World’s largest 2 GW geothermal project approved in US, to power two million homes

Geothermal energy has traditionally been considered unfeasible outside of seismically active regions like Iceland. However, modern geothermal techniques (which somewhat resemble fracking) could significantly enhance its feasibility in any location.

The Department announced that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has approved the Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah. This project will use innovative technology to generate up to 2 gigawatts (GW) of baseload power, enough to supply over 2 million homes.

The Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project generates energy by injecting water into hot subsurface rock formations.

It then extracts the heated water to produce electricity, rather than relying on naturally occurring underground hot water like traditional geothermal systems.

If fully developed, the project will cover approximately 631 acres, including 148 acres on public lands, and produce up to 2 gigawatts of clean energy. 

The project involves developing approximately 23 well pads for drilling and completing observation, production, and injection wells.

It will also include constructing up to 20 geothermal power plants, associated access roads, and a power distribution network comprising sub-transmission lines.

For reference, the US currently has about 4 GW of geothermal power in total, so this would be a 50% increase if constructed. In total, the US has a electrical nameplate capacity of 1.19 TW, or about 1190 GW. So 2 GW isn't a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but this technology looks promising and could conceivably take off beyond this particular project.

The climate crisis will not be solved by one "silver bullet." It will be solved by the confluence of many different solutions in different niches. This is one of them.

The US government believes that geothermal energy could account for a meaningful portion of the energy mix in the future. In addition to being much more green than burning fossil fuels, geothermal power isn't subject to price swings from oil producers or geopolitical battles over natural gas production. It can be produced at home all day, every day. There's an energy security component to geothermal that makes it attractive even to politicians who aren't keen on solar and wind. Additionally, because modern geothermal techniques work basically anywhere, there would be somewhat less need to expand grid infrastructure to support it. You could just build it relatively near population centers.

Geothermal doesn't have to make up an enormous portion of the energy mix in order to make a difference. It could help replace natural gas in order to provide power around the clock, in times of day/year that solar and wind have lower generating output. Along with an array of battery technologies, which are constantly innovating, and an increase in nuclear energy (which has recently gotten much attention in both the private and public sectors), it could feasibly ease the energy transition in a cost-effective way.

Let's invent some numbers. As of 2022, electricity nameplate capacity in the US for gas+coal was 771.4 GW. We have to replace all of this with electricity generation. (I am not talking about total energy, but thankfully the amount of total fossil fuel energy we have to replace is not as high as you think.)

• In a place like California, as of April 2024, solar can cover just about 100% of electricity needs from 11am to 4pm; renewables in general from about 8am to about 6pm. For most of the rest of the day, renewables can cover about 50% of demand.
• So if we can increase battery storage capacity (electrical, pumped hydro, sand, etc.) to about 25% of demand in the near future, that leaves about 25% needed from some other system. We're not so far off from this much battery storage, according to that chart in Scientific American—let's fudge it and say that mostly covers things until midnight, since the batteries would be in use after solar overproduction.
• I think a combination of greater wind production, greater geothermal production, novel technology like tidal production, and passive improvements to energy efficiency like slowly more effective home insulation techniques (what most power is being wasted on at night) could make up pretty much all of that difference. Geothermal would be a small part, but it's there. If we say wind manages 15% of that, geothermal 10%, and a combination of other novel stuff and energy efficiency improvements take the last 5%, we're pretty much covered. This is extremely optimistic and I'm sure climate scientists reading this are tearing their hair out, but I feel like there is opportunity for more-than-linear geothermal growth once a big plant like this is built.
• Obviously in the winter, more renewables would be needed. In practice I think this will work out to having more batteries. And in a less sunny place, more geothermal, wind, etc. would be needed to get to a fully renewable state. However, lots of less sunny places (like Pennsylvania) have a long history of fracking and would probably welcome the new technology.

It's not all-or-nothing though. Even if we can only consistently generate 75% of our electricity from renewable sources, that's a big step ahead of where we are now and would be a great absolute reduction in carbon emissions. We are totally on the way to a renewable future. I think batteries are going to be a much bigger part of this than geothermal, but it will all fit together.