Advances in deep directional drilling fostered by hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—for natural gas are increasingly being deployed to tap into and develop geothermal energy encased below the Earth’s surface.
According to the United States Department of Energy (DOE), geothermal energy generates less than a half-percent of the nation’s utility-scale electricity with the present capacity to contribute up to 3 percent. However, that production could dramatically scale up to as much as 30 percent by 2050 if experimental “supercritical” enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) prove viable.
