The time has finally come for geothermal energy

I've always been curious why a cost-effective widespread implementation of geothermal energy has never been considered a holy grail of energy production, at least not in the public debate. Much of the discussion is so focussed on nuclear fusion, which seems so much harder and less likely to be reliable.

> a holy grail of energy production

Since you're comparing it to nuclear, I'm assuming you mean electricity production here, not energy production?

It's always worth remembering that electricity only accounts for ~20% of global energy consumption (in the US it's closer to 33%).

I suspect people confuse these two because in a residential context electricity plays a huge part of our energy usage, but as a whole it's a smaller part of total energy usage than most people imagine.

But any serious discussion of renewable energy should be careful not to make this very significant error.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory publishes a great diagram of US energy use: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2024-12/e...

At home I use 15,000kWh of oil for heating each year (about 10kWh per litre, 1500 litres), and 8,000kWh of electricity (we use a lot more than the average household). For driving that's another 5000kWh a year if at 4 miles per kWh.

So even in a residential context, electricity is only about 1/4 of the demand. Across the whole country it's less than 300TWh out of 1500TWh, under 20%.

That excludes "imported energy" though, as in goods which used energy to make but were then imported.

The heating and driving could theoretically be electrified, though it might or might not make economic sense.