Tell Congress to accelerate enhanced geothermal power for America!

In Oregon, bold startup Mazama Energy is building the world’s hottest enhanced geothermal system by drilling into the slopes of a dormant volcano. Their tech-testing demonstration drilling site has now achieved a record-high bottomhole temperature of 629°F (331°C)! The next steps are to scale to a 15 MW pilot, then a 200 MW commercial clean power site, both still at Newberry Volcano. (The drilling site does not interact with the magma chamber, is located more than ten miles away from the nearest populated area, and has been evaluated to pose little to no seismic risk). Mazama calculates that achieving temperatures above 750°F (400°C) could provide 10 times more power while using 75% less water than most enhanced geothermal!

“With geothermal, you get global, round-the-clock energy that is carbon-free, cost-stable, and grid-independent.

The Newberry pilot provides a blueprint for unlocking baseload, utility-scale, carbon-free energy from the Earth’s crust worldwide.”

— Sriram Vasantharajan, CEO of Mazama Energy

This is just one of many bold new innovations taking shape at the frontier of America’s enhanced geothermal field, which is rapidly scaling up and diversifying to build 24/7 clean baseload power!

Enhanced geothermal pioneer Fervo is scaling up rapidly! They’re building out their 500 MW (0.5 GW) Cape Station in Utah, recently signed a long-term deal to provide power to California, and report that they have acquired mineral rights to half a million acres across America, which they view as “over 50 gigawatts of opportunity.”

Startups like XGS and Sage Geosystems are building out promising new closed-loop and “earth battery” enhanced geothermal designs.

The average price of U.S. public land leases for geothermal clean drilling has risen by 282% this year to reach $127 per acre, up from an average price of $33 per acre in 2024!

And there are even more experimental and adventurous concepts being developed to tap the incredible power of Earth’s heat for clean electricity. Startup Quaise is using a gyrotron originally developed for nuclear fusion experiments that fires an electromagnetic beam that can liquefy rock at 2,000°C, leaving behind cooling obsidian. Quaise hopes to develop this technology to cleanly drill 3 to 20 kilometers deep, possibly creating the deepest holes ever and hopefully unlocking super-hot geothermal heat for 24/7 clean power anywhere on Earth.

So far, America’s booming geothermal industry appears to have considerable bipartisan support, thanks in part to its use of very similar skills and technology to oil and gas drilling making it a perfect “off-ramp” for fossil fuel workers and suppliers. If we’re lucky and smart, we might get a solar power-level exponential surge in a clean baseload power source across the next decade! Consistent federal support is needed to ensure that this clean energy source has a chance to rise on its manifest merits and avoid being blocked by politicized bureaucracy. Strong legislative oversight to ensure that Energy Department R&D funding and Interior Department public land leasing isn’t being stalled by ideological apparatchiks (as we’ve seen with solar, wind, and transmission line projects) would be a good start, as would passing the GEO Act or the SPEED Act to ensure rapid permitting for geothermal energy projects

Tell Congress to accelerate enhanced geothermal power for America!