Tell Congress to support U.S. geothermal innovation!

In a rare example of sensible bipartisan support for a clean energy technology, Energy Department has finalized a clean energy grant to expand a successful first-in-the-nation networked geothermal project. The $8.6 million grant will go to Eversource Energy, nonprofit HEET, and the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, enabling them to double the size of their neighborhood-scale clean heating system.

The current networked geothermal system consists of a network of pipes circulating water through dozens of boreholes, each several hundred feet deep, to supply a warm heat source allowing electric heat pumps to provide heating and cooling to about 140 homes and businesses in Framingham. The network’s efficiency should increase as it grows, requiring fewer warming boreholes per customer. Grant-supported construction to heat another 140 Framingham buildings should begin in late 2026! Networked geothermal systems like these offer an impressively wide range of benefits for communities, from lowering utility bills by protecting households from highly volatile gas prices to improving health outcomes by reducing local air pollution!

This is a very different form of geothermal than the enhanced geothermal taking off out West with startups like Fervo and Mazama. Networked geothermal uses many small shallow boreholes instead of one or two big ultra-deep ones. Happily, both forms of geothermal are now growing fast! Construction work recently began on a similar networked geothermal system for New Haven, Connecticut, to provide clean heat to a historic train station and 1,000 units of housing! 26 networked geothermal pilot trials are reportedly underway nationwide.

There’s a lot of innovation happening with geothermal in America! Congress should impose its oversight power as a coequal branch of government to ensure that the White House does not weaponize permitting red tape to strangle geothermal growth as it has done for wind, solar, and batteries. And Congress should pass maximally supportive regulatory and permitting structures to accelerate a rapid build-out of geothermal power as well as wind, solar and battery storage — the fast-growing, market-preferred, clean, cheap, and reliable sources for U.S. energy!

Tell Congress to support U.S. geothermal innovation!