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Ground-source heat pumps, which tap into the stable temperatures found hundreds of feet beneath the Earth’s surface, are a super-efficient way to heat and cool homes. They’re also quite expensive to install in existing houses.
There’s a pretty straightforward reason: It’s hard to drill in a residential neighborhood. Hiring contractors to fit rigs into tight single-family yards and drill boreholes in places where utility infrastructure crisscrosses underfoot is a lot more complicated and expensive than installing an air-source heat pump, fossil-gas furnace, or other standard, aboveground HVAC systems.
But what if you could bore hundreds of holes at a time across a patch of cleared land and then build heat pump–equipped houses on top of them? That should be a lot cheaper. In fact, it could make ground-source heat pumps about as cheap as traditional HVAC offerings in newly built homes.
On Wednesday, Google X spinout Dandelion Energy and major U.S. homebuilder Lennar unveiled a partnership that aims to prove that proposition. The companies have pledged to build ground-source geothermal into more than 1,500 new homes in Colorado over the next two years, starting with Lennar’s Ken-Caryl Ranch development in Littleton, Colorado.
The goal is simple, Kathy Hannun, Dandelion’s founder and president, told Canary Media: “Can you get the up-front cost to be lower than everything else? Because then you have no reason not to do it.”
Just being able to tackle hundreds of boreholes at a time should more than halve the drilling costs that burden existing home retrofits, she said. Large-project economies of scale and designing homes around the high-efficiency heating and cooling that Dandelion’s system provides will yield further cost reductions, she said.
And by eliminating the need for new gas pipelines and reducing the peak electricity demands on the power grid, subdivisions built on this model could save a bundle on utilities as well, she said. That’s a key benefit cited in a January report from the Department of Energy, which found that widespread adoption of ground-source heat pumps, also known as geothermal heat pumps, could cut hundreds of gigawatts of peak demand and tens of billions of dollars in grid costs over the coming decades.
That study also found ground-source heat pumps could make a big dent in residential energy consumption and carbon emissions, particularly in climates where they outperform air-source heat pumps during cold winter weather.
But as it stands, the technology is in no more than 1% of U.S. homes, the report found. For comparison, air-source heat pumps are now in about 13% of U.S. homes.
The chief barrier, once again, is the up-front expense. Dandelion has spent the past eight years working to bring down those costs through a combination of technology and business-model innovation, and has done more than 1,000 home retrofits in the U.S. Northeast, targeting homes with high heating costs, many of which use expensive fuel oil.
To break into larger volume deployments, Dandelion has shifted its focus to new construction over the past two years or so, Hannun said. That pivot has naturally included Lennar, an investor in Dandelion that now owns about 10% of the startup, she said.
Lennar and Dandelion aren’t disclosing cost data for the homes they’re collaborating on in Colorado. But, Hannun said, “in a few markets, the up-front cost of geothermal today is less than conventional” heating.
That’s certainly the case in Colorado, where Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has made geothermal energy, or “the heat beneath our feet,” as he’s dubbed it in various state and regional policy initiatives, a big part of the state’s broader decarbonization strategy.
Over the past few years, the state has passed legislation creating tax credits for heat pumps, including ground-source systems, and competitive grants for geothermal energy projects. It also passed a law in 2021 that spurred Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility, to launch a Clean Heat Plan that will provide significant rebates to projects that improve energy efficiency and help customers switch from gas to electric heating.
“The rebates coming out of Xcel’s Clean Heat Plan played a really significant role in the ability of the Dandelion-Lennar investments to pan out,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, which manages state energy programs.
The government and utility incentives will also lower costs for people who aren’t buying these homes, because geothermal heat pump systems reduce the need for other utility infrastructure, he noted.
All-electric homes don’t need new gas pipeline extensions, the costs of which are typically recovered through increases on the bills of utility customers at large. And ground-source heat pumps need much less electricity than air-source heat pumps to keep homes warm during the coldest hours of the year, since they’re able to pull heat from deep underground thermal reservoirs rather than from cold outdoor air.
“There’s clearly some cost of putting in a geothermal system. But once it’s in there, it’s such an inexpensive approach to heating buildings,” Toor said. “If we can come up with creative ways to get these systems installed, we think it will help homeowners and businesses save money on their energy bills over the years.”
Power grids are sized to meet maximum electricity demand, so buildings that can reliably keep electricity use below certain limits minimize the need to build more grid infrastructure. These factors can make geothermal networks the least expensive option on a system-wide basis when the lifecycle costs of infrastructure and energy consumption are built in.
Xcel Energy is looking for ways to mitigate growing grid costs as it seeks regulatory approval to spend nearly $5 billion on its low-voltage distribution grid over the next five years, much of it to support growing power demand from heat pumps and electric vehicles.
“Based on our own research and forecasting, homes heated with ground-source heat pumps may require less electricity at peak and overall compared to homes with an air-source heat pump or resistance heating, therefore requiring fewer infrastructure investments on the grid,” Xcel spokesperson Tyler Bryant told Canary Media in an email. Xcel will study the grid impacts of Lennar and Dandelion Energy’s use of ground-source heat pumps to “inform future projects from a grid planning perspective.”
