The Quiet Revolution Reshaping America’s Energy Future

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

• The geothermal revolution includes both shallow geoexchange systems, such as The Riverie high-rise which uses boreholes for heating and cooling, and deeper, more technologically advanced “enhanced geothermal” techniques.

• Enhanced geothermal aims to make this alternative energy source viable anywhere by borrowing advanced drilling technologies from fields like hydraulic fracturing and nuclear fusion to access the Earth’s core heat.

• The sector is gaining momentum with significant investment from major tech figures like Bill Gates and Google, and is projected by the U.S. Department of Energy to supply about 90 gigawatts of carbon-free energy by 2050.

A geothermal revolution is unfolding around the United States in ways both flashy and quiet. As Big Tech becomes increasingly involved in developing alternative energy sources to meet skyrocketing energy demand driven by the AI boom, innovative and advanced geothermal technologies have been taking off – but so too have more simple and surface-level solutions like heat pumps. Together, these approaches could reshape the domestic energy industry by providing baseload clean energy solutions and shoring up energy security in urban and rural populations alike.

Last month, residents started moving into The Riverie, the biggest high-rise geoexchange system in the country, an apartment building in Brooklyn that is situated atop 320 boreholes that help the building heat and cool through tapping into the Earth’s naturally insulated temperatures. In the winter, relatively warm temperatures are piped out of the ground and into the building. In the summer, the process is reversed and heat is pumped downward into the ground. 

“Because it simply moves heat rather than generating it, the Riverie is expected to reduce annual carbon emissions from heating and cooling by 53 percent compared with traditional residential buildings,” reports Scientific American. While up-front costs and red tape can be a major deterrent from building similar models elsewhere, the benefits outweigh the costs – both in terms of economics and environmental factors – in many settings. As a result, the Riverie is likely at the vanguard of a much bigger movement that will start to become more common in urban areas around the country and the world. 

Whereas the major advantage of geoexchange systems such as this one is that they are relatively shallow and easy to drill, the other major innovation taking place in geothermal energy takes just the opposite approach – unlocking new ways to drill deeper into the Earth than ever before. Historically, geothermal energy systems have only been viable in places where the heat from the Earth’s core has naturally escaped to the surface – such as through geysers and thermal pools.  

To make geothermal a practical alternative energy source nearly anywhere on Earth, geothermal startups across the world are working on ‘enhanced geothermal’ techniques capable of drilling to extreme depths. These startups are borrowing technologies from hydraulic fracturing and even nuclear fusion to find more advanced ways to blast and melt away bedrock to access the heat of the Earth’s core. 

Enhanced geothermal startups are being backed by some of the tech industry’s biggest figures and deepest pockets. One such venture, Houston-based Fervo Energy, is backed by Bill Gates and Google, among other major investors. Plus, critically, geothermal has bipartisan backing and outspoken support from the Trump administration – rare for a clean energy technology in the United States. 

As such, the U.S. is poised to become a major frontrunner in the emerging sector. According to projections from the United States Department of Energy, enhanced geothermal projects could provide about 90 gigawatts of carbon-free energy in the U.S. by 2050. That’s roughly enough to power at least 65 million homes. 

“The U.S. has a number of different superpowers and putting holes in the ground and taking things out of those holes is one of them — and doing so more economically and more efficiently than basically any other place on Earth,” Drew Nelson, vice president of Project InnerSpace, was quoted by Cipher News in an article from last year.

Plus, the AI boom is driving an increase in investment in geothermal research and development, which has been a major catalyst for technological advancement. While AI is creating an energy problem that geothermal is needed to solve, it is also providing key solutions for geothermal development and deployment. AI tools are increasingly being used to map out optimal locations for geothermal systems. 

However, there are some key challenges standing in the way of geothermal expansion, including high up-front costs and a talent shortage for the nascent and relatively little-known industry. But while enhanced geothermal gets all of the attention and most of the bottlenecks, smaller and quieter projects like Riviera are continuing to break ground and change the way we heat and cool our cities. These breakthroughs are small, but could add up to huge changes for energy efficiency in coming years.