But in the small Bavarian town of Geretsried, near Munich, a new geothermal plant is quietly signalling a paradigm shift for the industry, as recent technological advances have opened up new territories, enabling the production of clean, baseload power.

Calgary-based Eavor Technologies, a pioneer in what’s being called “next-generation” or “advanced” geothermal, is part of a small pool of start-ups that is borrowing technical expertise gleaned from the oil and gas industry to drill for heat far below the earth’s surface and send it back up as a source of low-carbon energy.

“It has one of the smallest footprints for power generation of any technology,” says Steve Grasby, president of Geothermal Canada, a non-profit that supports research and development of geothermal projects. “It’s also highly reliable; the power is always there. And it’s easy to ramp up and down as needed, unlike nuclear, which needs to run all the time.”

Eavor’s latest milestone was achieved on December 4, 2025, when it became the first geothermal company to deliver electricity to a commercial power grid at its Geretsried facility, demonstrating that its “closed loop” system is capable of supplying emission-free power at scale. For this project representing the culmination of a decade’s worth of research and development, Eavor bored sealed pipes nearly 4.5 kilometres into the earth, connecting more than 300 kilometres of boreholes underground. Now completed, the eight-megawatt electric and 64-megawatt thermal project produces enough electricity for 8,000 homes and enough heat for 120,000 homes. Another Eavor project is in the works in the Netherlands.

If geothermal is ever going to scale, it has to be a repeatable process you can do over and over. We think we’ve got the best way to do that.

– John Redfern, CEO, Eavor Technologies

The U.S. Air Force has also shown interest in advanced geothermal energy supply. In 2023, the Air Force began planning for two prototype-level geothermal projects at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and Joint Base San Antonio in Texas, awarding the Texas base project to Eavor.

Eavor believes its technology has the potential to generate power almost anywhere, and the firm has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital with the promise of truly ubiquitous, dispatchable renewable energy. The venture capital arms of BP and Chevron have invested some US$40 million in Eavor, and, through the Canada Growth Fund, the federal government has funnelled $90 million to the company. Eavor has used investors’ capital on research and development to continue to scale up the number and size of its projects and trim costs.

Eavor is not the only player in the hydrothermal sector that is exploring new ways to dig for heat. Texas is a hub of innovation in next-generation geothermal power. Prominent start-ups, such as Sage and Fervo Energy, are based in Houston, which shouldn’t be surprising given that energy demand is surging in Texas, where Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft are building huge data centres.

In general, geothermal is becoming a growth sector as new drilling capabilities and other advances now enable projects to be developed across a much wider range of geologic settings than ever before.

What is geothermal energy and how does it work?

For more than a century, people have been using steam generated by deep underground water reservoirs that are heated by the earth’s mantle to power generators. Iceland and New Zealand get about 20% of their electricity from geothermal thanks to their volcanic landscapes, which host shallow, highly permeable underground heat reservoirs. Only a few sites on the planet, however, contain the geological conditions to support a geothermal system at scale, and geothermal contributes only a very small share of the world’s overall supply – approximately 16 gigawatts, representing less than 1% of total capacity installed worldwide. (The only commercial geothermal power plant in Canada is in Alberta, the Swan Hills Geothermal Power Project.) By comparison, wind and solar together supplied 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of 2025, pushing the total share of low-carbon energy sources to 43%.

With the rise of next-generation technologies, geothermal could significantly raise its contribution to the world’s supply of renewable power. Key to both “enhanced” geothermal and “advanced” geothermal systems is that neither requires natural underground reservoirs. All that is required is the heat of the earth, which is available nearly everywhere.

Enhanced geothermal uses the fracking techniques of the oil and gas sector to drill into hot rock and create permeability.

Eavor’s advanced geothermal system forgoes fracking in favour of a closed-loop system. Started by veterans of the oil sector, Eavor has designed a kind of underground radiator where fluid is circulated through a closed loop of vertical pipes that connect a network of horizontal pipes deep within the earth. Absorbing heat from the rock, the temperature of the working fluid rises and is then pumped up to ground level to generate heat and power.

“If geothermal is ever going to scale,” Eavor’s chief executive, John Redfern, told The New York Times in 2023, “it has to be a repeatable process you can do over and over. We think we’ve got the best way to do that.”

