Cape Station, future home of an enhanced geothermal power plant, in Utah

I have been following this company and several others (Quaise, Fervo, Sage) in the EGS Space for a little bit now, and I think we are on the cusp of a huge breakthrough in baseload renewable energy. This site in Utah is one of the largest test cases that expands the use of EGS to a much broader area than just a few geothermal hot spots. Prices are dropping dramatically, and these things are moving quickly beyond the R&D phase. There is a world where every major data center across the Western US has its own base load power supply that has essentially no pollution, no footprint, no hazardous waste, and no need for complicated permitting. EGS truly could be a game changer in the world's push to decarbonize. I'm super excited.

> no pollution, no footprint, no hazardous waste

As a layman, I assume waste heat would still be an issue? Even so I would also assume it's still way less damaging to the environment than everything else.

Complicated permitting as compared to what? I would assume it's much more complicated than solar, and less complicated than... is there anything else available at small scale?

coal or gas i would guess

Nuclear is the comparable power source -- both have high upfront costs, long build times, low operating costs and clean generation. If deep geothermal can come in cheaper than nuclear, there's basically no reason to do nuclear.

Nah. Gas isn't comparable and no one in the US is building new coal generation.

Shallower geothermal has a history of causing damaging earthquakes in some geologies.

At least in Tuscany - where there is a cluster of geothermal power plants creating 1/3 of the region electricity (it should reach 40% in a few years) - they had to invent special filters to lower the emission of mercury and hydrogen sulfide https://www.enelgreenpower.com/stories/articles/2024/10/geot...

I don't know if it's "no footprint" at all. For what I know, which is not much, but just what a person living here might know, there's a footprint that can be somehow managed. But I'm not an engineer

I'm not quite sure about that. The earths core should generate the same amount of heat (through gravitational friction and radioactive decay) regardless if we tap it or not. If the heat didn't escape somehow already it would slowly get hotter.

Whaste heat from nuclear or fusion does contribute to earth heating, though insignificant compared to any source pf c02.

But my intuition tells me geothermal wouldn't...

Mm. Actually, water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas; and that's how to covert heat to energy. So mabie it would indeed be significant.

Some versions of deep geothermal does also borrow from the fracking industry which has issues with groundwater pollution.

TFA states the Cape Station plant (created and operated by a company called Fervo) are closed systems - they capture the emissions so no water is wasted or spewed into the environment as steam.

They deserve big props for this innovation and effort, as historically Utah has frequently been been treated as an industrial dumping grounds. The long-term ecological damage and visual eyesores due to strip mining, chemical dumping and other pollution is significant.

Not really an issue in the US at least. Their primary geothermal basins already have earthquakes far stronger than any that might be triggered by fluid injection. They also have earthquake swarms due to natural circulation of geothermal fluids in some of these areas.

It is mostly an issue in places like Europe that do not have a history of strong earthquakes and therefore lack seismic resistance civil engineering. There are a few places like that in the US (e.g. New England) where a minor M5 earthquake can cause damage but those don't overlap with areas with high geothermal potential.

Oh, yes. Especially if you don't have a generous supply of fresh water, to use in your cooling towers. For example:

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/02/f7/geotherma...

Well, that's just neat!

Aren’t we getting ”clean beautiful coal”?

The plants mentioned in the article are closed systems. They aren’t releasing steam into the atmosphere like the plants you’re referencing.

Waste heat is always "an issue", but rarely an issue worth caring much about.

Global warming isn't happening due to industrial waste heat - it's happening due to CO2 emissions being a massive leverage for messing with how the planet absorbs and emits heat.

There's some small wind generation (e.g. designed to go on top of buildings), though I don't think it's ever been a significant commercial success.

The deep geothermal people seem to think it can be used ~anywhere, not just traditional geothermal basins.

The downvotes are presumable because you have misquoted him.

He said ‘BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL’

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1141801993510...

I wish New Zealand did more of this.

We have a whole fleet of geothermal plants (15ish), making about 20% of our power. However the largest plant is only 160MW.

The impact in comparison to our other renewables seems fairly minimal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_New_Zealan...

Although, the more greenhouse gases there are, the worse waste heat is.

For sure! I’ve been following this tech for decades. The advantage of high-quality geothermal basins is maximizing the ROI and efficiency of the first installations, which places the product in the best possible light for marketing purposes. It also provides a comparison against more conventional geothermal power generation which is deployed in the same environment.

I understand the problem to be energy RoI. The larger the size of a wind turbine’s blade, the more energy it produces compared to the cost of producing it. Small wind systems just can’t avail themselves of these economies of scale.