Hannun isn’t aware of other homebuilders embedding ground-source heat pumps into large-scale single-family construction, though they are being built into bigger buildings, including multifamily housing.
But there are similar, yet distinct, approaches for single-family homes to tap underground temperature reserves to save energy and cut carbon emissions.
One is thermal energy networks — projects that build the infrastructure needed for geothermal heat pumps at a campus-wide or neighborhood scale instead of serving just one home. Utilities in Massachusetts and New York are actively pursuing these projects as part of their states’ decarbonization strategies. Six other states, including California and Colorado, have passed legislation that allows or mandates gas utilities to develop demonstration projects or pilots, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
“Geothermal heat pumps and thermal energy networks are a cost-effective way for utilities and developers to deliver clean, affordable heating and cooling, at scale, while minimizing strain on the electric grid,” said Ania Camargo, the nonprofit’s associate director of thermal networks. “The more geothermal systems we install, the better for the homeowner and the grid in the long run.”
Newly built neighborhoods can also incorporate thermal energy networks. A shared geothermal system will serve the 7,500-home Whisper Valley development in Austin, Texas. In Colorado, the housing authority serving Steamboat Springs is studying a community geothermal system for a new housing development.
Under a state law passed last year, Xcel Energy is examining several “neighborhood-scale alternatives to the gas system that can include both electrification and thermal energy network or ground-source heat pumps,” Toor said.
Hannun agreed that shared thermal energy networks are an effective way to approach neighborhood-scale geothermal heating. But they’re also more complicated to build and administer than individual ground-source heat pumps, particularly for entities that aren’t a regulated utility with state-mandated authority to provide energy services to customers. Lennar and Dandelion opted for single-home ground loops to avoid any complications that could arise from getting lots of homeowners to commit to a shared system, she said.
Not all homebuilders will embrace the additional costs of ground-source geothermal, she said. Developers don’t pay utility bills, incentivizing them to choose the lowest-cost heating and cooling options available. At the same time, nationwide homebuilders like Lennar “often offer new products to homeowners to try to stand out,” Hannun said, and ground-source heating has “traditionally been a luxury system.”
It’s also a straightforward way to meet state or local energy-efficiency building codes, she added.
Air-source heat pumps are inherently more energy efficient than fossil-fueled furnaces, since they use energy to move heat from one place to another rather than to create heat directly. But ground-source heat pumps can be more than twice as efficient as air-source models.
“These homes will have the lowest operating cost for HVAC possible,” Hannun said. “The homeowners will spend less than if they were using air-source heat pumps or if they were using gas. And that will be locked in for the lifetime of that home because that ground loop is built to last.”
One recent day in a warehouse south of downtown Houston, I got a peek at something that just might revolutionize the clean energy transition: a molten orange puddle of instantly liquefied rock.
Moments before, an attendant loaded a slug of basalt under a metal-frame structure that looked like something a supervillain might point at a tied-up James Bond, and I was ushered behind a protective barrier. An order went out, the contraption began to whir, and we turned our focus to a TV screen, where the solid rock erupted in a blast of white light that overwhelmed the livestream camera.
One mustn’t believe everything that appears on a screen, but then Carlos Araque, CEO and co-founder of advanced geothermal startup Quaise Energy, led us back to the rig, and there was the freshly blasted rock. A minute ago, it hit as much as 2,000 degrees Celsius, but the molten goop had already solidified into a crown of shiny obsidian. Heat radiated from it, warming my hand as I hovered it a few inches away. The air smelled like toasted marshmallows, if the marshmallows were made of stone.
The flashy demonstration was just one example of how startups are looking to revolutionize geothermal energy production. The U.S. built its biggest geothermal power-plant complex in 1960, but construction has stagnated for decades. Geothermal serves a mere 0.4% of U.S. electricity generation; its nearly 4 gigawatts of capacity amounts to roughly the solar and battery capacity Texas installs in four months these days.
The way out of this decades-long malaise may simply be down. The more subterranean heat a geothermal plant can access, the more energy it can generate, and the Earth gets hotter closer to the core. But the intense conditions below a few miles deep rapidly wreck conventional drill bits.
Araque figured that if he could build a strong enough drill bit, it could harness this super-deep heat and deliver cheap, clean, and abundant geothermal power, pretty much anywhere.
So he left a career in oilfield drilling and formed Quaise in 2018 to do exactly that. Or, more precisely, the company adapted the gyrotron, a tool honed by the nuclear fusion industry that emits millimeter waves, which fall on the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared waves. Fusion researchers use them to heat plasma to unfathomably high temperatures. But these waves exert a dramatic effect on rock, so Quaise leadership repurposed them to bore through depths that would demolish conventional drill bits, and perhaps unlock a new golden age of geothermal.
