But instead of oil and gas, Fervo is hunting heat, a more abundant resource that neither pollutes the air nor contributes to global warming. The heat will fuel a new type of power plant: an enhanced geothermal plant.
Coal power plants, for example, burn coal to boil water and pump steam through the turbine. They make reliable electricity, but they also emit pollution and greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
In contrast, conventional geothermal power plants capture steam from natural underground hot springs in places such as Iceland or the Geysers in Northern California. These require a rare combination of geologic conditions — heat, underground water and porous rock.
Enhanced geothermal plants use technology pioneered by oil and gas drillers to reproduce the conditions of a conventional geothermal well. This makes it possible to extract heat in many more places.Doesn't fracking cause earth tremors? Even in California?
When completed in 2028, the new enhanced geothermal plant will add 400 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to the power grid (Southern California Edison has agreed to buy 320 megawatts; the rest will go to smaller power providers.)That is less than one-fifth of the generating capacity of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which by itself provides nearly a tenth of California’s electricity.
Fracking for heat releases no greenhouse gases. But to meaningfully contribute to emissions cuts, enhanced geothermal will need to expand quickly. Developers say they are hamstrung by a needlessly long permitting process, which takes years to complete. Lawmakers in both houses of Congress have introduced bipartisan bills that would make it as easy to drill for heat as for oil and gas.
Enhanced geothermal’s biggest constraint is how much heat can be found underground. The hottest rock is out West, according to a recent government assessment, but cooler rock formations could fuel power plants in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and at least a dozen other states.
Map showing nationwide possible sites included at link.
To extract enough heat in places with cooler rock, geothermal developers must drill 15,000 feet or deeper, which is more expensive. Faster drilling helped the oil and gas industry dig deeper to squeeze more profits out of shale rock, and analysts expect geothermal drilling speed to similarly improve.
Even in the West, where the rock is known to be hot, a government-funded demonstration project helped pave the way for Fervo’s wells. That project, known as FORGE, began in 2015 and did not generate power until 2022.
"I do not believe that any of the advances that have happened right now, with commercial liftoff of this technology, would have happened without federal dollars," said Lauren Boyd, the director of the Energy Department’s Geothermal Technologies Office, who managed the FORGE project.