Elevated gas prices are making geothermal more competitive. Is that why we're seeing a wave of geothermal project announcements? When we were working on our Ember geothermal report earlier this year, we were already excited that a lot of geothermal capacity in Europe could be deployed at costs comparable or lower than gas (LCoE vs SRMC). And that was before gas prices rose +50%, driving gas power generation costs to 150 €/MWh... Just last week, Fervo Energy closed $421 million in financing for their EGS project in Utah, with a drilling depth of 4800m. On Tuesday, Hungary launched its first power+heat geothermal project. A much smaller scale (up to 5 MW), but in Europe! Another project, 150 MW, was announced yesterday in New Mexico by XGS Energy and Baker Hughes, powering Meta's data center operations. A few weeks earlier, Google signed a 150 MW geothermal deal with Ormat Technologies, Inc. and NV Energy to supply data centers in Nevada. And announced a data center in Minnesota powered by 1400 MW of wind, 200 MW of solar, and 300 MW of battery storage, in collaboration with Xcel Energy. A wind+solar+battery+geothermal data center sounds like a much better idea than a gas-powered one, and now cheaper too. Plus completely immune to price volatility. Link to our geothermal report and all other sources in comment below.