Araque likened the technology to the familiar microwave oven, which heats food by zapping it with a particular band of electromagnetic waves that excites water molecules.
“Translate that into rock,” he said. “Well, rocks love millimeter waves. You put millimeter waves into rock, they soak it up, they light up instantly.”
He first pitched me on his super-powered drill bit six years ago. At the time, it all sounded like science fiction, something that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers might study and venture capitalists might take a flyer on but that wouldn’t materialize as real technology.
In fact, Quaise did spin out of an MIT lab, and it did raise venture capital for the idea — more than $100 million to date from Prelude Ventures, Mitsubishi, and others. Seven years into the project, however, here I was, smelling the deep, toasty scent of freshly bruleed rock. Deep geothermal energy suddenly seemed a little less like sci-fi and a little more plausible.
Still, Quaise has plenty more work to do before it can deliver its transformative promise — and that starts with getting out of the lab and into the field.
By the time I visited in late January, Quaise had been melting rock outside of the lab but on its own property for weeks. I personally witnessed rock-melting in two places: in the hangar, with a drill rig pointing the millimeter-wave beam at a target rock, and in the yard, where a contraption mounted on tank treads blasted into a rock sample placed in a concrete receptacle on the ground.
“This is the first demonstration of capability, outside, at full scale,” Araque said of the installation.
These tests are necessary to calibrate the novel combination of millimeter-wave emitter and conventional oil-drilling rig. (The Quaise founders know their way around that world, having come from drilling powerhouse Schlumberger.) Quaise proved it can transmit the waves while moving the device, something that the nuclear fusion folks never needed to test. The company’s “articulated wave guide” also showed it can achieve a consistent round shape for its borehole, at least over short distances.
The tests so far amount to the karate demonstration where someone chops through a stack of two-by-fours: Most impressive but not a commercially viable way to chop wood. The next step is obvious — Quaise needs to get out and drill into the earth. That’s coming soon.
Quaise obtained a test site in north Houston where it can drill up to 100 feet underground. The 100-kilowatt gyrotron system I saw firing up in the warehouse has already been moved to this field site, where Quaise is connecting it to a full-scale drilling rig owned by partner Nabors Industries; its mast will soar over 182 feet tall. Drilling should begin in April, cutting into an existing well stuffed with rock samples — outdoors but still a controlled environment.
Soon after, Quaise will swap that out for a new 1-megawatt system, delivering 10 times the power to speed up subsurface boring and maintain an 8-inch-diameter hole, bigger than the initial test holes. That device will use a comparable amount of power as is used by conventional drilling rigs, Araque noted.
Drilling 100 feet down is a start but far from sufficient. The company also secured a quarry site near Austin that provides the opportunity to drill nearly 500 feet through pure granite. Once the technology graduates to drilling thousands of feet, Quaise plans to piggyback on the existing drilling industry with its “BYOG” approach.
“Bring a gyrotron, bring the waveguide, bring the power supply, plug it into the drilling rig,” Araque said. “There’s thousands of drilling rigs in the world. You just go and plug and play into them.”
If and when the time comes to drill for actual power plants, Quaise aims to ride conventional drilling technologies as far as they’ll go. The plan is to hire traditional rigs to burrow through the first 2 to 3 kilometers of subsurface (up to nearly 2 miles) until the drill hits what’s known as basement rock.
After hitting basement rock, Quaise will swap drill bits for its millimeter-wave drill and blast to about 5 miles deep in favorable locations — even that far down, some places have easier access to heat than others. Operators will pump nitrogen gas into the hole to flush out the dust from vaporized rock as the drill moves ever deeper.
Quaise leaders did not disclose a timeline for the company’s first commercial deep drilling. At that point, Quaise will need to build an actual power plant and navigate the myriad permitting and transmission-connection hurdles that face renewables developers broadly. The company is running this development process in-house and already has multiple geothermal leases secured, a spokesperson noted.
In the meantime, a handful of other startups are making headway on commercial-scale geothermal plants, albeit with different approaches.
Fervo Energy has applied fracking technologies to geothermal drilling to make the process more efficient; after a successful 3.5-megawatt trial project in Nevada, the company began drilling the 400-megawatt Cape Station plant in Utah.
Closer in principle to Quaise, a Canadian startup called Eavor is developing ways to drill deeper than was economically practical before. Instead of reinventing the drill itself, Eavor defends it with insulation and “shock cooling” to avoid crumbling in deep, high-temperature rock.
“Most oil and gas directional drilling tools are rated for 180C temperatures, [but Eavor’s] insulated drilling pipe has a cooling effect on the tools making them work at even higher temperatures just by insulating the pipe,” a company spokesperson said in an email.
Eavor notched a big win in 2023, when it drilled a test well in New Mexico to depths of 3.4 miles and through rock as hot as 250 degrees Celsius. Now it’s drilling a closed-loop project in Germany to generate 8.2 megawatts of electricity and 64 megawatts of heating.
