The United States Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the country needs to invest $225–250 billion to reach a potential 90 gigawatts (GW) of geothermal generation by 2050.

The figures are laid out in the DOE’s roadmap for next-generation geothermal power, the ninth installment of the Biden administration’s “Pathways to Commercial Liftoff” reports. The Liftoff reports, launched March 2023, outline how the public and private sectors achieve U.S. potential in alternative and renewable energy.

The latest report, “Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Next-Generation Geothermal Power”, puts the lower end of the range of potential geothermal capacity at 88 GW and the upper end at 125 GW.

In the near term, or by 2030, the advanced geothermal Liftoff report envisions two to five GW of added capacity to achieve commercial liftoff, which would need an investment of $20–25 billion. Geothermal sources currently account for about four GW of US electricity generation, according to the DOE.

The DOE said the targets could be achieved by implementing oil and gas technologies that overcome the geographic limitations of conventional geothermal projects.

“‘Next-generation’ technologies have the potential to engineer effective geothermal resources in commonly found environments, vastly expanding resource availability and potential commercial adoption”, the report states. “Although a nascent industry, next-generation geothermal enjoys several starting advantages, including transferrable technology, supply chains, and workforces from the oil & gas sector, that will help it achieve rapid scale.

“Recent field-scale pilots already provide a compelling roadmap for cost reductions necessary to achieve widespread commercial adoption of next-generation geothermal power.

“If the industry can achieve a set of market conditions around cost, demonstrations, value, and community engagement, commercial liftoff is attainable as early as 2030”.

High upfront costs could be overcome through $5 billion in early development capital to showcase the viability of such technologies, according to the report.

On February 13 the DOE announced three projects for potential funding of up to $60 million in the first rollout of a financing program for the demonstration of the viability of advanced geothermal energy.

For the Enhanced Geothermal System Pilot Demonstrations grant offer, Chevron Corp. has been picked for a project in Sonoma County of California that will use innovative drilling and stimulation methods to derive energy near an existing geothermal field. Fervo Energy Co. has been chosen for a project within Utah’s Milford Renewable Energy Corridor and adjacent to the DOE’s Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy laboratory that aims to produce at least 8.0 megawatts (MW) of power from each of three wells. In a work that “will help advance the science needed to operate in extreme heat conditions”, Mazama Energy hopes to build the first superhot EGS—with temperatures above 375 degrees Celsius (707 Fahrenheit)—on the western flank of Oregon’s Newberry Volcano.

Fervo published February 12 drilling results from its 400 MW project in Utah that it said “exceed the Department of Energy’s expectations for enhanced geothermal systems”. Of seven wells it drilled in the Cape Station project, Fervo achieved the fastest completion in 21 days, hailing the application of oil and gas drilling technology to geothermal energy.

“This increase in drilling efficiency has translated into significant cost reductions, with drilling costs across the first four horizontal wells at Cape falling from $9.4 million to $4.8 million per well”, Fervo said in a press release at the time.

Fervo and Google LLC last year put onstream the former’s first geothermal project under a partnership announced 2021 to generate electricity from next-gen geothermal technology. The project, which Google called the world’s first corporate agreement for next-gen geothermal power, provides electricity for Google’s data centers in Nevada.

“To tap into this subsurface heat at our site in Nevada, Fervo dug two horizontal wells and installed fiber-optic cables to capture data that shows the flow, temperature and performance of the geothermal system in real-time”, Google senior director for energy and climate Michael Terrell said in a blog post November 28 announcing the startup. “The result is a geothermal plant that can produce round-the-clock CFE [carbon-free energy] using less land than other clean energy sources and drawing on skills, knowledge, and supply chains that exist in other industries”.

Recent geothermal drilling successes in the U.S. indicate the domestic industry is on track to an average cost of $60-70 per megawatt hour (mWh) of geothermal power by 2030 and the official target of $45 per mWh by 2035,  the DOE said in the next-gen geothermal Liftoff report.

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