Geothermal rocks.

This is a post to explain to friends and family why geothermal energy is interesting. It is more of a love letter than white paper. If there are errors, omissions, or other things you would like to discuss please reach out.

More energy is a good thing

Let’s start with a basic premise that is now close to full-blown consensus opinion for good reasons. We need more energy. It is the fundamental input for everything we do today and in the future. If you want data, check out this chart showing that more prosperous societies (as measured by GDP per capita) use more energy, without exception.

What does this energy get us? There are five main things: electricity generation, making things (manufacturing), getting around (transportation and logistics), growing food (agriculture), and temperature control (heating/cooling buildings). Electricity is about 20% of energy consumption today (and growing). Increasing electrification (e.g., growing share of electric vehicles, electrifying industrial processes, etc) is one of the best ways we can decarbonize, as long as that electricity is generated by carbon-free sources. So how are we going to increase how much electricity we generate to make society better off?

We have good options

Fortunately for us, the technology is available to succeed in the largest and most exciting energy transition in human history. We have made big transitions before – wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to electricity – and now, after decades of progress, carbon-free energy assets are being deployed at record pace.

Deploying all this new tech gives us a chance to be good ancestors.

We need baseload power

Today’s energy demands require power 24/7. Think about the data centers powering artificial intelligence. Hyperscalers demand 8,760 hours of uptime a year (24x365). In order to solve all energy needs, we need “baseload” power sources that are always-on and carbon free. Luckily, the tech and economics are working for several ways to deliver this. Here is our menu of options.

• Solar or wind + storage: this is the most popular combination, but doing things like powering a city or data center on stored energy in batteries during night / when it’s not windy is expensive.
• Hydro: perfect if you have dams or rivers, for a good example look at Quebec.
• Nuclear fission: using magic rocks to generate power is a miracle. Modern reactors are very safe, but the industry faces real challenges with cost / build times, next gen fuel supply, and public perception (although this has improved rapidly over the last few years). I'm optimistic next generation reactors are going to work and be a key part of the solution.
  • Side note: Nuclear fusion (creating energy the same way as the sun) is cool, but very hard to make commercially viable. It has perpetually been “10 years away” since the 70s. SHINE Technologies has a really interesting go-to-market strategy to commercialize fusion. I’m excited about what they’re doing.
• Geothermal: using heat from the earth’s core to generate power. If we access hot enough rock, that heat can be used to power turbines that transfer that energy into electricity. It is nuclear under your feet (most of the Earth’s core heat is from radioactive decay!). Historically this is geographically limited (think places with hot springs), but, like in other industries, geothermal advances are coming to market quickly. Companies are figuring out how to access hot rock in more places.

So here’s where we stand (all uncontroversial and boring to list out):

1. Increased energy consumption is required for the world to become more prosperous
2. Additional energy should be increasingly from carbon-free sources
3. Electrification is a good way to deliver more carbon-free power
4. We need that power available 24/7 (“baseload”)

Why is geothermal a good idea?

The case for geothermal

Geothermal energy is the only source of carbon-free baseload power that can work anywhere on the planet if we drill deep enough, never needs to be re-fueled, requires no storage, and creates no waste. And at the same time, we can use talent and equipment from the oil & gas industry to help aid the energy transition.

Geothermal energy has about 16GW of global capacity today, with 30GW expected by 2030. The rough rule of thumb is 1 MW (1/1000 a GW) is about enough to power 1,000 homes. So geothermal today can power the equivalent of about 16,000,000 homes. That is not a lot. The International Energy Agency says that with tech improvements geothermal can grow fast enough to reach 600GW of installed capacity by 2050 (15% of global electricity demand, from 1% today), second only to solar's scale potential of renewable options.

So what is standing in the way? A recent piece from the Carnegie Endowment highlights drilling, well construction, heat extraction, power production, and international coordination as key challenges. An addition to their write up is permitting and the weaponization of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) to slow or stop energy projects.

My take on all this is the technical and political challenges are real, and have some great teams and efforts in progress working on them. The under-addressed reason we aren’t talking more about geothermal is the industry hasn’t developed an effective cultural / marketing / lobbying strategy yet. There are lots of lessons to learn from what nuclear has done well (As an aside, since so much of life and politics is downstream from culture, I really look up to what Isabelle has been doing with Isodope, a nuclear advocacy effort).

For decades, geothermal energy was limited to places with unique geology, like Iceland or parts of California. But that's changing fast. For example, companies are bringing down costs of site discovery (Zanskar), leveraging fracking tech to make more hot rock accessible (Fervo Energy), improving how efficiently heat can be brought to the surface (Eavor), and figuring out novel ways to drill way deeper than thought possible (Quaise).

It's still early days for geothermal. The fundamentals are there and improvements are working. I'm confident the path to society-level scale for energy consumption and decarbonization is there, but it won't happen automatically. I'm excited about the possibilities over the next five years and think you'll be hearing a lot more about geothermal soon. Geothermal rocks. Tell a friend.

If you're involved in the geothermal industry and find yourself in Washington D.C., I’d love to connect. I’m also doing a tour of project sites in Texas and Utah this fall. If there are any recommendations please let me know.

Thanks to ChatGPT 4o and o3 for reviewing drafts of this.