1/I get asked a lot why geothermal seems to suddenly be getting a lot of attention. There’s a market/policy reason and a tech reason. A short THREAD.
2/Market/policy: despite the rhetoric, up until 3 years ago few people actually took deep decarbonization seriously. Low level targets were all people thought could be achieved. 100% clean electricity standards and 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy commitments have expanded the ambition.
3/This expanded ambition is important because study after study shows that if you want a true carbon free grid, instead of just 60-80%, you need to have a clean firm power resource like geothermal as a portion of the grid mix.
4/Tech: drilling tech is just dramatically better than it was a decade ago, driven largely by major advancements in the O&G industry. Just look at this productivity measure from EIA for gas drilling. Up over 10X in 10 years. 
5/More people are realizing that though this tech has clear crossover to geothermal (after all we drill too, similar wells), costs models for geothermal haven’t changed. The commonly cited public cost models use data over a decade old, as if drilling tech has been stagnant.
6/So the 2020s finds us at an interesting point where we finally have a policy and market pull from efforts on deep decarbonization, right when drilling tech has dramatically improved. That’s why you are hearing about it more. This will be the Geothermal Decade. END
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