Taken together, geothermal innovators like Quaise, along with the somewhat less science-fictiony enhanced geothermal startups like Fervo and Eavor, could produce the “clean firm” power that energy modelers say is necessary to balance out cheap wind and solar in the quest to decarbonize the electrical grid.
“Advanced geothermal technologies could unlock a terawatt-scale resource that can deliver clean energy on demand,” said Jesse Jenkins, an authority on net-zero modeling and assistant professor at Princeton University. “That would be an enormously valuable tool to have in our toolbox.”
Quaise could in theory supply those other geothermal innovators with a better type of drill to extend their range. But Araque insisted Quaise wants to be in the power generation business, not the widget business.
The company also has to manage an evident chokepoint in its development: those highly specialized gyrotrons. Quaise owns four, Araque said; the global gyrotron supply chain currently can’t handle an order for 10 more. That’s not an issue while Quaise works its way up to deep subsurface drilling, but the growth trajectory of the gyrotron suppliers could limit how much power-plant drilling the company can perform simultaneously in the future.
The work to extend from boring a few inches of rock to miles of it should not be underestimated, but Quaise has already crossed the more daunting chasm from never melting rock with an energy beam to doing so daily.
Connecticut could become the latest state to pursue networked geothermal systems as a way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, improving public health, and reducing energy cost burdens for residents.
State lawmakers are considering a bill, HB 6929, that would create a grant and loan program to support development of geothermal networks, which tap into energy stored in the earth to deliver heating and cooling to multiple buildings in one neighborhood.
“Thermal energy networks are an incredibly exciting technological breakthrough,” said Samantha Dynowski, state director of the Sierra Club’s Connecticut chapter, testifying in favor of the bill during a Tuesday hearing before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Energy and Technology.
The bill enjoys wide support from environmental advocates, community leaders, and business interests. Several parties are pushing for changes they say would make even more of an impact, such as requiring utilities to propose pilot projects, following the example of New York, which included such a mandate in a 2022 law.
Also, as drafted, the bill does not specify a funding mechanism for the grant and loan program it would create. Several stakeholders have suggested adding language that authorizes the state to issue a bond to fund the program.
“It’s a one-time capital investment that would yield long-term environmental and economic benefits,” said Connor Yakaitis, deputy director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, who also suggested a budget of $20 million for the program.
Advocates point to the emissions reductions the systems can achieve. More than 40% of the state’s households burn heating oil to stay warm, and another 37% use natural gas; meanwhile, the only emissions associated with geothermal heat come from generating the electricity used to run the heat pumps installed in buildings across the system.
Geothermal networks can also save customers money because the energy underground is free and ground-source heat pumps use far less electricity than air-source heat pumps or electric resistance heat. In Framingham, Massachusetts, the country’s first utility-scale geothermal network is projected to cut some customers’ heating bills by as much as 75% this winter, testified Eric Bosworth, clean technologies manager for Eversource, which built and owns the project.
The adoption of geothermal networks can also help utilities — and their workers — transfer skills into a new field as energy systems transition away from natural gas, supporters said.
“They have experience and expertise that can be leveraged,” Bosworth said, noting that gas industry workers constructed much of the Framingham system.
Geothermal heat pumps have been around for more than 100 years, but the idea of using the equipment to serve dozens of homes connected in a loop first started to catch on in 2017, when Massachusetts energy transition nonprofit HEET began pitching it to utilities. They were interested, and in June 2024, Eversource brought the Framingham system online. Today the network serves 135 residential and commercial customers in the city of Framingham. National Grid is also in the process of developing a system in Boston.
Other states have seen the promise in geothermal networks, too. Six states in addition to New York and Massachusetts have passed legislation supporting utility construction of thermal energy networks, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition, and some 22 to 27 pilot projects have been proposed to regulators nationwide.
In Connecticut, environmental groups have been discussing the geothermal possibilities with utilities for a few years, said Shannon Laun, the Conservation Law Foundation’s vice president for Connecticut. Eversource has shown interest in developing a pilot project and taken preliminary steps to seek approval to proceed, but specific legislation supporting geothermal networks would be more likely to galvanize action from utilities, she said.
“We’re starting to see some new momentum with this bill,” Laun said.
The recent cancellation of a Massachusetts networked geothermal project isn’t dampening enthusiasm for the emerging clean-heat strategy.
National Grid said this month it has abandoned a planned geothermal system in Lowell, Massachusetts, due to higher-than-expected costs. The news disappointed advocates who see networked geothermal as an important tool for transitioning from natural gas heat, but they pointed to many more reasons for optimism about the concept’s momentum.
The nation’s first utility-operated neighborhood geothermal network, a loop serving 36 buildings in the Massachusetts city of Framingham, is performing well and seeking to expand. It’ll soon be joined by a surge of pilot projects being developed across the country, testing different models and accelerating the learning curve. And a recent report forecasts as much as $5.2 billion in potential savings from leaning more heavily on geothermal energy than on air-source heat pumps.
