The artificial intelligence boom is fueling an energy revolution. The extreme electricity demands of the fast-growing sector are kicking the research and development of a huge number of next-gen energy alternatives into overdrive, with particular attention to clean energy sources that can provide power 24/7. As a result, the private and public sectors alike funnel billions into nuclear fusion and enhanced geothermal, among other future-facing baseload energy sources.

In recent years, geothermal has emerged as a majorly promising solution for round-the-clock clean energy thanks to enhanced drilling technologies that make the technology suitable for nearly every geologic context on Earth. Until now, geothermal energy has only been viable in locations where the heat from the Earth’s core naturally escapes to the surface through geological anomalies like geysers. But thanks to breakthroughs in drilling technologies on the part of the hydraulic fracturing industry, we can now dig deep enough to access the Earth’s natural heat nearly anywhere on the surface. Thanks to these ‘enhanced’ drilling approaches, geothermal energy could soon feed into a power grid near you.

The enhanced geothermal sector is still in its infancy, and therefore continues to face relatively high costs thanks to a lack of scale, among other factors. Today, geothermal represents just 0.4 percent of the United States energy mix, even though the country is the global leader in installed geothermal capacity at about 3.7 gigawatts.

But geothermal’s newness also presents one of its key advantages. The sector gets the considerable benefit of learning from the success stories as well as cautionary tales of the startup clean tech sectors that have come before it. As Latitude Media reported earlier this year, “geothermal has the chance to get it right the first time” – especially when it comes to managing the public pushback and policy snags that plague nuclear energy and solar and wind power.

But despite its currently tiny footprint, geothermal’s potential is enormous. The amount of installed capacity is set to skyrocket in coming years as the technology advances and installations get cheaper with scale. In fact, geothermal could meet up to 64 percent of the expected growth in data center energy demand as soon as the early 2030s, at least according to a recent report from the New York-based research firm and think tank Rhodium Group.

In addition to its huge potential contributions to the power grid, geothermal could also be critical for directly heating residences and commercial buildings, in a huge win for energy efficiency. “If we were to use geothermal resources to meet our heat requirement, we could do so enormously more with a much greater efficiency than we could by converting it to electricity and then using that electricity to make heat available to us,” Wayne Bezner Kerr, the  Earth Source Heat Program Manager at Cornell University, was recently quoted by DW.

Cornell is conducting a pilot project right on its own campus, and hopes to be heated by the Earth itself in the coming years. Over in New York City, residents are already moving into a new high-rise that is currently the largest geoexchange system in the country. The Brooklyn complex is built atop 320 boreholes that help to heat and cool the building thanks to the natural insulation of the Earth. “Because it simply moves heat rather than generating it, the Riverie is expected to reduce annual carbon emissions from heating and cooling by 53 percent compared with traditional residential buildings,” Scientific American reported.

The versatile applications of the clean energy source are driving historic levels of attention and investment dollars from both the private and public sectors. Enhanced geothermal is one of the few clean energy sectors that has bullish support from the Trump administration and enjoys broad bipartisan enthusiasm. With the vocal support of the federal government and Silicon Valley alike, the geothermal revolution is a matter of when, not if.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Geothermal-Energy/Artificial-Intelligence-Is-Driving-a-Geothermal-Energy-Boom.amp.html