Energy

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Why the Time Has Finally Come for Geothermal Energy: It used to be that drawing heat from deep in the Earth was practical only in geyser-filled places such as Iceland. But new approaches may have us on the cusp of an energy revolution. (Rivka Galchen, November 17, 2025, The New Yorker)

There aren’t gates of Hell just anywhere. A kilometre below ground in Kamchatka is considerably hotter than a kilometre below ground in Kansas. There is also readily accessible geothermal energy in Kenya (where it provides almost fifty per cent of the country’s energy), New Zealand (about twenty per cent), and the Philippines (about fifteen per cent)—all volcanic areas along tectonic rifts. But in less Hadean landscapes the costs and uncertainties of drilling deep in search of sufficient heat have curtailed development. This partly explains why, in the field of clean energy, geothermal is often either not on the list or mentioned under the rubric of “other.” For decades, both private and government investment in geothermal energy was all but negligible.

That has now changed. In the past five years, in North America, more than a billion and a half dollars have gone into geothermal technologies. This is a small amount for the energy industry, but it’s also an exponential increase. In May, 2021, Google signed a contract with the Texas-based geothermal company Fervo to power its data centers and infrastructure in Nevada; Meta signed a similar deal with Texas-based Sage for a data center east of the Rocky Mountains, and with a company called XGS for one in New Mexico. Microsoft is co-developing a billion-dollar geothermal-powered data center in Kenya; Amazon installed geothermal heating at its newly built fulfillment center in Japan. (Geothermal energy enables companies to avoid the uncertainties of the electrical grid.) Under the Biden Administration, the geothermal industry finally received the same kind of tax credits given to wind and solar, and under the current Trump Administration it has received the same kind of fast-track permitting given to oil and gas. Donald Trump’s Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, spoke at a geothermal conference and declared, in front of a MAGA-like sign that read “MAGMA (Making America Geothermal: Modern Advances),” that although geothermal hasn’t achieved “liftoff yet, it should and it can.” Depending on whom you speak with, either it’s weird that suddenly everyone is talking about geothermal or it’s weird that there is a cost-competitive energy source with bipartisan appeal that no one is talking about.

Scientific work that has been discarded or forgotten can return—sometimes through unknowing repetition, at other times through deliberate recovery. In the early nineteen-seventies, the U.S. government funded a program at Los Alamos that looked into developing geothermal energy systems that didn’t require proximity to geysers or volcanoes. Two connected wells were built: in one, water was sent down into fractured hot, dry rock; from the other, the steam that resulted from the water meeting the rock emerged. In 1973, Richard Nixon announced Project Independence, which aimed to develop energy sources outside of fossil fuels. “But when Reagan came into office, he changed things,” Jefferson Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell University, who was involved in the Los Alamos project, told me. The price of oil had come down, and support for geothermal dissipated. “People got this impression that it was a failure,” Tester said. “I think if they looked a little closer, they would see that a lot of the knowledge gained in those first years could have been used to leverage what is happening now.”

Boreholes at the Krafla Geothermal Station.Photograph by Victor Bouchentouf / Hans Lucas / Redux
Tester went on to help establish the M.I.T. Energy Lab (now called the Energy Initiative), which focusses on advancing clean-energy solutions. He and his colleagues felt that students needed to know the history of the research into diverse energy sources, so they put together a course and a textbook called “Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options.” In 2005, the Department of Energy, under George W. Bush, commissioned a group consisting of Tester and some seventeen other experts and researchers—including drilling engineers, energy economists, and power-plant builders—to investigate what it would take for the U.S. to produce a hundred thousand megawatts of geothermal energy, a bit more than one-fifth of the energy the U.S. had consumed that year. (Geothermal energy production in the U.S. at that time was around three or four thousand megawatts.) The experts avoided framing their support for geothermal in environmental terms. “The feeling was that you weren’t supposed to talk about carbon, because then it would be perceived as about climate change,” Tester said.

It’s about abundance and independence.

THAT WAS EASY:

How a Climate Doomsayer Became an Unexpected Optimist (Mother Jones, 12/31/25)

McKibben’s stark and straightforward foreboding about the future of the planet was once described as “dark realism.” But he has recently let a little light shine through thanks to the dramatic growth of renewable energy, particularly solar power. In his latest book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, McKibben argues that the planet is experiencing the fastest energy transition in history from fossil fuels to solar and wind—and that transition could be the start of something big.

…AND CHEAPER…:

Nuclear Fusion Took Big Leaps in 2025. Here’s What Mattered Most (Gayoung Lee, December 10, 2025, Gizmodo)

2025 witnessed a surge in fusion research from both established and newcomer stakeholders. Scientists reported increased fusion energy outputs compared to previous years, improved reactor hardware, and a wide range of experimental and theoretical developments supporting different parts of fusion energy. Here are the most notable advancements in fusion from the past 12 months.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Renewable energy is reshaping the global economy – new report (Sam Fankhauser, November 13, 2025, The Conversation)

Perhaps the most underappreciated economic benefit of renewables concerns productivity. Cheap, efficient energy is the lifeblood of industrial growth. Renewable energy is now much cheaper than fossil fuels, particularly when factoring in what is lost when turning energy (say, car fuel) into usable services (propulsion).

We calculated that with a rapid conversion to renewables, energy-sector productivity could double by 2050, compared to both current levels and a fossil fuel future. Since energy is such a ubiquitous input to all other economic activities, this has significant economy-wide benefits. For some developing countries, the GDP boost could be as high as 9-12% – simply from having more efficient energy services.