Low risk, high rewards

Besides the scarcity of suitable locations, geothermal has long been hampered by its high capital costs, the bulk of which are spent on drilling, which can eat as much as half the cost of a project.

Still, as greater efficiencies are realized, costs are coming down – by an impressive 22% from 2021 to 2022 alone. Some systems are even cost-competitive with gas plants and cheaper than coal. Moreover, once built, geothermal is much cheaper to operate than other dispatchable sources like coal, gas and nuclear.

While some experts believe it possible to create geothermal energy almost anywhere, Grasby does offer a caveat. “You can’t really do this just anywhere. In some places, you may have to drill much deeper to get to the heat you need. Rocks vary in thermal connectivity; some rocks have high connectivity and others are low in connectivity. You need a certain temperature to make the system work.”

In Canada, as well, permitting and regulatory regimes have yet to catch up to the latest developments in the geothermal world. According to Grasby, only three provinces currently regulate geothermal energy production: Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia.

Updates to regulatory frameworks may yet emerge should the momentum behind geothermal continue, especially given that hydrothermal offers round-the-clock, on-demand power, unlike wind and solar.

New analysis from the International Energy Agency forecasts next-generation geothermal as representing up to 800 gigawatts of clean electricity capacity by 2050 – roughly 50 times the world’s current geothermal capacity of around 16 gigawatts.

Analysts at Ember, a U.K.-based energy think tank, anticipate that geothermal will quickly accelerate, reporting that by 2030, nearly 1.5 gigawatts of new capacity is expected to come online each year globally, three times the level added in 2024. By 2050, geothermal could meet up to 15% of the growth in the world’s demand for clean power.

As a net-zero economy looks increasingly precarious, the latest geothermal breakthroughs offer a solution to the supply of firm, low-emission energy thanks in large part to the tools and expertise that originated in the oil field.

Victoria Foote is a writer and editor who specializes in clean energy and climate.

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Harris and Trump are diametrically opposed to each other on issues ranging from national security to the economy to foreign policy, but perhaps nowhere are the candidates more at odds than on the matter of climate change: one thinks rising temperatures pose an existential threat, the other thinks climate science is nonsense.

That gulf in views was put on full display in the last minutes of the hour-and-a-half-long debate, when ABC News Live Prime host and debate co-moderator Linsey Davis asked the pair what they would do to fight climate change. Harris, who answered the question first, was quick to point out that Trump has implied on many an occasion that climate change is a hoax propagated by China. “What we know is that it is very real,” she said. “You ask anyone who is living in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who is now being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up.” In the past couple of years, private insurance companies have begun dropping policies in fire- and flood-prone states like California and Florida.

While Harris pointed out the existence of these worsening problems, she did not say what she plans to do about them, choosing instead to cite investments in climate change made by the current president. “I am proud that as vice president, over the last four years, we have invested $1 trillion in a clean energy economy, while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels.” She got that $1 trillion sum by adding up all of the administration’s major investments over the past four years, some of which are only vaguely connected to climate change.

Trump didn’t answer the question at all, instead making a convoluted point about domestic vehicle manufacturing. He then falsely claimed that President Biden is getting millions of dollars from China and Ukraine. “They’re selling our country down the tubes,” he said.

Trump slashed scores of environmental rules and climate regulations during his four years in office and appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who have since made it harder for the federal government to clamp down on pollution. He also withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, a global pact to slow planetary warming, though President Biden later reentered it.

Before Tuesday’s debate, it seemed likely that Harris would cite her record as district attorney for the city of San Francisco, where she formed the nation’s first environmental justice unit aimed at penalizing companies for polluting. Or her tenure as California attorney general, when she investigated oil companies and secured a multibillion-dollar joint settlement from Volkswagen over the company’s attempts to cheat smog emissions standards. But she didn’t bring those receipts to the podium.

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Instead, Harris doubled down on her recent efforts to make swing-state voters in gas-rich states like Pennsylvania forget about the anti-fracking position she took during her 2019 presidential campaign. At the time, Harris said she was “in favour of banning fracking,” but she recently walked that back. “I will not ban fracking,” Harris said early in the debate. “In fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases on fracking.” The Inflation Reduction Act also happens to be the single-largest investment in fighting climate change in American history, something Harris chose not to point out.

