Enhanced geothermal systems — which are a new way to tap the Earth’s natural underground heat to make electricity — could be a key piece of America’s transition away from fossil fuels.
To scale it broadly and quickly enough to fight climate change, however, the emerging technology needs to overcome some bumps in the road: mainly an engineering learning curve and the need to attract more investment dollars.
Fervo Energy’s Cape Station in rural southwest Utah is already starting to show signs of progress on both fronts.
“We've done it on paper. We've run computational models on the computer. But at the end of the day, you only know these things to be true when you do them in the field,” Government Affairs and Policy Manager Ben Serrurier said.
“What's been so exciting about our development at Cape Station is seeing the expectations that we had going in, the plan that we put onto paper come to fruition.”
The company broke ground on the project last fall in Beaver County. And drilling the latest well took less than half of the time it took to drill wells at its previous project in Nevada. That’s according to data Fervo published as part of a Stanford University geothermal workshop in February.
Speeding up the process has led to a near 50% cut in the total cost of drilling, Serrurier said, which is a big deal because drilling accounts for roughly half of the cost of getting a project like this off the ground. Perhaps even more important is what those cuts have allowed the company to do.
“We're able to reach deeper depths, hotter temperatures and longer horizontal laterals, all of which translates into better power production,” Serrurier said.
Renewable energy advocates also view the progress at Cape Station as a big step in promoting climate-friendly energy solutions in Utah.
“It’s huge,” Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and energy analyst with environmental group Utah Clean Energy, said.
“Enhanced geothermal is one of the most exciting developments in the energy space in a decade. … We just need to have the vision to actually develop it.”
In a future of carbon-free power, the country will require some form — or more likely multiple forms — of renewable energy that can be used when solar and wind aren’t producing enough. Mitchell said geothermal stacks up well against its competitors for that slice of the power pie. Current processes for producing energy from hydrogen are not very efficient and nuclear, even with modern small modular reactors, creates radioactive waste. Pumped storage hydropower requires a certain type of topography.
Cost is another consideration. Historically the costs of drilling into hot, deep rock for geothermal had been so high, that few believed it could be a big part of our energy mix, Mitchell said. He was initially skeptical, too.
“People didn't think [geothermal] was a real thing or that it would have much potential. So what's really important now is to see that there’s starting to be a change in that direction.”
There are still some concerns, he said, such as geothermal’s potential connection to increased earthquake activity, but the technology also has built-in advantages over other fledgling energy options. As geothermal looks to scale up its workforce, for example, it can turn to an entire industry of people who are already trained in similar drilling techniques for oil and gas.
In fact, enhanced geothermal borrows a lot of know-how from the oil and gas industry Serrurier said, but it requires delving into harder, hotter rock. So each time they drill, they learn more about which piece of equipment or technique works best.
“It's like cooking. You know the ingredients, but then you can prepare it a little bit better.”
Like the nearby Utah FORGE project, Cape Station will employ a closed-loop that pumps water below ground into cracks in the hot rock and then brings it back to the surface, where it generates power before cycling it back down to repeat the process again.
The federal government believes in this technology, too — the Department of Energy’s long-term goal is to multiply domestic geothermal capacity nearly 25-fold by 2050. And based on data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Utah has plenty of untapped potential for generating geothermal power.
Since enhanced geothermal is still a relatively new field, Serrurier said proving it works can boost the whole industry, both by sharing best practices and by making investment easier to attract.
Fervo’s early success at Cape Station helped it land $25 million from the federal government as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Then on Feb. 29, the company announced it raised another $244 million from a group of private investors led by Devon Energy, an Oklahoma-based oil and gas producer.
But for Utahns, this momentum comes with a catch. The electricity produced by this project won’t go to Utah utility customers, at least initially. Fervo has contracts to send it to California in two phases — 90 megawatts in 2026 and then an additional 310 megawatts in 2028.
“It is every one of our intentions to sell in Utah, but that requires a buyer,” Serrurier said.
“At the moment, there hasn't been the same level of enthusiasm as there has been from California utilities. But I fully expect that when we demonstrate 400 megawatts in their backyard, they're gonna start to take notice.”
That’s disappointing for renewable advocates like Mitchell. Having early enhanced geothermal projects in Utah should be a big competitive advantage for the state, he said, but the 2024 legislative session didn’t offer a lot of signs that lawmakers plan to seize on it.
One bright spot for Mitchell was HB124, the Energy Infrastructure Amendments bill that added geothermal to the list of projects businesses can get a tax credit to build. But overall, he said it seemed like the Legislature put more time and attention into protecting Utah’s coal plants with bills like SB224. Another bill that would have specifically authorized a study on the future of geothermal energy in Utah, SB257, failed to advance in the Senate.
If action isn’t taken now, Mitchell said Utah is at risk of being left behind as hotter temperatures from climate change increase the West’s need for electricity in the coming years.
“It’s not like Utah is in a vacuum. There is an intense competition to build resources. … So by us saying we're just going to squat on our coal resources, we're really missing an opportunity.”
