Still awaiting my daughter’s arrival, but in the meantime I’ve made my debut in The Atlantic. 

I wrote about the looming boom in geothermal energy, one of the few renewables generating as lots of excitement among both Republicans and Democrats. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/04/geothermal-energy-boom/682291/

We really should be going all in on geothermal

Reporter at Drop Site News, co-host at Breaking Points/Counter Points

Geothermal really doesn't seem to have dramatic downsides that I'm aware of.  We have the technology, we have the skillsets and resources from the oil and gas industry, you can build it anywhere if you go deep enough and it can be scaled up or down for community builds.

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As more and more geothermal happens, it'll get much cheaper.  Oil and gas is very expensive and has been heavily subsidized by governments - so if those subsidizes get removed then geothermal looks very competitive price-wise.

I think it's just upfront cost. If it was designed into more of our standards it might be more cost effective. But it's pretty expensive and has a long payback period because of it.

Same reason why asphalt shingles are still most popular even tho better roofing materials exist on a lifecycle cost basis.

Cheaper upfront almost always wins.

I'm not sure that's correct.  It's the same tech used for oil drilling.  They no longer need to find hot spots, you can put geothermal anywhere, it's just a matter of how deep you go (which does add to the cost).

Once the upfront costs are made,  it's very cheap to run for both heating and cooling. 

We've already tipped the scales on CO2, we can't add more and we need to start removing CO2, so the expense of drilling more oil is more than financial.

We don't have the tech.

We can't xray the ground, but need a way to find the hotspots that are appropriate for geothermal, as it's not universal. 

Very expensive operation, to the point where it usually costs more than it will generate. 

Exception: Iceland.