Geothermal

Lithium-ion batteries power everything from our vape pens to electric cars, but they have one glaring issue: they rely on lots of hard-to-harvest lithium. A new reactor from Rice University is set to make the whole process easier and safer.

The prospect of virtually unlimited clean geothermal power is substantially brighter. EPFL’s Laboratory of Experimental Rock Mechanics has shown that the semi-plastic, gooey rock at supercritical depths can still be fractured to let water through.

Supercritical geothermal power holds the promise of meeting humanity's energy needs for millions of years, but how practical is it? A new analysis by Karthik Subramanian of Lux Research suggests that it may lie somewhere between improbable and impossible.

Just a year ago, Fervo Energy successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of its horizontally oriented geothermal system. Now the company has landed a massive contract for providing its clean, virtually endless power to the California grid.

The Krafla Magma Testbed "has the potential to be for geoscientists what the Large Hadron Collider has been for particle physicists." So say researchers working on the project to drill into a magma chamber to explore massive geothermal power.

A new simulation video from Herrenknecht AG shows off its Urban Vibro Trucks. The machines can deploy thumping devices from their mid-sections that send seismic waves beneath city landscapes to explore the terrain for geothermal development.

A potentially game-changing and largely unexplored energy jackpot lies beneath the ocean floor, according to a whitepaper from geoscience tech consultancy CGG. Unique conditions under the sea bed promise cheaper and more accessible geothermal power.

Geothermal development company Fervo Energy has announced impressive strides being made at its Cape Station facility in southern Utah. The results could lead to a quicker and more widespread uptake of this super-clean energy production process.

The world needs gargantuan amounts of clean energy moving forward, making this an area of colossal and growing opportunity for disruptive innovations. Here are some of the fascinating energy ideas and technologies that made us most hopeful in 2023.

Google has announced that its innovative advanced geothermal plant in Nevada is now operational and connected to the grid, pioneering an approach that promises to unlock clean, always-on geothermal energy across a much larger range of locations.

Sage Geosystems has pioneered a new form of cheap energy storage that uses the Earth as a giant bellows, pumping water into underground fractures, then letting it squirt back up at 70% efficiency – or 200% efficiency if you also harvest heat energy.

Fervo's "next-generation geothermal" technology has proven itself in testing, becoming the most productive enhanced geothermal plant in history. The company hopes its approach will radically expand access to clean energy, like shale did for oil.