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The Trump administration isn’t a big fan of clean energy, as its cuts to solar programs and push to kill offshore wind farms demonstrate. But it’s had no objection so far to next-generation geothermal power projects that were backed by Biden’s Energy Department.
Traditionally, geothermal power plants have only been an option in a limited number of areas in the U.S., namely those adjacent to geysers or volcanic activity, which Sage Geosystems CEO Cindy Taff, an oil industry veteran, calls “unicorn geology.”
But in the past few years, companies like hers and Fervo Energy have been adapting techniques honed in the oil and gas industry for fracking to make geothermal power an option for a far greater portion of the U.S. To do that, they’re drilling thousands of feet underground to tap into hot subsurface rock that’s used to generate carbon-free electricity. Sage calls its approach geopressured geothermal, as it utilizes the underground pressure in addition to heat, to improve overall efficiency.
“We’re drilling for a minimum temperature of 180 degrees centigrade,” Taff said. “If you’re in the Western U.S., you can hit those temperatures at 8,000 to 14,000 feet. If you’re east of the Rockies, it’s more like 14,000 to 18,000 feet.”
Sage has refined its approach over the past five years, and in 2024 landed a deal to build a 150 megawatt power system for a Meta data center, which is likely to turn into a 300 megawatt system, Taff said. Its initial commercial project is a long-duration energy storage system for a solar power plant, and she sees that as an additional market Sage can pursue. In August, the company announced a partnership with Ormat Technologies, which develops conventional geothermal plants, to integrate Sage’s system into some of its existing projects.
The ability to build bespoke geothermal systems fast and in many parts of the U.S. makes the technology especially attractive to power-hungry data centers. Though it’s likely to be a more expensive form of electricity than natural gas for the time being, the benefit of geothermal power, aside from not generating carbon pollution, is that it’s a stable, long-term energy source. And while geothermal accounts for less than 1% of current U.S. electricity generation, compared with solar and wind that are at about 25%, it’s likely to expand quickly by the end of the decade.
“Conventional geothermal right now in the lower 48 states, those small pockets, that’s about 40 gigawatts of resource,” Taff said. “The DOE estimates the hot dry rock potential [for next-generation geothermal] to be five-and-a-half terrawatts. The resource is huge. … I think we just need, as an industry, to get the cost down.”
“I look at next-generation geothermal being where wind and solar were 15 years ago,” she said. “It’s an exciting time. I think the learning curve is right ahead of us.”
The Big Read
Redwood Materials Raises $350 Million To Boost Electric Grid Battery Business
Redwood Materials, the leading U.S. recycler of lithium-ion batteries and a growing supplier of materials for new ones, just raised $350 million to expand its ability to supply grid-scale energy storage systems as electricity demand, especially for AI data centers, surges.
The round, led by venture firm Eclipse with participation from Nvidia’s investment arm, boosted the Carson City, Nevada-based startup’s total funds raised to $2.2 billion. Redwood didn’t confirm its valuation as a result of the latest round, but people familiar with the matter said it’s over $6 billion.
Redwood said in a statement that the funds will “accelerate the expansion of our energy storage deployments, refining and materials production capacity,” and be used to grow its engineering and operations teams.
Tesla cofounder and board member JB Straubel, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of at least $2 billion, created Redwood in 2017 to help build up a U.S. supply base for critical materials needed to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and to reduce reliance on China. That started with recovering valuable elements, including cobalt, nickel, copper and lithium, from used batteries. All of these materials, which are mined globally but refined mainly in China, are then supplied to other companies as well as used to make cathode materials for new cells. In July, it partnered with General Motors to get lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells from the automaker for large-scale energy storage systems that are in high demand by utilities and AI data center operators.
Read more here
Hot Topic
Jennifer Granholm, former U.S. Energy Secretary and senior counselor for the DGA group, on pushing cleantech companies in the Trump era
What do you think about where we are and the impact the Trump administration has had on investing in ESG and renewable energy?
I am a glass-half-full kind of gal, so let’s just pretend that the Inflation Reduction Act did not exist. If you woke up and you saw that you had the [One Big Beautiful Bill] or whatever we’re calling it, you would say, “Wow, this is a really big investment in clean technology.” Of course, it’s missing some major pieces. It is accelerating the cliff of the incentives on solar and wind, and taking away the consumer tax credits for electric vehicles. Obviously, that significantly impacts the battery factories that were all announced. All of that is very true.
However, there are some pieces of hope here: Long-duration energy storage. You may take away the solar credits, and there’s some acceleration that’s happening on getting these solar projects out before that cliff happens, but it’s now storage plus solar. So at least that is still happening. The excitement around small modular reactors and nuclear. The excitement around advanced enhanced geothermal is exciting. Hydroelectric power. It’s big capital stuff. There’s biofuels. There are some pieces that are optimistic. This is happening regardless of the pullback on some really key incentives, which is very discouraging
What have you been working on since leaving your role as Energy Secretary and what’s the future of your efforts in this area?
First of all, I am now on the outside working with some companies that were funded, for example, by DOE and may have had their grant either pulled back or are under audit and are trying to match them with folks who might want to invest in them. For example, we pushed out $160 billion worth of investment in companies doing all manner of clean energy. And they were all vetted, every single one of them, vetted by experts at the labs, vetted for their market liftoff, et cetera. These are really good bets, and so we want to take them to financial companies and say, “Look, maybe the DOE grant is no longer there, but you better believe this is a really important and great investment that we believe is going to have significant liftoff.” So I’m doing that.
And it’s not just DOE companies, but companies that feel like, “Oh my God, with the OBBB, what is this going to mean?”
Some of them may rightly, understandably, feel like they’ve got to pivot to India or other places in this interregnum. DGA Group, it’s a company that acquired the Albright Stonebridge Group, has a presence in 45 different countries, and can help U.S.-based companies that feel disfavored or international companies that see an opportunity right now between tariffs and OBBB.
For example, if you’re a small modular reactor company or you’re a supplier to that, come on over. If you’re a long-duration energy storage company, it’s a good time to invest in the United States. If you’re an EV battery manufacturer, unless you’re converting to long-duration energy, maybe not so much. But the bottom line is there’s just a lot of movement happening across the world as a result of the activity that’s happening in the United States. That’s partly why I’m optimistic is because you want to move the ball forward in whatever way you can.
See the conversation here
What Else We’re Reading
The Trump administration finalizes a plan to open pristine Alaska wildlife refuge to oil and gas drilling (Associated Press)
Weather disasters in the first half of 2025 were the costliest on record, data shows (NBC News)
Rivian’s spinoff company—Also—has designed a modular, affordable electric bike (Wired)
Why cement is so hard to decarbonize — and why climatetech should care (Forbes)
Mosquitoes found in Iceland for the first time as climate crisis warms country (The Guardian)
Trump claims “windmills” kill whales but torpedoes research programs that track North Atlantic right whales near offshore wind construction sites (Canary Media)
Climate scientists expect attempts to dim the sun by 2100 to cool the Earth (New Scientist)
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