The United States is moving to expand the scope of geothermal energy through government research and partnerships with energy and drilling companies, in a step that could change the boundaries of a sector that currently accounts for only about 1% of the country’s electricity-generation capacity. According to the original article, this policy is not limited to general statements; it includes funding, research institutions, and commercial projects targeting reliable electricity generation at the gigawatt scale.
These moves are part of the Donald Trump administration’s policy known as “American energy dominance,” which also includes biomass and hydropower. But support for geothermal energy stands out because the natural conditions required for conventional projects, such as the availability of suitable heat, rocks, and groundwater, had confined most U.S. potential to scattered areas west of the Rocky Mountains, limiting its ability to compete with fossil fuels in baseload electricity generation.
From a Limited Resource to a Scalable Engineering Field
The article says that government investment in new geothermal systems began in the early 2000s, with the aim of overcoming the geographic constraints of natural resources. Among the most prominent of these efforts is FORGE, or Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy, in Utah, a long-term research and development project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy in partnership with the University of Utah.
The new direction relies on what are known as enhanced geothermal systems, which aim to create or improve the pathways needed to access geothermal heat rather than relying solely on suitable natural reservoirs. This shift explains the interest of oilfield and gasfield services companies in the sector, given the possibility of reusing their expertise in drilling and equipment.
The report indicates that Liberty Energy, whose chief executive officer Chris Wright held the position before being nominated as energy secretary, invested $10 million in the startup Fervo Energy in 2022. Devon Energy, another energy services company, also participated in a $462 million Series E funding round for Fervo in 2025.
A National Center to Coordinate Research
On September 3, the U.S. Department of Energy established the Geothermal Center of Excellence at the National Laboratory of the Rockies in Colorado, the new name of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The center will work in partnership with the National Energy Technology Laboratory, known as NETL.
According to the department, the center will bring together specialized expertise and capabilities at the department’s national laboratories to accelerate the discovery and development of geothermal energy at the gigawatt scale, in addition to resource discovery and support for commercial development. It will also serve as the industry’s main point of contact with the national laboratories, with plans to form an advisory council by special invitation that includes industry stakeholders to identify market-relevant research needs and strengthen public-private partnerships.
The support network includes the Argonne, Brookhaven, Idaho, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia laboratories, in addition to NETL. NETL’s connection to the hydrocarbon sector gives the project an important dimension, as the laboratory operates in states traditionally associated with fossil-fuel industries, including Texas and West Virginia, and also supports the department’s Office of Hydrocarbon and Geothermal Energy.
Commercial Projects Raise Expectations
Several commercial announcements coincided with the government moves. On September 1, Fervo announced a 396-megawatt power purchase agreement with Google to support the development of enhanced geothermal systems as part of the Cape Station project in Utah. If the plan proceeds as expected, the facility is scheduled to begin operations in 2028.
On the same day, Hexagon Energy announced a strategic agreement with wood-products company Weyerhaeuser to develop geothermal projects on the latter’s land in Washington and Oregon. Mazama Energy also announced a new milestone in the development of a high-speed, high-efficiency drilling system for engineered geothermal projects targeting extremely hot rocks, at the Project Athena pilot site in Oregon.
Before the end of the year, Mazama plans to begin drilling at Project Ceres in Oregon, which the company describes as the first large-scale commercial geothermal system based on extremely hot rocks in the United States, and possibly in the world. The report says that the Department of Energy supports Mazama among a group of entities operating in the sector, while the U.S. Air Force continues to monitor a group of new geothermal systems.
What Is Changing in Practice?
The most important shift is not in the size of current production, but in the attempt to move geothermal energy from a resource dependent on rare natural sites to a technology whose scope can be expanded through drilling and engineering. If these projects succeed, the sector could become an additional competitor in baseload electricity generation, the area traditionally targeted by coal and gas.
But this possibility does not mean that the competition has already materialized. The projects mentioned are still in development or testing, and some dates lie in the future. The report also provides no data on electricity costs, operational success rates, or the environmental impact of new drilling technologies. The relationship between support for geothermal energy and the Department of Energy’s stated goal of restoring coal as a “cornerstone” of the U.S. energy mix remains a political paradox; the article argues that the same policy could accelerate the development of an alternative that competes with coal, at a time when the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects demand for coal from power plant operators to continue declining.