Rather, she advocated for an energy strategy that has been proposed by many Republican lawmakers over the years: something resembling an “all of the above” approach in order to boost American energy independence. “My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” she said.

“Harris spent more time promoting fracking than laying out a bold vision for a clean energy future,” the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate action group, said in a statement. “We want to see a real plan that meets the scale and urgency of this crisis.”

Harris wasn’t the only one eager to talk oil and gas at the debate. Onstage, Trump frequently returned to a familiar set of energy-related talking points. He skewered President Biden, and Harris by association, for high gas prices, which spiked again this year. He claimed that the day after the election, should Harris win, “oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead.” Neither Harris nor Biden have ever said that they aim to eliminate the country’s vast reliance on fossil fuels in the near future.

Trump also went after sources of renewable energy, saying that, while he is a “big fan of solar,” Democrats have commandeered “a whole desert to get some energy out of it.” Trump may have been referring to parts of the American West where the Bureau of Land Management has approved 33,500 acres of land, some of it desert, for solar installations since 2021.

As the debate wrapped up, it wasn’t clear whether Harris had succeeded in her goal of convincing Pennsylvania voters that she’s not the anti-fossil-fuel crusader Trump has been working to pin her as. But she did leave Philadelphia with at least one coveted endorsement: that of pop icon, and native Pennsylvanian, Taylor Swift.

“I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post shortly after the debate ended. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election.”

Jake Bittle contributed reporting to this article.

This article originally appeared in Grist; it has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at grist.org.

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Financial Planning, a media organization geared toward independent financial advisors, is betting on socially aware young adults to increase demand for RI. The organization published an update today saying it forecasts continued growth in values-based investing over the next decade due to “millennials [who] will increasingly demand a social dimension to their investment portfolios.” The piece also pushed back against the notion that RI generally leads to lower returns.

California became the first state in the United States to ban single-use plastic bags yesterday, which will be phased out over the next several years. “This bill is a step in the right direction – it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself,” Governor Brown said in a statement after signing the bill. Major California cities, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, already have similar bans in place, making the transition easier for businesses and consumers alike.

A new ranking released today has found that Norway is the best place to grow old. The Global AgeWatch index looked at 96 countries, considering factors, such as income security, health status, capability and the enabling environment. Rounding out the top five were Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and Germany. The ranking was compiled by HelpAge International, a UK-based charity.

As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers federal regulation of fracking fluid, the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates is warning that this could undermine research and development into new proprietary chemicals. It is urging the EPA to instead expand the use of existing voluntary disclosure databases, such as FracFocus. CK’s managing editor Jeremy Runnalls covered the debate on fracking fluid disclosure throughout the United States back in March.

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Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process wherein rock is fractured by a pressurized liquid. Popularized by the discovery of horizontal drilling in the late 1990s, it has led to the natural gas and tight oil boom currently powering the ongoing energy revolution in North America. Thirty-one states now contain potentially viable shale gas plays, including Michigan.

Few issues cause as much political heartburn as the expansion of fracking in the United States. The International Energy Agency estimates that U.S. gas output will continue to increase for the next five years, on top of the sixfold increase that has occurred since 2007. Proponents such as John Griffin, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute in Michigan, believe that the continued expansion of natural gas is a necessity. “It’s strengthening America’s energy security, and creating jobs at home,” says Griffin, “all while reducing overall emissions.”

Opponents of fracking are convinced that industry is glossing over the environmental consequences. From fears about fresh water depletion, methane emissions and earthquakes, community opposition to new wells has been fierce. But the greatest concern remains groundwater contamination. To dislodge oil and gas from within rock formations, a mixture of sand and chemicals is added to water during the fracking process. Local residents are apprehensive about these chemicals infiltrating local water supplies. Further complications arise during the treatment process, as wastewater needs to be stored before being treated or reused.

There has been some evidence of groundwater being affected around drill sites, including a recently published study by researchers at the University of Texas that found higher levels of heavy metals, including arsenic, in groundwater around fracking sites in the Barnett Shale deposit. Another study released this year found elevated radium levels in wastewater discharged from a Pennsylvania treatment plant. Other research, however, has found no such link. An ongoing U.S. Department of Energy study in Pennsylvania tagged tracers with unique markers. Described as the first independent look at the movement of toxic chemicals during drilling operations, a year in it has showed no evidence of chemical contamination of drinking water.

