The U.S. Department of Energy puts it plainly: “There is heat beneath your feet,” and it remains largely untapped. While solar panels and wind turbines dominate clean energy conversations, a growing body of federal research suggests that geothermal energy, both shallow and deep, could slash building emissions, ease grid strain, and deliver round-the-clock electricity at a scale that current policy largely ignores. New modeling from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and field results from a federal test site in Utah are now putting hard numbers behind that claim.
What Shallow Geothermal Heat Pumps Could Do by 2050
Most of the energy consumed in American buildings goes toward heating and cooling, and ground-source heat pumps offer a direct way to cut that demand. These systems exchange heat with the stable temperatures found just a few meters underground, working in virtually any climate. A national-scale simulation published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory modeled mass deployment of geothermal heat pumps into 68% of eligible U.S. building floor space between 2022 and 2050, co-simulating the results with electrical grid models to measure system-wide effects. The study projects significant reductions in both carbon emissions and peak electricity demand, meaning fewer gas plants running during summer afternoons and winter cold snaps.
That 68% figure is not a ceiling imposed by geography. It reflects the share of buildings where ground-source systems are technically and economically viable under the study’s assumptions. The International Energy Agency separately tracks heat pumps as a critical tool for decarbonizing building heat globally, reinforcing the case that this technology is proven and deployable now, not decades away. When paired with high-efficiency building envelopes and smart controls, shallow geothermal can flatten seasonal demand swings that currently force utilities to build and maintain fossil-fueled plants that run only during the most extreme hours of the year, locking in costs and emissions for decades.
Deep Geothermal Goes Nationwide
Conventional geothermal power plants have long been confined to places where hot rock sits close to the surface, primarily in the western United States. That geographic limit has kept geothermal electricity a minor player: the 2025 market report documents installed U.S. geothermal power nameplate capacity as of 2024, along with counts of power purchase agreements signed through June 2025 and investment totals in next-generation geothermal firms since 2021. Those figures show a market that is growing but still punches well below its weight relative to wind and solar, even though geothermal offers firm capacity that can backstop variable renewables without additional storage.
Next-generation enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS, aim to change that constraint entirely. Unlike conventional setups limited to geologically active regions, next-generation geothermal can access deep underground heat virtually anywhere, according to MIT’s renewable energy research program. The technique borrows from oil and gas drilling: engineers fracture hot dry rock at depth, circulate water through the cracks, and bring steam or hot fluid back to the surface. Researchers at the University of Utah have described the approach as applying techniques from the fracking boom to clean energy, with one scientist quoted in a university profile noting that such systems can be engineered to produce electricity 24 hours a day. That round-the-clock output is precisely what grid planners seek as coal plants retire and demand from electric vehicles and data centers grows.
Utah FORGE and the Great Basin Test Case
The strongest real-world evidence for enhanced geothermal comes from Utah FORGE, the flagship U.S. enhanced geothermal systems field laboratory. During 2024, the site conducted stimulation and circulation testing that produced first-order estimates of producible energy from its reservoir, including measured output from a 27-day circulation test conducted over the summer. Those results give engineers actual performance data rather than theoretical projections, a distinction that matters enormously for attracting private capital. With verified flow rates, temperatures, and well integrity, developers can begin to translate laboratory success into bankable commercial projects that lenders and utilities will accept into long-term planning.
Beyond a single test site, the U.S. Geological Survey has assessed the broader potential. USGS Fact Sheet 2025-3027 provides a provisional estimate of electric-power generation capacity from enhanced geothermal systems at upper crustal depths in the Great Basin of the southwestern United States. That estimate is contingent on technology advances, which means the numbers represent what becomes possible if drilling costs fall and reservoir engineering improves, not what can be built tomorrow. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Annual Technology Baseline tracks standardized cost and performance assumptions for geothermal electricity, including levelized cost of energy ranges, and provides a citation trail linking Department of Energy analyses to USGS resource assessments. Together, these federal datasets outline a resource base far larger than what current installed capacity reflects, suggesting that the limiting factor is less geology than investment and policy support.
Why Geothermal Stays on the Sidelines
If the resource is so large and the technology works, why does geothermal remain a footnote in U.S. energy policy? Part of the answer is visibility. Solar and wind benefit from decades of manufacturing scale-up and consumer familiarity, while geothermal drilling happens out of sight, and the upfront costs of boring deep wells remain high (relative to dropping panel and turbine prices). Developers must also navigate subsurface risk: until wells are drilled and tested, it is difficult to know exactly how a reservoir will perform, which raises financing costs. Even shallow systems face hurdles, from the need for trained installers to the challenge of coordinating drilling in dense urban areas where the benefits for district-scale systems could be greatest.
Federal agencies are trying to close that gap. The U.S. Department of Energy’s geothermal program funds research on both shallow and deep systems, including demonstration projects that test new drilling methods, reservoir stimulation techniques, and hybrid designs that pair geothermal with other renewables. Geoscientists are also probing less obvious resources; one project led by university researchers in Colorado, described in a campus news report, is examining whether certain rock formations could store and release heat at scales large enough to serve as seasonal clean-energy reservoirs. As these efforts mature, they feed into open data tools such as the NREL developer platform, which makes standardized resource, cost, and performance datasets available to planners and software developers. That transparency can help derisk projects, align private investment with the most promising regions, and, over time, move geothermal from the margins of the clean energy transition into the mainstream.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
