Electricity demand in the U.S. is climbing faster than the grid can comfortably absorb, driven largely by AI data centers that need power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The U.S. power system needs all the reliable clean energy it can get, and once-forgotten geothermal energy is one such resource.
In the 1960s, the United States was a world leader in building large-scale geothermal power plants, but during the fracking boom of the mid-2000s, drillers turned their attention to oil and gas. As wind, solar and batteries got cheaper, bankers and developers put their money into those resources.
Geothermal development around the world had flatlined, until a new generation of geothermal developers and entrepreneurs borrowed the horizontal drilling techniques that powered the fracking boom and used them to make geothermal viable in far more geographies
One of those entrepreneurs is Tim Latimer, Co-Founder and CEO of Fervo Energy.
Fervo Energy is a geothermal developer using advanced drilling techniques from fracking in the oil and gas industry to make it easier to find and harness heat underground.
In our conversation, recorded in December 2021, Tim told me about how he combined his expertise in oil and gas drilling with a dedication to solving the climate crisis, and used his experience to break open an overlooked renewable resource. Tim predicted the 2020s would be "the geothermal decade," noting that we can't transition to a zero-carbon grid without round-the-clock clean energy resources to supplement intermittent renewables. Geothermal offers that always-on feature needed now more than ever.
We're revisiting this conversation now in celebration of what Fervo has accomplished: signing hundreds of megawatts of power purchase agreements with hyperscalers and utilities alike, and recently completing the largest IPO of any clean energy company.
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