Geothermal Drilling and the Path to Always-On Energy Abundance

This article serves futurism and the move from scarcity toward abundance and post-scarcity. Its thesis is simple and a little contrarian: the fastest route to clean power that runs day and night may go through the drilling tools and the workforce of the oil and gas industry, not around them. The heat under our feet is close to unlimited on human scales. What is scarce is the ability to reach it at a low cost, and that is a drilling and permitting problem that people already know how to work on.

The idea in brief

Most energy debates treat clean power as a choice between sunlight, wind, and nuclear fission. Geothermal energy is usually left out because, for most of its history, it only worked in a few lucky places where hot water sits close to the surface. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, geothermal plants in the United States produced about 16 billion kilowatthours in 2025, about 0.4% of utility-scale electricity, from plants in only seven states, with California producing about 68.6% of that total.

The surprising part is the size of the resource compared with that small output. When the U.S. Department of Energy launched its Enhanced Geothermal Shot in September 2022, it stated that more than five terawatts of heat resources exist in the United States, which it described as enough to meet the electricity needs of the entire world. The gap between five terawatts of heat and 0.4% of electricity is the whole story. The heat is there. The way to reach it has been too expensive.

Why heat is not the scarce part

Rock gets hotter with depth almost everywhere. Conventional geothermal plants use natural pockets of hot water and steam, which the Clean Air Task Force describes as resources at roughly 150 to 200 degrees Celsius. Enhanced geothermal systems take a different approach. Instead of waiting for nature to provide a hot reservoir, engineers drill into hot, dry rock, open small fractures, and circulate water through the rock so it carries heat back to the surface.

This changes the question from "where is the hot water?" to "how deep and how fast can we drill?" That is the same question the oil and gas industry has spent decades answering. Horizontal drilling, better drill bits, downhole sensors, and fracture design were all developed to pull oil and gas out of rock. The same toolkit can be pointed at heat.

What the oil field already proved

In July 2023, the company Fervo Energy reported results from Project Red, a pilot in Nevada. According to the company, it drilled a horizontal well pair with lateral lengths of 3,250 feet, reached a temperature of 191 degrees Celsius, and ran a standard 30-day well test with a flow rate of 63 liters per second, enough to support 3.5 megawatts of electric production. The company described this as a record for an enhanced geothermal system and said it followed an induced seismicity mitigation protocol based on Department of Energy best practices. Its own statement credited "drilling technology from the oil and gas industry" for the result.

These are company claims about one pilot, and a single well pair is small. The point for this article is the direction of travel. A technique built for fossil fuels produced a working source of continuous clean power.

The Department of Energy has made the same link in policy. Its 2022 announcement included up to $165 million to transfer best practices from oil and gas to geothermal work, $44 million for its FORGE field laboratory in Utah, and $84 million for four pilot enhanced geothermal demonstrations. The same announcement noted that most geothermal jobs are local, tied to well drilling and construction, and that the geothermal workforce is similar to the oil and gas workforce. That creates an opportunity to move skilled workers, equipment, and whole communities into a clean energy industry rather than leaving them behind.

The cost target and what it would unlock

The Enhanced Geothermal Shot sets a goal of cutting the cost of enhanced geothermal systems by 90%, to $45 per megawatt-hour, by 2035. The agency stated that capturing even a small fraction of the resource could power over 40 million American homes.

The Department of Energy GeoVision analysis offers a second set of numbers. It projects that, with technology improvements, U.S. geothermal electricity capacity could grow to 60 gigawatts by 2050, more than 26 times current deployment and about 8.5% of U.S. electricity. An updated look in 2023, based on newer estimates of enhanced geothermal potential, found that capacity could reach 90 gigawatts by 2050. GeoVision also identified potential for geothermal heat pumps serving the equivalent of 28 million households and economic potential for 17,500 geothermal district heating systems.

One finding in GeoVision deserves more attention than it gets: regulatory reforms that shorten permitting timelines could, on their own, double geothermal capacity by 2050. In other words, part of the scarcity is a paperwork scarcity. This connects to a theme across this wiki, that some scarcity is made by rules rather than by nature, as discussed in Occupational licensing and scarcity.

Superhot rock and geothermal everywhere

The more ambitious version is called superhot rock geothermal. The Clean Air Task Force describes it as drilling into rock above 400 degrees Celsius, where water enters a supercritical state that carries far more energy. It estimates that such wells could produce five to ten times the energy of a conventional geothermal well. It points to the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, whose Krafla borehole produced superhot water at 452 degrees Celsius with an estimated 36 megawatts of electric production potential.

The catch is depth. The same source states that reaching superhot rock in most places could require drilling to around 15 kilometers, compared with about 7 kilometers reachable with current methods. If deep drilling becomes routine and affordable, geothermal stops being a resource for volcanic regions and becomes something almost any country could use. That is why the phrase "geothermal everywhere" appears in this field.

For comparison, the EIA reports that Kenya already produces about 43% of its electricity from geothermal energy. A country with good geology has already shown that geothermal can be a main source of power, not a niche one.

What this means for abundance

Energy sits under almost every other price. Water from desalination, fertilizer, metals, computing, and indoor farming all depend on it, as explored in Energy costs and abundance. Solar and wind can produce power at a low cost per unit, but their output varies with weather and time of day. A source that runs day and night with no fuel cost fills a different role. It can carry the load that would otherwise need fuel, large batteries, or long transmission lines.

Geothermal also has a small surface footprint and local jobs. A region that once depended on drilling for oil and gas could keep its skills and rigs and sell clean heat and power instead. That makes the transition less of a fight between workers and climate goals, and more of a retooling.

For readers interested in measuring progress, the time prices approach offers a useful test. If drilling costs fall the way solar panel costs fell, the hours of work needed to buy a year of electricity could drop sharply, and that would show up in nearly every other good.

Honest limits and open questions

The Department of Energy cost target is a goal, not a forecast, and it may be missed.
Pilot results such as Project Red come from company statements and early projects, which do not prove performance over decades.
Fracturing rock can cause small earthquakes. Monitoring and mitigation protocols exist, but public trust has to be earned site by site.
Enhanced geothermal systems need water to circulate, which matters in dry regions.
Drilling to 15 kilometers in hot rock is far beyond routine practice today, and superhot rock remains mostly a research goal.
Permitting reform can speed projects, but it also raises fair questions about local consent and environmental review.

Discussion questions, essay ideas, and learning related AI prompt ideas

Why has geothermal energy stayed so small in the United States when the heat resource is so large?
Write an essay arguing for or against the idea that the oil and gas workforce is the most important asset for clean energy abundance.
Explain the difference between conventional geothermal, enhanced geothermal systems, and superhot rock geothermal in plain language for a high school student.
Compare how solar panel costs fell over time with how drilling costs might fall, and list what would have to happen for geothermal to follow a similar curve.
Describe how a region that depends on oil and gas jobs could plan a move into geothermal work, including training, equipment, and local consent.
Explore what permitting reform for geothermal projects could look like while still protecting local communities and groundwater.

References

Geothermal drilling and the path to energy abundance