“This is very promising,” said Ania Camargo, associate director of thermal networks for the Building Decarbonization Coalition. “Networked geothermal makes a lot of sense as a transition strategy.”
The idea for utility-operated networked geothermal systems, often also referred to as thermal energy networks, originated in Massachusetts. The concept grew out of conversations about the environmental and public health dangers posed by aging and increasingly leaky natural gas pipes.
In 2014, the state passed a law requiring gas companies to create plans to replace these leaky pipelines. These plans, however, are projected to cost nearly $42 billion to execute. Climate advocates began to question the wisdom of investing so much money in fossil fuel infrastructure when state policy was simultaneously pushing for electrification and renewable energy. At the same time, air-source heat pumps were catching on, a growing trend that would leave fewer and fewer gas consumers to foot the bill for pipeline repairs.
In 2017, Massachusetts clean energy transition nonprofit HEET proposed a solution: networked geothermal. The systems would be based on well-established geothermal technology, which circulates liquid through pipes that run deep into the ground, extracting thermal energy from the earth and carrying the heat back up to warm buildings. The same principle can provide cooling as well, transporting heat away from buildings and returning it to the ground.
Thermal energy networks scale up the process, connecting many buildings to one geothermal loop, allowing heating and cooling to be delivered to homes in much the same way gas and electricity are. At the same time, they offer a new business model for gas utilities grappling with states’ efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. Utilities liked the idea and jumped on board.
In 2023, the first two such systems broke ground in Massachusetts: National Grid launched one in Lowell, and Eversource began work on a system in Framingham.
The University of Massachusetts Lowell, which was a partner in National Grid’s now-canceled project, hopes to use the engineering and design work developed for the project as the basis for a future network, said Ruairi O’Mahony, senior executive director of the university’s Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy.
Even the cancellation provides valuable insight by providing a case study of what didn’t work, said Audrey Schulman, executive director of HEETlabs, a climate solutions incubator that spun off from HEET. In this case, the problems included participating homes spread too far from each other and issues with the field where the boreholes were to be drilled. “We’re on an even better arc,” Schulman said. “If there’s a mistake made, we have to correct for it. We can’t have people paying for things that cost too much.”
Meanwhile, the Framingham network began hooking up its first customers in August 2024 and now has about 95% of its anticipated load up and running, said Eric Bosworth, clean technologies manager for Eversource. The system is performing well, keeping customers warm even when a recent cold snap dropped temperatures down to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.
Plans are already underway to expand the system. The U.S. Department of Energy in December awarded Eversource, the city of Framingham, and HEET a $7.8 million grant to develop a second geothermal loop to be connected to the first network, in the process generating valuable information about expanding and interconnecting geothermal systems. The grant is still under negotiation with the federal agency, so it is unclear what the final terms will be. Still, Eversource hopes to have the second system installed in 2026.
“What we’re trying to prove out with Framingham 2.0 is, as we expand on an existing system, that we can do it more efficiently and bring down that cost per customer,” Bosworth said.
The widespread interest in networked geothermal systems within Massachusetts and throughout the U.S. is also promising, Camargo said. In Massachusetts, National Grid is continuing work on a different geothermal network pilot serving seven multifamily public housing buildings in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. Last year, HEET, with support from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, awarded $450,000 in grants to 13 communities to conduct geothermal feasibility studies. And a climate law passed in Massachusetts last year authorizes utilities to undertake networked geothermal projects without getting specific regulatory approval to veer out of their natural-gas lane.
New York has also embraced the idea with enthusiasm. In 2022, the state enacted a law allowing utilities to develop geothermal networks and requiring regulators to come up with guidelines for these new systems. So far, 11 projects have been proposed using a variety of approaches that will provide takeaways for the developers of future geothermal networks, Camargo said.
“New York is amazing,” she said. “They’re doing things in different ways to innovate.”
Across the country, between 22 and 27 geothermal networks have been proposed to utility commissions in Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, and other states, she said. Eight states have passed legislation supporting utility construction of thermal energy networks, according to Building Decarbonization Coalition numbers, and another four or five are expected to file bills this year, Camargo said.
A report prepared by Synapse Energy Economics for HEETlabs and released last month concludes that geothermal networks offer significant financial benefits when compared with using air-source heat pumps. The analysis found that each system roughly the size of the Framingham network could generate from $1.5 million to $3.5 million in economic benefits, including avoided transmission and distribution costs from lowering peak demand. If 1,500 geothermal networks came online in Massachusetts, the savings could hit $5.2 billion, the analysis calculates.
These savings could be used to subsidize building retrofits, making the homes and offices connected to a geothermal network highly energy efficient to optimize the impact of the ground-source heat pumps, Schulman said.
Even with gathering momentum, challenges remain to the widespread adoption of geothermal networks.
Retrofitting buildings on the network is perhaps the thorniest, particularly in the Northeast where much of the building stock is older and draftier, said both utilities and advocates. In Framingham, an individual efficiency plan had to be created for each home and structure on the loop, a time- and money-consuming process. Going forward, a more streamlined, standardized procedure will likely be necessary, Camargo and Bosworth both said.