Little federal regulation currently exists on fracking, largely due to the original passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Language within the bill, known as the “Halliburton loophole,” exempted drilling companies from complying with the Clean Water Act. Subsequent bills in Congress aimed at defining hydraulic fracturing as a federally regulated activity under the Safe Drinking Water Act have gone nowhere, which has forced individual states to establish their own guidelines.

Wyoming was the first state to require disclosure of fracking fluids to the public in September 2010, followed by Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Fifteen states now have laws on the books, with legislation pending in an additional seven states. Some regulatory structures only require confidential disclosure of fluids to regulators, none of which are released to the public. Even in states that require public disclosure, according to Jennifer McKay, a policy specialist for the Michigan-based Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, a “trade secret” exemption allows companies to omit information to protect intellectual property.

At a recent State Senate hearing in Texas, Marc Edwards, Halliburton’s senior vice-president of completion and production, defended the necessity of trade secrets. “Halliburton has the only frack fluid that is sourced entirely from the food industry,” he told committee members. “Without proprietary protection, it would not have invested in its development.” Lawsuits are underway in several states challenging the use of trade secret exemptions, including one suit currently pending before the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Twelve states have made the submission of chemicals to the website clearinghouse FracFocus a disclosure requirement. The online registry for chemicals, with 45,000 records from more than 400 companies, is managed jointly by the Groundwater Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, testified at the same hearing as Halliburton about the problems with the system. “The problem with FracFocus is that it’s not a government website with specific requirements and a legitimate process to determine what actually is a trade secret,” she explained. A Harvard Law School study in April showed some companies claiming a chemical as proprietary in one state while disclosing it in another.

Some companies, like Canadian natural gas giant Encana, have developed their own internal rules for screening chemicals with the potential to impact human health. The Calgary, Alberta-based company, which has extensive shale gas plays across the U.S., launched the Responsible Products Program in conjunction with a third-party toxicologist. “To give you a scope of the program,” says Spencer Forgo, a communications advisor for the company, “over the course of 2012 we assessed in excess of 350 fluid system products across our operations.” Fluids containing arsenic, cadmium, chromium and other metals have been banned by Encana already, and the company is pushing to adopt the practice across the industry in North America.

Fracking remains in its infancy in Michigan, with only 19 new wells having been drilled since 2010. That pales in comparison to the 13,540 wells drilled in Texas alone in 2012. It’s for this reason that proactive regulations should be put in place to ensure the growth of a well-regulated industry, says McKay. “Our top priorities remain the full disclosure of chemicals, paired with baseline testing,” she said. Companies are not required to release information on fracking cocktails until 60 days after fracking occurs, making testing for specific fracking fluids all the more difficult. Some companies, such as Encana, offer free tests to homeowners who live near wells, but homeowners are often wary to accept these offers. “Some residents just don’t trust companies to remain objective,” says Emily Whittaker, a policy specialist at Freshwater Future. In August, the environmental NGO began offering its own testing program for any Michigan citizen with concerns.

With many fracking cocktails proprietary and likely to remain so in the future, those conducting tests often don’t know what they’re looking for. Scientists have been looking for alternative ways around this, including the idea of putting tracers in the fracking fluid. Using a similar method as the Department of Energy study, competing companies that began at Rice University and Duke University are racing to bring trace fracking fluids to market. A field test is currently underway at a well site in Texas. The appeal of this technology is that it would allow companies to continue to guard trade secrets, while adding definitive traceability into the process.

Lawmakers have already put forth bills in the Texas legislature to mandate the use of tracers, but industry remains non-committal on the subject. “If companies want to adopt this on a voluntary basis they should go right ahead, but in my opinion adding another layer of regulation for companies is not necessary,” says Barclay Nicholson, an energy and commercial litigation attorney at Norton Rose Fulbright’s Houston office.

For some, hydraulic fracturing will never be safe enough to accept. Activists are currently circulating a petition to place a Michigan fracking ban on the 2014 state-wide ballot. LuAnne Kozma, the spokesperson for Ban Michigan Fracking, explained her reasoning when announcing the creation of the group. “We know enough now to demand a ban,” she declared in a press release.

This article was made possible with the generous support of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources.

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