FILE - A drill rig stands at a Fervo Energy geothermal site under construction near Milford, Utah, Nov. 26, 2023. Southern California Edison will purchase electricity from Fervo Energy, Fervo announced on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. One method of making electricity cleanly to address climate change has been quietly advancing and on Tuesday it hit a milestone.
“If these purchases help to get this technology off the ground, it could be massively impactful for global decarbonization,” he said. Decarbonization refers to switching out things that produce carbon dioxide and methane, which cause the climate to change, in favor of machines and methods that don’t.
The first generation of geothermal plants, for example, The Geysers in California, tapped into superheated reservoirs of steam or very hot water close to the Earth’s surface. Such reservoirs are relatively rare. The United States is one of the world leaders in using the Earth’s heat to make electricity, but geothermal still accounts for less than half a percent of the nation’s total large-scale electricity generation,