How super-hot rocks miles under the earth’s surface could help combat climate change
The iconic Old Faithful Geyser springs to life (every 90 minutes) in Yellowstone National Park’s Upper Geyser Basin on September 18, 2022, in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Sitting atop an active volcanic caldera, Yellowstone, America’s first National Park, is home to more geological hydrothermal features (geysers, mud pots, hot springs, fumaroles) than are found in the rest of the world combined.
George Rose | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The future of clean, renewable energy is underneath our feet. Quite literally.
The core of the earth is very hot — somewhere between 7,952 degrees and 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit at the very center. If we can drill down from the surface into what’s called superhot rock, then we could access the heat of the earth and turn it into a massive source of zero-carbon, always available energy.
A new report out Friday from the Clean Air Task Force, a non-profit climate organization, finds that this category of clean, baseload superhot rock energy has the potential to be cost-competitive with other zero-carbon technologies — while also, very critically, having a small land footprint.
The Clean Air Task Force commissioned a non-profit geothermal organization, the Hot Rock Energy Research Organization, and an international clean energy consultancy, LucidCatalyst, to estimate the levelized cost of commercial-scale superhot rock electricity. They determined that it could eventually cost between $20 and $35 per megawatt hour, which is competitive with what energy from natural gas plants costs today.
This is not reality yet. Currently, there are no superhot rock geothermal energy systems operating and delivering energy, Bruce Hill, the chief geoscientist at Clean Air Task Force and the author of the report, told CNBC. But money is flowing into research projects and companies that are working to develop the technology.
The report posits that superhot rock energy can be commercialized in the 2030s, and argues that its unique set of features — it’s a clean source of inexhaustible baseload energy with a small footprint — make the investment worthwhile.
“It will take public and private investment similar to those being allocated to nuclear, carbon capture, and hydrogen fuels,” Hill told CNBC. “Geothermal programs receive far less funding from Congress and the U.S. Department of Energy than these other programs. Superhot rock geothermal isn’t even in the decarbonization debate — but given a decade or two of aggressive investment it could be producing baseload power — local, energy dense, clean-firm (baseload) and competitive,” from a price perspective.
The graphic here shows that if technology develops allowing the drilling into hot, dry rock, superhot rock geothermal energy can be available virtually anywhere.
Graphic courtesy Clear Air Task Force
Regular versus superhot geothermal
While energy from superhot rocks is not being used now, geothermal energy is being used in a few places where super-hot temperatures exist close to the surface of the earth. Currently, about 16 gigawatts of power come from geothermal globally, according to CATF — that’s less than 0.2% of the world’s total. For comparison, there is 2,100 terawatts of capacity for coal energy globally and 1 terawatt of capacity for energy generated from photovoltaics, or solar panels.
But accessing superhot rock energy involves tapping into hotter, dry rock — which is everywhere, but sometimes far beneath the surface.
The deepest borehole ever drilled in the earth went down almost 8 miles in the Kola Peninsula of Russia in the 1970s, but the rock there was not nearly as hot as 752 degrees Fahrenheit — the minimum required for this type of energy. (Rock starts melting at between 1,112 and 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit, so the functional window for superhot rock geothermal is roughly between 752 and 1022 degrees Fahrenheit, Hill said.)
How far you have to drill to get to 752 degrees depends on where you are. On the edges of the tectonic plate boundaries or near recent volcanic activity, it might be two miles down, Hill told CNBC, but in the middle of a continent you might have to go down 12 miles.
Water would be pumped down into the hole and returned to the earth in a super-heated state known as “supercritical,”, which has the properties of gas and liquid at the same time. That supercritical water would then be directed to power generators.
Conventional geothermal energy systems “have a very small but measurable carbon footprint,” Hill told CNBC. That is why the Hellisheiði ON Power plant in Iceland has a Carbfix crarbon capture plant attached to it. A superhot rock energy system would have some carbon emissions associated with the construction of the plants, but “because the working fluid, water, is injected into dry rock there are no such hydrothermal related carbon dioxide emissions,” Hill said.
