Within all the hooraw about energy policy, the main gist of the argument seems to be about fossil fuels and nuclear power - the climate scolds really should be advocating for nuclear power; but they never do - vs. "renewables," including solar and wind power, with a few other schemes like wave-energy and so forth.
There are other ways to generate electricity and even heat your home, especially if you live in the right area. One of these, an alternative we don't seem to see discussed much, has advantages over the other renewables - it's constant, it's reliable, and its energy density is... OK. But it's a reasonable alternative.
I'm talking, of course, about geothermal energy. Climate, Etc.'s Chris Morris has some interesting details.
Geothermal power stations are mature technology with proven performance, reliable operation and ideal for baseload generation. The units are synchronous, so they support the grid. The production from them is considered by most to be renewable. They do not use fossil fuels to provide the heat. It is not “carbon free”, but no generation truly is. It has a relatively small footprint, environment harm is low, and it can coexist with farming or industrial development. Most developments have a cheaper energy cost than onshore wind, using published accounts for analysis. For countries or areas where the resource is there, geothermal generation is very viable.
Sounds good, right? It gets better.
Associated with the plate boundaries and other weak points in the earth’s crust, the deep underlying heat in the mantle can find its way to the surface easier. “Bubbles” of magma can push up to relatively shallow depths. These may force their way to the actual surface as volcanoes with their lava. With the distortion and earth movement from this activity, the crust’s rock formations are deformed and cracked – earthquakes. Groundwater can enter all the fault cracking in the rocks. This will be heated up by the hot magma, even if that has solidified.
Geothermal resources exploited for power production are the plumes of hot water formed from the heating of this deep groundwater. In geologic terms, such convection systems are short lived – generally lasting between 200 and 450 thousand years.
Note that this statement about being "short-lived" - between 200 and 450 thousand years - is very much on the geologic time scale, not the human time scale. On our time scale, for the purposes of generating energy, it may as well read "forever." And if you're anywhere on the Ring of Fire, you're in an area where geothermal energy is on the table.
The Ring of Fire. pic.twitter.com/0sFrqapbut
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) April 12, 2025
Using the heat that occurs naturally in the earth is one thing, but there are also home-based systems that use the constant temperature of the earth as shallow as 30-40 feet down to operate a heat pump, which will heat and cool your house. I'm not going into any great detail on those other than to note that we looked into one for our rural Alaska home and decided that for us, it wasn't practical.
So, geothermal energy, as an input to the grid, would seem to occupy something of a middle ground: Reliable and constant, although limited in possible location. And, for the climate scolds, it doesn't emit any CO2 - at least, not any beyond what the vulcanism associated with locations like the Ring of Fire already emits, which is a lot.
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So, why aren't the climate scolds talking about geothermal power? Very likely, the same reason they oppose fracking; geothermal generation requires drilling. There are a few legitimate concerns about releasing potentially toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide - then again, volcanos produce that, and to spare. Leaks can cause groundwater contamination, although a cursory search hasn't uncovered any such event at a working geothermal plant.
Like hydropower, as I mentioned, geothermal's main disadvantage is that it's limited by location; most methods, open or closed-loop, rely on hot rock or magma being close enough to the surface to make the drilling necessary to set up such a plant feasible. But look at that map of the Ring of Fire, and one thing you'll notice is that not only are the major American West Coast cities in what looks to be the right area, but so also are some major Asian cities - Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, among others.
Maybe, when considering American energy policy, it's time to take another look at this method - but once again, only if it's economically viable. Like other "renewable" sources, if it can't succeed without subsidies, we don't need it.