“Utilities have not traditionally worked inside the building, so who does it and who pays for it is something that still needs to get worked out,” Camargo said.
Cost is another concern, as the terminated Lowell project demonstrates. However, costs are likely to come down as engineers and installers gain experience in the process and develop smoother supply chains, Schulman said. The second loop planned for Framingham is already likely to be half the amount of the initial system, she said.
As these challenges are worked through, it is vital for Massachusetts to approach its role as a leader in geothermal networks with care, Schulman said.
“We need to think ahead and do this in an efficient and thoughtful way and show the country how it can be done,” she said.
Two community-based geothermal pilot projects, each led by equity-focused nonprofits, have advanced to the second phase of funding through a U.S. Department of Energy program.
Blacks in Green, a community organization based in Chicago, and Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting an equitable transition to clean energy, were included last week in a set of five projects across the country that have been awarded a total of more than $35 million from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office to implement geothermal installations.
The five project teams advancing to the next phase of the DOE project were among a cohort of 11 projects participating in the initial phase of the program, where coalitions selected project sites, assessed geothermal resource and permitting needs, conducted feasibility analysis and local engagement, and identified workforce and training needs. The selected projects’ range of sizes, technologies, and innovations will provide potential templates for other communities considering implementing geothermal systems.
Three of the five projects are located in urban or suburban areas; two are in rural communities. The other three recipients are the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan; the University of Oklahoma, for a project in the town of Shawnee; and GTI Energy, for a project in Hinesburg, Vermont.
Blacks in Green, located in West Woodlawn, a predominantly Black community on Chicago’s South Side, serves as the lead for a coalition which was awarded $9.9 million for its Sustainable Chicago Geothermal pilot. Other coalition partners are the City of Chicago, University of Illinois, The Accelerate Group, Citizens Utility Board, Climate Jobs Illinois, dbHMS, GeoExchange, and Illinois AFL-CIO.
The pilot, also located in West Woodlawn, utilizes alleys to circumvent the need for vast open plots for subterranean loop fields that form the heart of a geothermal array. Locating the bulk of geothermal loop lines in alleyways also sidesteps the underground congestion of existing utility infrastructure typically located underneath city streets.
It’s among an assortment of elements in the Sustainable Square Mile approach that advances BIG’s vision for energy justice through clean energy and microgrid/VPP systems owned and managed by the community, said Naomi Davis, BIG’s founder and CEO.
“BIG launched in 2007 with a goal of increasing household income and community resilience against the harms of climate crisis at neighborhood scale using the new green economy — so we’re grateful for this chance to make it manifest,” Davis said in a news release.
Along with installation of the needed infrastructure within the multiblock footprint, year two of the West Woodlawn project will focus on community outreach and job programs. Once construction is complete, the geothermal system will provide heating and cooling, not to mention lower utility bills, for potentially more than 200 households.
“The Sustainable Chicago Geothermal project will be a transformational investment in the West Woodlawn community. The effort to eliminate harmful emissions from homes and businesses, while lowering energy burden, has proven to be a community-wide challenge, and requires a community-wide solution,” said Andrew Barbeau, president of The Accelerate Group and principal investigator of the Blacks in Green project, in a news release.
The need to reconstruct the alleyways after installation of the geothermal array also presents the opportunity to replace asphalt or concrete with permeable pavers. This would work to promote climate resiliency through mitigation of urban flooding, a persistent occurrence in many of Chicago’s South and West Side communities, said Nuri Madina, the director of Sustainable Square Mile, who serves as point person for the pilot.
“All of our programs are designed to create multiple benefits,” Madina told the Energy News Network in September.
Home Energy Efficiency Team, commonly referred to by the acronym HEET, in partnership with Eversource Energy; the city of Framingham, Massachusetts; and engineering consultant Salas O’Brien; was awarded $7.8 million toward construction of a utility-based,community-scale geothermal system.
“We are honored to receive this funding from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office as part of the Community Geothermal Heating and Cooling initiative, and to show how geothermal energy networks can be interconnected to increase efficiency, build resilience, and decarbonize at the scale and speed we need to achieve our climate goals,” said Zeyneb Magavi, executive director for HEET, in a news release.
The proposed plans by HEET and its partners would connect to the first Framingham geothermal network, which was commissioned earlier this year. Once approved by the state Department of Public Utilities and upon completion, it would represent the first utility-owned community geothermal network to connect to an adjacent operational loop, establishing guidelines for the interconnection and growth of geothermal networks.
“This innovative project not only showcases Framingham’s commitment to sustainable energy solutions but also sets a precedent for other communities across the nation. By harnessing the natural heat from the earth, we are taking a significant step towards reducing our carbon footprint and promoting renewable energy sources. Our collaboration with HEET and Eversource exemplifies the power of partnerships in driving forward clean energy initiatives,” said Framingham Mayor Charlie Sisitsky in a news release.