To access superhot rock geothermal energy requires drilling down to rock that is 400 degrees Celsius, or 752 degrees Fahrenheit.
Graphic courtesy Clear Air Task Force
Iceland is a leader in investigating superhot rock geothermal energy with its Iceland Deep Drilling Project. A test there suggests one well could produce 36 megawatts of energy, which is five to ten times more than the typical three to five megawatts of energy a conventional geothermal well could generate.
Iceland is well suited to study geothermal energy because of it’s located where the American and Eurasian crustal plates are pulling apart from each other.
“We are replenished with constant supplies of magma energy to feed our geothermal systems,” Guðmundur Ó. Friðleifsson, who served as a coordinator and principal investigator in the IDDP effort for over 20 years, told CNBC. “Magma energy is also at relatively shallow depths and relatively easily accessed, and Icelanders by nature are explorers of Celtic and Norse origin who love to sail into or out to the unknown,” Friðleifsson said.
Beyond Iceland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and the United States are leaders in superhot rock geothermal, according to Friðleifsson. Other areas on the edges of tectonic plates, including Central America, Indonesia, Kenya and the Philippines, also have some development.
For superhot rock geothermal energy to be commercialized and deployed broadly will require new technology, including rapid ultra-deep drilling methods, heat-resistant well materials and tools, and ways to develop deep-heat reservoirs in hot dry rock.
These are not insignificant, but they are “engineering challenges, not needed scientific breakthroughs,” the CATF report says.
For example, drilling into hard crystalline rock takes a long time with current rotation drill techniques and the drill bits have to be replaced frequently. One potential solution is using energy instead of a mechanical drill.
Quaise Energy is develoing such a drill, building on research from Paul Woskov at MIT. The Quaise drill is being tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, according to CATF.
“The solution to drilling is to replace the mechanical grinding process with a pure energy-matter interaction. Sufficient energy intensity will always melt-vaporize rock without need for physical tools,” Woskov told CNBC.
“Directed energy drilling has been considered since the laser was invented in the 1960s, but so far unsuccessfully because the infrared wavelengths are scattered in a drilling environment, the laser sources are of too low average power, and lasers sources are not efficient. We now have gyrotron sources since the 1990s that operate at millimeter-wavelengths that are more robust in a drilling environment, more powerful, and more efficient.”
It will take innovation and investment over coming decades to be able to commercialize terawatts of superhot rock geothermal energy.
Graphic courtesy Clear Air Task Force
‘Very small’ investment so far
So far, private investment in the superhot rock space is “very small,” according to Hill. CATF didn’t have an exact number, but they estimate it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars at the most, and this includes investments by the Newberry Geothermal Energy consortium for work done 10 or 15 years ago, Hill said.
But it’s getting easier to raise money in the space, according to Carlos Araque, the CEO of Quaise, which has raised $75 million so far, including $70 million in venture capital.
“The first 10 [million] took a lot longer than the other 65 because it was done in the 2018-20 period; things accelerated significantly in the 2021-22 period probably pushed by many investors realizing the need for new tech in this space,” Araque told CNBC. “Investors are increasingly aware that we need to invest now on the technologies that will enable full decarbonization towards 2050.”
Investor Vinod Khosla, the first backer of Quaise, recently talked to CNBC about his belief in backing potentially revolutionary technologies to fight climate change, and pointed to super hot rock geothermal as an example.
“A superhot rock well, like 500 degrees, will produce 10 times the power of a 200-degree well. And that’s what we need,” Khosla told CNBC. “If we can drill deep enough we can get to those temperatures — many, many — all of Western United States could be powered with just geothermal wells, because there’s geothermal everywhere if you go 15 kilometers, 10 miles deep.”
The CATF report said that big tech companies, and their associated deep pockets, could have “an important role” in funding the early development and commercialization of superhot rock energy by buying power purchase agreements or investment dollars to power “rapidly expanding energy intensive operations like data centers,” the report said.
