Recent national focus on the value of increasing our supply of indigenous, renewable energy underscores the need to re-evaluate all alternatives, particularly those that are large and well-distributed nationally. To transition from our current hydrocarbon-based energy system, we will need to expand and diversify the portfolio of options we currently have. Although geothermal energy from conventional hydrothermal resources is used extensively for both electric and non-electric applications worldwide, it is perceived by many as being “too small and too local” a resource to have a large impact. This interpretation ignores the real potential for deployment of geothermal on a national scale by engineering reservoirs in hot rock that emulate the characteristics of natural hydrothermal systems. A recent MIT-led assessment of engineered geothermal systems (EGS) evaluated the potential and pathways for geothermal to become a major primary energy supply for the U.S. to provide 100,000 MWe of base-load electric generating capacity in the U.S. by 2050.
