By Kennedy Maize
The Department of Defense, working through the U.S. Air Force, on Feb. 28 selected 11 companies that are eligible for contracts with military to pursue geothermal technologies for electric generation at military bases.
In a solicitation issued last September, the Air Force said it is “seeking novel approaches to generate electricity at its installations using geothermal energy, because it can provide continuous, resilient, carbon-free electricity regardless of weather conditions to maintain mission continuity and comply with congressional mandates to maintain energy resilience for all critical missions at each installation.”
While the Air Force issued the document, it applies to bases throughout the U.S. military. Analyst Fareed Zakaria explained on CNN, while the Trump administration is generally hostile to “clean” energy sources such as wind and solar, they have “embraced another energy source that has not gotten enough attention over the years, geothermal.”
In his January 20 Executive Order “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” Trump said that “energy resources” covered in his policies includes “crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, the kinetic movement of flowing water, and critical minerals.” Note what’s missing.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who made his fortune supplying equipment for natural gas drilling, early last month gave a keynote address at a pro-geothermal event titled “MAGNA,” both a geology reference on a play on Trump’s MAGA meme. Wright’s former firm Liberty Energy was an investor in Fervo Energy, a leading firm in enhanced geothermal. At that event, Wright said that geothermal “hasn’t achieved liftoff yet, it should and it can.”
DOD’s interest in geothermal preceded the advent of the Trump administration and Chris Wright at DOE, although at a fairly low level. In October 2022, the Defense Logistics Agency launched a web page stressing DOD’s devotion to “carbon pollution-free electricity.” The DLA specified that its interests include “marine energy; solar; wind; hydrokinetic, including tidal, wave, current, and thermal; geothermal; hydroelectric; nuclear; renewably sourced hydrogen; and electrical energy generation from fossil resources to the extent there is active capture and storage of carbon dioxide emissions meeting Environmental Protection Agency requirements.”
As then Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks noted, the DLA web site followed President Biden’s December 2021 executive order (subsequently scrubbed from the White House web site by the Trump administration) calling for the federal government to achieve 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030. That goal, of course, will not be met.
In September 2023, the Defense Innovation unit, AKA “Unit X” announced agreements with three companies—Eavor Inc., Teverra, and Zanksar—for enhanced geothermal projects at four Air Force and Army installations in Alaska, California, Idaho, and Texas. In April 2024, Defense One reported that Unit X expanded that program to “Fervo Energy, GreenFire Energy, and Sage Geosystems for new projects at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada; Naval Air Facility El Centro, California; and the Army’s Fort Bliss in Texas.”
Of the 11 firms selected in February, two – GreenFire Energy and Sage Geosystems – are veterans of the Biden DOD geothermal program. The newcomers are Addis Energy, Baker Hughes, EarthBridge Energy, Energy Systems Group / GE Vernova and partners, Power Planet Inc., Quaise Energy, SLB, TLS Geothermics, and XGS Energy.
In a news release, GE Vernova said its group is led by Energy Systems Group and includes Sage and The Energy & Geoscience Institute at The University of Utah. GE said “With this expertise, the team is now poised to explore the development of utility-scale geothermal power plants in the United States and abroad, with the goal of supplying U.S. military bases with reliable and cost-effective electricity, even during grid outages.”
Kirk Phillips, who directs the Air Force Office of Energy Assurance, said, “The U.S. Air Force leveraged the Tradewinds solicitation process to quickly collaborate with innovative American companies to build resilient, next-generation geothermal technologies at our bases, using private capital instead of taxpayer dollars.”
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