Indeed, Microsoft President Brad Smith spoke in Seattle about how vital it is for Microsoft to expand access to clean sources of energy to be able to continue to expand its business.
Oil and gas companies could use their resources to help spur development in the superhot rock industry, the CATF report said. “Drilling deep into the Earth to produce energy is the oil and gas industry’s core expertise, which provided innovations that drove a rapid transformation of shale fossil energy resources previously considered impossible.”
The government is also chipping in. The U.S. Department of Energy also has up to $20 million available in funding to develop better and faster geothermal drilling. Also, President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocates $84 million for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office to build four pilot demonstration sites of what it calls enhanced geothermal systems, including superhot rock geothermal. Similarly, the Department of Energy recently announced Enhanced Geothermal Shot in an effort to reduce the cost of enhanced geothermal systems by 90%, to $45 per megawatt hour, by 2035.
It looks like electric motorcycle influencer Surronster has landed himself in trouble south of the border, based on an arrest video posted to his social media channels.
A heavily edited video posted on his Instagram page shows the controversial rider in handcuffs being led into a police vehicle by officers in Tijuana, Mexico. The reel appears to have been filmed by a companion in the influencer’s entourage. No additional context was provided in the post, and at the time of writing, details surrounding the arrest remain unclear.
The incident comes just two days after the influencer posted another update to his social media showing that he was being denied entry into Mexico with his Sur Ron electric off-road motorcycle loaded in the bed of his truck.
In the more recent clip, the Tijuana Municipal Police appear to be questioning him and an associate before handcuffing them both. An officer is seen starting to remove the influencer’s helmet, then the clip jumps to a shot of the influencer entering the back of the police truck, edited to avoid showing his unhelmeted face. Surronster has long concealed his identity, always being filmed while wearing a full-face dirt bike helmet.
Surronster has gained a large following online by pushing the limits of electric motorcycles – especially the Sur Ron Light Bee and similar lightweight electric dirt bikes. His content often shows him performing stunts, riding in traffic without a license plate, and usually on electric dirt bikes that are not street legal for use on public roads. His 1M+ following is comprised mainly of young male viewers in their teens and twenties, with many attempting to imitate the riders’ style and stunts. He has risen to become one of the leading influencers in the electric motorbike industry, all while promoting a rebellious image and racking up millions of views on social media.
That notoriety has earned him plenty of fans, but also a long line of critics. Many in the e-bike and e-moto community have called out the influencer for encouraging illegal and unsafe behavior that risks drawing increased regulation and public backlash against electric two-wheelers, not to mention the danger to young riders who may attempt to recreate his stunts. Others defend him as a thrill-seeking entertainer similar to traditional motorsport stunt riders.
A large proportion of his videos feature illegal riding activities, but his strict control over his anonymity has meant that he has effectively operated with impunity. But getting arrested in a foreign country is a serious matter, and it remains to be seen what charges – if any – he’ll face. At the time of publishing, the Tijuana Minicipal Police have not responded to a request for comment.
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Clean energy jobs surged in 2024, growing more than three times faster than the rest of the US economy and adding nearly 100,000 new positions. That brought the total clean energy workforce to 3.56 million people, according to the 10th annual Clean Jobs America report from E2.
But growth slowed compared to 2023. Amid policy uncertainty and an overall cooling economy, clean energy jobs expanded at their slowest pace since 2020, with about 50,000 fewer new jobs than the year before.
Even so, the sector still outpaced the broader economy. Solar, wind, batteries, energy efficiency, storage, and grid jobs made up more than 7% of all new US jobs last year and 82% of new energy jobs. Clean energy also takes a bigger share of the overall workforce: it now accounts for 42% of all US energy jobs and 2.3% of the total workforce. More people work in clean energy today than as nurses, cashiers, restaurant servers, or preschool through middle school teachers.
