Why Don't We Hear about U.S. Investment in Geothermal Energy?

A little over a year ago, my family and I were settling back into life after a life-giving trip to Iceland. It was on that trip where I became obsessed with volcanoes (as I wrote here) and further fueled my lifelong obsession with hot springs. The active volcanoes (one of which is currently erupting on the Reykjanes Peninsula not far from the capital Reykjavik and has temporarily forced the closure of the famed Blue Lagoon) are spectacular in that they are such a dramatic example of the power of nature. We didn’t witness an active volcano in action during our visit, but we visited just about every museum and feature where we could learn about the volcanoes of Iceland. What we did experience every single day were the hot springs that rose from the power of earth’s heating capacity. (Y’all, I live for a hot tub. I do not have one of my own, but I love nothing more than sitting in a small pool of hot water staring ahead into the void as my muscles release their tension). Every single community–from tiny towns to the bigger cities–have their own public pool where locals take their daily soaks that have become a central part of Icelandic social culture which I want very badly to have here. 

The Secret Lagoon in Iceland

But beyond the drama of the active volcano and the daily curer-of-ills of the hot springs, I became intrigued by (and maybe a little obsessed with) what the deep earth activity meant for climate adaptation. In every single Airbnb we stayed at, you could catch the faint whiff of sulfur because chances were that house was heated by the water zapped by that volcanic activity. In Iceland, 90% of homes are heated by geothermal energy and going beyond that, geothermal energy accounts for 66% of the energy sources in the country. While the hot water bathing is not new to Iceland, the geothermal energy use is fairly recent. Starting in the 1990s, Iceland began a wide scale deep drilling project–drilling over 15,000 feet below the Earth’s surface–and created a geothermal energy boom which grew by 1700% between the 1990s and 2014. While the positive environmental impact of moving energy production mostly to renewable energy is unmatched, the true motivation was because Iceland had been severely impacted economically by the fluctuation of oil prices. By going with their abundant renewable resources, Iceland was able to carve out energy independence. Since the Iceland has become a model for the world. 

Lots of lava and volcano learning in Iceland (L-R): Learning about fault lines at the Thingvellir Visitor Center; Learning about all of Iceland's volcanoes at the Lava Centre; and seeing real deal lava at The Lava Show in Vik.

And while we visited, I could not get over how ubiquitous that renewable energy resource was. And in particular, how powerful something created by the heat of the earth could be. So why haven’t other places around the world gotten on board with this geothermal energy trend?

One seemingly obvious answer is that not every place is sitting on top of a land that possesses over 30 active volcanoes over the expanse of roughly 40,000 square miles. Also, Iceland is tiny population-wise with a permanent population of around 400,000 people (although receiving around 2 million tourists every year), so one might wonder how far such energy can go in a larger country. But just because geothermal can’t power every single home is not a good reason to expand our renewable energy options. In the U.S., geothermal makes up a mere 0.4% of energy sources. There has got to be a good reason for that, right?

Considering the geographical and geological nature of the U.S., the lack of geothermal activity compared to Iceland seemed like the most obvious reason. However, when we got back to the states from our trip, I realized that we do very much so sit on top of a lot of geothermal activity, specifically here in the Pacific Northwest. Mount St. Helens, which I can see from my kid’s school’s playground on clear days erupted just a year before I was born. Growing up, we’d find ash in my parents’ yard as a constant reminder of the volatility of this amazing planet. And now living in Portland, clear days reveal how close two active volcanoes are to us, Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens. When I’m driving north on I-5 on those clear days, Mount St. Helens appears so close that I wonder how surreal it would have been to be driving on that very spot when the eruption happened in 1980. Not to mention the countless hot springs around the region that are real-life examples of geothermal activity.

Views of Mount St. Helens (Left), Mt. Rainier (Middle), and Mt. Adams (Right) as our plane was descending into Portland.

With just a little Googling, I found out that there is a great deal of geothermal energy potential here, particularly in the Western United States.

“(The capacity for geothermal power) is hugely greater than what we’re generating right now,” said Roland Horne, the Thomas Davies Barrow professor of earth sciences at Stanford University in this story in Governing. “It’s not intermittent, it runs all the time, and that’s a very compelling advantage.” 

In fact, there is potential for the Western U.S. to produce up to 5% of the national electricity with geothermal energy with existing technology. With emerging systems and technology, that rate could increase to up to 15%. The story goes on to say that some states, like Nevada and California, are already doing a great deal to invest in and power their grid with geothermal energy, but there’s a need for standardization. And it does seem like the U.S. Department of Energy isn’t ignoring geothermal as a viable option, per the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2020 U.S. Geothermal Report.

What strikes me is that I rarely hear about geothermal energy as an option when we talk about renewable energy investments. We hear about wind and solar as options. And those should be invested in, of course, but it seems like we should be casting a wide renewable energy net. And geothermal, while expensive to drill to these deep wells, has the potential to take up way less land than what’s needed with solar and wind. Yet the price tag is a big reason why states and the country writ large haven't really gone fully down the geothermal road. It seems like we’re missing an opportunity here.

Perhaps, and stay with me here, we can pitch this to the world in a marketing campaign that exploits the romanticism in the adjacent cultural aspects to geothermal. That is to say hot springs. As I noted previously, the public hot springs in Iceland were some of my favorite things about the country. And maybe, just maybe, there’s a part of me that wants to see more geothermal energy because I would also like us to become a hot springs culture. So Perhaps we could use this rise in public hot springs culture as a means to market the potential of geothermal energy writ large. 

Heat Your Body Inside and Outside the Home: Let’s go Geothermal

Hot Water for Life: Go Geothermal

So what I’m saying is let’s be more Icelandic y’all! 

If you have a better slogan (and you probably do because those above are ‘me’), share them in the comments!