The HEET-led program operates on the principle that utility-scale geothermal systems could operate on a billing model similar to that of natural gas or electrical utilities, and ultimately replace them, Magavi told the Energy News Network in October 2022.
“So instead of feeding natural gas into these buildings, we could feed geothermal water,” Magavi said. “And then we could meter that and sell that. It’s no different than when you pay your water bill.”
LEGISLATION: Massachusetts lawmakers consider a climate bill that aims to slow the expansion of natural gas and authorizes gas utilities to offer networked geothermal services. (Energy News Network)
ALSO: The bill would also streamline the process of siting and permitting for renewable energy infrastructure, boost deployment of electric vehicle chargers, and support increased energy storage. (WBUR)
SOLAR: Maine officials plan new fees for large-scale solar installations on certain undeveloped land — measures that developers say could make utility-scale solar projects all but impossible. (The Maine Monitor)
GAS: A Pennsylvania community looks to increase the allowable distance between fracking operations and homes, with advocates citing adverse health effects associated with these sites. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
NUCLEAR: Federal regulators reject a request to let Amazon Web Services expand a data center co-located with a Pennsylvania nuclear plant, saying the increased energy use could cause reliability concerns. (RTO Insider, subscription)
GRID: A Maryland utility plans to use a $50 million federal grant to install 11 MW of battery storage capacity and enable additional solar, storage, and electric vehicle charging projects. (Baltimore Sun, subscription)
EFFICIENCY: Rebates for heat pumps, induction stoves, and other energy efficiency measures are expected to be available in New Hampshire by summer 2025, after delays in receiving $70 million in federal funding for the program. (NHPR)
TECHNOLOGY: A Massachusetts start-up promises a clean and affordable way to extract lithium — an essential metal for making electric car batteries — from underground brine. (The Boston Globe)
WIND: The rules governing transportation of wind turbine parts in New York pose a serious obstacle to reaching the state’s goals for onshore wind production, advocates and industry insiders say. (Gothamist)
MICROGRIDS: A New York City utility tests a microgrid combining solar panels, an onsite battery, and electric school buses that can send power to the grid during off hours. (Canary Media)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Delaware plans to use $21 million in state and federal funds to install electric vehicle chargers along busy highway corridors. (Delaware Business Times)
POLITICS: Maine’s plans to develop an offshore wind hub are a central issue in a state legislative race that could signal the area’s level of support for the industry. (Bangor Daily News, subscription)
GEOTHERMAL: The federal Bureau of Land Management approves the Fervo Cape enhanced geothermal energy project in southwest Utah, which is expected to generate up to 2,000 MW when fully built out. (Washington Post)
ALSO: The Biden administration proposes exempting small-scale geothermal exploration on federal land from environmental review in an effort to accelerate development. (news release)
NUCLEAR POWER:
OIL & GAS: The U.S. EPA fines Hilcorp Energy $9.4 million by emitting nearly 2,000 tons of methane and other pollutants in violation of federal and state laws at its oil and gas facilities in northwestern New Mexico. (news release)
GRID:
UTILITIES: Arizona regulators respond to lawsuits accusing them of skirting state law when exempting a proposed 200 MW natural gas plant from environmental review by considering each 50 MW unit separately. (Arizona Capitol Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
PUBLIC LANDS: The federal Bureau of Land Management finalizes land use plans for western Colorado aimed at protecting big game and sage grouse habitat from oil and gas development. (news release)
SOLAR: California community choice aggregators sign up to acquire 394 MW of solar power and 171 MW of battery storage capacity. (Solar Industry)
MINING: Eighty-five religious organizations file a brief supporting Apache advocates’ lawsuit seeking to block a proposed land exchange and copper mine in central Arizona. (ICT)
This article was originally published by Colorado Newsline.
The state commission that regulates Colorado’s oil and gas industry this week adopted its first set of rules governing geothermal drilling, taking another step towards fulfilling the broader mandate it was given as part of a legislative makeover of the agency last year. But regulators and experts say not to expect a “boom” in the new technology just yet.
The Energy and Carbon Management Commission was formerly known as the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission until lawmakers rebranded it in 2023. The name change that came with new authority to regulate emerging industries like carbon capture and so-called deep geothermal energy.
ECMC adopted its Deep Geothermal Operations rules on a unanimous 5-0 vote Monday. The 59-page addition to the agency’s rulebook outlines permitting and enforcement procedures broadly similar to those already in place for oil and gas operations, giving the commission the power to approve or deny permits to protect health and safety and ensuring that local governments have a say in the process.
While existing technologies like heat pumps involve drilling geothermal wells hundreds of feet into the ground to heat and cool homes and even entire neighborhoods, the deep geothermal industry aims to help power the electric grid by drilling thousands of feet down into much hotter pockets of the Earth’s crust. To date, the application of deep geothermal technology has been limited by a variety of factors, but some experts point to its potential to serve as a “baseload” source of clean energy to help offset the intermittency of renewables like wind and solar.