The report lands as the clean energy industry faces major headwinds. Federal policy moves have canceled projects, revoked tax credits, and added new regulatory hurdles targeting solar, wind, EVs, and more. While not yet reflected in 2024’s numbers, those actions are already hitting jobs hard. E2 found that since January 2025, companies have canceled more than $22 billion worth of clean energy factories and projects that would have created 16,500 jobs. Other analyses warn that more than 830,000 jobs could vanish under Trump’s big bill, signed on July 4.
“This was one of the hottest and most promising job sectors in the country at the end of 2024,” said E2’s executive director Bob Keefe. “Now, clean energy job growth is at serious risk – and with it, our overall economy.”
Clean energy and EV jobs have added more than 520,000 positions over the last five years, a 17% increase. That’s far more growth than fossil fuels, ICE vehicle manufacturing, or the economy overall. In fact, over the past five years, clean energy companies have added jobs 60% faster than the rest of the US economy.
Energy efficiency remains the largest employer in the sector, with nearly 2.4 million workers after adding 91,000 jobs last year. Renewable generation jobs reached 569,000 (+9,000 in 2024), while clean vehicle jobs totaled 398,000. The clean vehicle sector shrank by 12,000 jobs in 2024 due to an industry-wide decline across all vehicle sectors, but employment is still up 52% since 2020.
Regionally, the South is leading the way. More than 1 million clean energy workers are based there, and the South added 41,000 jobs in 2024. The West and Northeast each added over 20,000 jobs, and the Midwest added 13,000. At the state level, 23 states now have at least 50,000 clean energy jobs, and in all but eight states, clean energy employment outnumbers fossil fuel jobs.
“Every year, clean energy jobs become more intertwined and critical to our overall economy,” said Michael Timberlake, E2’s director of research and publications. “These jobs are now a vital anchor of America’s energy workforce. The strength of the US job market and the future of our energy economy are now inseparable from the growth of clean energy.”
Read more: $15.5B in EV, renewable projects vanish as Senate eyes rollbacks
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Genesis is turning 10, and it’s celebrating with a few big surprises. The rising luxury brand is rolling out a slate of new hybrids and EVs, including an ultra-luxe flagship SUV and off-roader.
Genesis gears up for new EVs, hybrids, and EREVs
Hyundai’s luxury brand has quickly emerged as a dark horse in the luxury market. Genesis is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a bang.
By 2030, the brand aims to sell 350,000 vehicles annually. Genesis is launching a new lineup, including its first hybrid, a new flagship SUV, an off-roader, and several performance vehicles.
Hyundai confirmed during its CEO Investor Day on Thursday that Genesis will launch several new models soon, including new EVs, hybrids, and extended-range vehicles (EREVs).
Genesis will launch its first hybrid in 2026, followed by EREVs shortly after. At least two new SUVs are set to join the lineup, a full-size flagship model and an off-roader.
Hyundai said the new luxury SUVs will be based on the Neolun and X Gran Equator concepts. Although we have yet to learn all the details, the Neolun is expected to arrive as the GV90, an “ultra-luxe,” full-size flagship electric SUV. The X Gran Equator concept is a more rugged, luxury off-road SUV.
Genesis plans to expand the brand into up to 20 European markets while strengthening its presence in the US. Those in the US will see the first hybrid Genesis vehicles roll out, starting in 2026.
The luxury brand will also launch its first EREV, which Hyundai promises will deliver over 600 miles of range by using a battery and a gas engine that acts as a backup generator.
Genesis is entering “the realm of high-performance vehicles” with its new Magma brand. The first performance model, the GV60 Magma, will arrive later this year.
In under eight years, the Genesis brand sold a total of over 1 million vehicles. Over the next few years, it’s betting on new EVs, hybrids, advanced tech, sleek designs, and more to solidify its position in the luxury space.
Hyundai is also launching new vehicles across nearly all powertrains and segments. Check out our recap of Hyundai’s CEO Investor Day to see what’s coming.
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