ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Fracking and drilling for oil and gas have unleashed huge stores of fossil fuels in the U.S., which exacerbates climate change. But now similar technologies are being used to create a new kind of carbon-free electricity. And a utility that serves 15 million people has now made a deal to add this type of renewable power to the grid by 2026. David Condos of member station KUER has more.
DAVID CONDOS, BYLINE: From the surface, Fervo Energy's Cape Station project looks kind of like an oil derrick. That's where CEO Tim Latimer stands on a metal platform 40 feet off the ground.
TIM LATIMER: You can see where we're drilling behind us. We're currently drilling at over 13,000-foot depth.
CONDOS: But this $2 billion project in rural southwest Utah is not drilling for gas. It's drilling for hot underground rock that Latimer says could generate carbon-free power - lots of it.
LATIMER: Just these three well pads alone will produce a hundred megawatts of electricity - around-the-clock, 24/7 electricity.
CONDOS: This isn't the type of geothermal already active in volcanic hot spots like Iceland or the California geysers. It's called an enhanced geothermal system, and here's how it works. Cold water goes down one well, then squeezes through cracks in 400-degree rock. The water heats up and returns to the surface through a second well. That creates steam that turns turbines to produce electricity, and the water gets sent back underground in a closed loop. It's technology pioneered at a $300 million federal research project in this same part of Utah, and new innovations like better drill bits have helped Fervo drill this latest well faster and cheaper.
LATIMER: This is now proven tech. That's not a statement you could have made two or three years ago. And now it just comes down to how do we get more of these megawatts on the grid so we have a bigger impact?
CONDOS: This summer Fervo signed a first-of-its-kind deal with Southern California Edison, one of the country's largest electric utilities. It says that just a few years from now, this Utah plant will send enough electricity to power 350,000 homes. California passed a law a few years ago requiring 100% renewable electricity by 2045. So SoCal Edison spokesperson Reggie Kumar says adding geothermal makes sense.
REGGIE KUMAR: For California to achieve its decarbonization goals by 2045, the grid must expand faster than ever before. This means we need to take bold actions.
CONDOS: Geothermal costs more per kilowatt than wind or solar, but those need big batteries to keep power flowing around the clock. Geothermal has the potential to ramp up and down as needed, to fill the gaps when it's not sunny or windy. Uday Varadarajan at the sustainability think tank RMI says this SoCal Edison deal sends a message.
UDAY VARADARAJAN: It's saying something that they feel they need geothermal even though they have so much wind solar in storage that they can put in and that they see additional value in that geothermal. And so I think it is a big deal.
CONDOS: Varadarajan says we won't know for sure if geothermal can be a reliable, utility-scale power source until it actually happens, but he's cautiously optimistic. And if the Fervo project works, he says other companies could start to build more geothermal for other utilities by the end of this decade.
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CONDOS: Enhanced geothermal has the potential to scale quickly because it borrows a lot of tech and know-how from the industry many would like to see it replace - fossil fuels. Fervo is even based in Houston - Oiltown, U.S.A. And most of the company's employees come from the oil and gas industry. Now, a lot of fossil fuel power plants will be phased out to fight climate change, and oil and gas workers will need a landing spot. Latimer says geothermal could help with both transitions if the project here in Utah is the start of something bigger.
LATIMER: When we stand here, you know, 10 or 20 years from now, our hope is not only was this a successful project, but it was a template for something that we could repeat dozens and even hundreds of times, all over the world.
CONDOS: Now geothermal just needs to prove it's up to the task. For NPR News, I'm David Condos in Beaver County, Utah.
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