Gov. Jared Polis, who has touted geothermal energy’s potential in his “Heat Beneath Our Feet” initiative, said in a statement Monday that with the ECMC’s new rules, the state is “poised to leverage this clean, renewable energy resource.”
“Colorado has incredible low-cost renewable energy resources like geothermal that can help reduce emissions and save Coloradans money,” Polis said. “Geothermal energy can play an integral role in powering the way Coloradans live, work and play, and will help future generations.”
The feasibility of tapping into deep geothermal resources can vary widely according to local geology. A study released last month by the ECMC, the Colorado Geological Survey and Atlanta-based energy firm Teverra analyzed “geothermal utilization opportunities” and found that the Piceance Basin north of Grand Junction, the Raton Basin near Trinidad and a “localized hot spot” along the Colorado-Kansas border rank as the state’s most promising locations.
Colorado Communities for Climate Action, a coalition of 43 local governments supportive of clean energy policies, said the rules adopted by the ECMC struck an “impressive balance.”
“Local governments are optimistic about the role of deep geothermal electricity in efficiently decarbonizing Colorado’s power grid,” Emma Pinter, an Adams County commissioner and vice president of Colorado Communities for Climate Action, said in a statement. “But we have to make sure this new technology benefits all Coloradans and their environment while avoiding the damage we have seen from oil and gas development and other extractive industries.”
“Despite its promise as a clean energy source, (deep geothermal operations) will have some adverse impacts, although we don’t yet know the scope of them, and it’s important to recognize that,” Kate Burke, an assistant county attorney for Boulder County, told commissioners in a rulemaking hearing last week. “The net impacts … should be less than oil and gas, and in some instances, the scale may be smaller, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be impacts to the people, plants and animals living near the facilities.”
Geothermal Rising, a trade group representing geothermal energy companies, was “very satisfied with where the draft rules have landed,” an attorney for the group, Matt Lepore, told commissioners Monday. Lepore is a former chair of the agency who departed in 2018 and has gone on to represent the oil and gas industry in commission proceedings.
Environmental groups have urged the ECMC to follow up with a second geothermal rulemaking process to flesh out its regulations before operations ramp up. Commissioner Brett Ackerman, a former Colorado Parks and Wildlife official, said prior to Monday’s vote that it was important not to “hamper industry” at an early stage, but the agency should “appropriately address future concerns and opportunities as they arise.”
“I agree that it’s highly unlikely that there’s any pending boom of deep geothermal development,” Ackerman said. “We’re rather more at a pilot stage.”
GEOTHERMAL: Southern California Edison signs on to purchase 320 MW of power from an enhanced geothermal energy facility under development in Utah, boosting the nascent technology. (KTXL)
OIL & GAS:
CLIMATE: A Colorado judge clears the way for a local governments’ lawsuit looking to hold oil and gas companies accountable for climate change-related damages. (CPR)
HYDROPOWER: Yakama Nation leaders criticize federal regulators for failing to consult with them on a proposed pumped hydropower storage project in Washington state after the tribe refused to reveal ceremonial and religious knowledge. (High Country News)
SOLAR:
WIND: Wyoming regulators prepare to consider legal snags that have delayed development of a proposed 504 MW wind facility in the southern part of the state. (Cowboy State Daily)
STORAGE: An Arizona utility brings two battery energy storage systems online with a combined 340 MW capacity. (news release)
AVIATION: California regulators propose requiring jet fuel suppliers to offset their product’s greenhouse gas pollution by paying for emissions-reduction projects. (E&E News, subscription)
GRID:
NUCLEAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A mapping tool finds electric vehicle charging deserts persist even in strong EV markets, including Los Angeles. (Axios)
COAL: Advocates push back against the proposed sale of Canada coal mines blamed for contaminating Montana waters, saying it could affect remediation efforts. (Montana Free Press)
GEOTHERMAL: Google agrees to purchase about 112 MW of enhanced geothermal-generated electricity from NV Energy to power its Nevada data centers. (Reuters)
SOLAR: An Arizona city plans to install 3 MW of solar capacity over 660 parking spaces at municipal facilities. (Mesa Tribune)
GRID:
WIND: A developer begins site investigation surveys for its proposed 1,600 MW Canopy offshore wind farm off northern California’s coast. (Windpower)
UTILITIES:
OIL & GAS:
TRANSPORTATION:
CLIMATE:
DIVESTMENT: Advocates urge California’s public employee pension fund to limit its investments in ExxonMobil after the company sued climate-advocate shareholders. (E&E News, subscription)
COAL: Right-wing Wyoming lawmakers call for a special session to fight the Biden administration’s proposal to end new federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin. (Cowboy State Daily)
NUCLEAR: A Wyoming community college receives $2.4 million in state funds to develop a nuclear technology program to support a proposed advanced reactor at a retiring coal plant. (Douglas Budget)
MINING: Conservation groups prepare to sue the U.S. Forest Service for allegedly violating federal law when approving a copper mine’s expansion in central Arizona. (news release)
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