DONALD WHO?:

Renewables outpace fossil fuels despite US policy shift: IEA (Laurent Thomet and Catherine Hours, 11/12/25, AFP)

Renewable energy is still expanding faster than fossil fuels around the world despite policy changes in the United States, with oil demand possibly peaking “around 2030”, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.

Economics trumps ideology.

PITY THE POOR PETROPHILES:

There’s a $10 Trillion Antidote to Trump’s Climate Backlash (Laura Millan, November 4, 2025, Bloomberg)

Annual energy transition investment surpassed $2 trillion for the first time in 2024, more than double the rate in 2020, according to research by BloombergNEF examining the deployment of net zero-aligned technologies and infrastructure.

Investment between 2014 and last year totalled $10.3 trillion, though the scope of the analysis has been widened since 2020 to capture additional categories. Spending on renewable energy alone hit a record in the first half, jumping 10% on the same period a year earlier.

Additions of clean power generation like solar and wind farms are finally beginning to catch accelerating demand for electricity, meaning carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector — the most significant man-made contributor to global warming — may have peaked last year and already be in decline, BNEF analysis suggests. That outlook could be challenged, however, if forecasts of continued stronger-than-anticipated demand for coal, oil and gas prove correct.

Road transport emissions are on track to peak around 2029, and one in every four passenger vehicles sold this year will be a plug-in hybrid, a range-extended electric, or fully electric, the BNEF data shows. China, the source of almost 30% of all global emissions, has potentially already begun to lower its climate footprint from this year, after pollution growth slowed to less than 1% in 2024.

In a new assessment ahead of COP30 negotiations that begin Nov. 10, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change made its first ever forecast for total global emissions to decline, projecting a 10% reduction from 2019 levels by 2035.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Election Day Was a Win for the Climate (Sophie Hurwitz, 11/08/25, MoJo)

In races from New York to Georgia to Washington, voters backed funding renewables, reining in energy costs, and building out mass transit—and the people promising to deliver those policies. On the whole, the results suggest Americans are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back climate action.

“This election was a decisive rejection of the Trump Administration’s ban on clean energy, multimillion-dollar taxpayer bailouts for expensive dirtier energy sources like coal, and other ineffective proposals that will make costs go even higher,” Sara Schreiber of the League of Conservation Voters said in a statement.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Don’t Tell Donald Trump, but Texas Is Deep Into Wind and Solar Power (Arcelia Martin, 11/05/25, MoJo)

Solar power has generated 45 terrawatt hours of electricity so far this year—50 percent more than the same period in 2024 and nearly four times more than the same period in 2021.

The availability of solar generation in ERCOT also has reduced the need for gas-fired generation during midday hours, according to the EIA. This energy production comes despite attempts by some Texas lawmakers earlier this year to restrict renewable development across the state.

For Dennis Wamsted, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, ERCOT’s growing share of renewables shows that it’s the preferred resource type when an energy market is open, like Texas’ deregulated market.

“People are going to build solar and wind, and now battery storage, essentially as quickly as they possibly can,” Wamsted said. “It’s economic—it is what customers want.”

LEARN, BABY, LEARN:

Renewables Are a Global Economic Engine, Not a Culture War Threat: Energy companies are learning this lesson faster than Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. (Mitch Andersonon, Sep 29, 2025, DeSmog)

While leaders like Premier Smith and President Trump may try to engage in a futile culture war in favour of fossil fuels, a more compelling force is simple economics. According to Ember, 91 percent of wind and solar installations deployed last year were cheaper than equivalent fossil fuel options. Even in the U.S. – currently riven by divisive politics – over 80 percent of new electrical capacity added in 2025 was solar with three quarters of those installations built in states that voted for Trump.

China also sees this transition as a way to reduce strategic vulnerabilities to foreign oil imports, a sentiment that could soon become contagious around the world. Four fifths of the global population lives in countries that import fossil fuels. Replacing oil, coal and LNG imports with locally produced clean energy is not only cheaper but avoids risky supply chains that are expensive and challenging to defend.

For years oil enthusiasts have predicted that the Global South would provide the engine of future demand. China is upending that agenda by providing cheap reliable renewable technologies to countries like Mexico, Pakistan, and Malaysia. Almost two thirds of developing countries now use a greater proportion of renewables than the U.S. Imports of Chinese solar panels in Africa soared by 60 percent in the last year.

Will political rhetoric overpower economics around a new bitumen pipeline from Alberta? B.C. Premier David Eby is betting not, stating he is not categorically opposed to a privately funded project through his province – apparently confident that it will not happen given the pace of the global energy transition.

“There’s no money for it,” Eby told the CBC, clarifying that his opposition is against public funds being shoveled at a money-losing oil pipeline when many renewable projects are good to go. “We have major projects with private proponents, cash on the table, ready to go to hire people and build — let’s focus on those.”

The authors of the Ember report concur with Eby’s dim assessment of oil pipeline economics, warning, “For petrostates and others committed to expanding fossil fuel extraction, China’s clean energy progress raises questions about the long-term viability of fossil fuel expansion-led development plans.”

Economics trumps ideology.

IT’LL NEVER FLY, ORVILLE:

Solar-powered electric plane unofficially sets new altitude record (David Szondy, August 26, 2025, New Atlas)

Another air record has been (unofficially) broken as a prop-driven solar/electric aircraft reached the highest altitude yet for its type. On August 12, 2025, a modified Elektra One reached 31,237 feet (9,521 m) in the skies over Switzerland.