Last week Fervo Energy announced it successfully operated Project Red in the northern Nevada desert over a 30-day test period, generating 3.5 megawatts of clean electricity, more than any other enhanced geothermal plant in the world. Project Red expects to connect to the power grid later this summer, delivering 5 megawatts to Google’s Las Vegas data center operations.
This is a small step in the right direction. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Enhanced Geothermal Shot Analysis predicts enhanced geothermal could reach 90 gigawatts of installed geothermal capacity by 2050 which is enough to power 65 milloin U.S. homes.
By using technology traditionally used in oil and gas production, enhanced geothermal like Project Red can turn on power generation whenever it’s needed and even store energy for days at a time, basically turning the ground beneath us into a giant long term battery.
This technology could also start pulling emissions out of the sky. Fervo energy is planning a direct air capture (DAC) system that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using geothermal energy to power its operations and store that pollution underground in its geothermal reservoirs.
Geothermal power dates back to the early 1900s and is renewable, fueled by inexhaustible heat from the Earth’s core. It can produce power 24/7 regardless of weather patterns. It is also small, using roughly 11% of the land of coal-fired plants. And it is clean, with life-cycle emissions up to 20 times less than gas-fired plants.