Thread by @FracSlap

Geothermal promises to be one of the cleanest and most abundant energy sources in the world.

But there is a major hurdle I'm trying to wrap my head around:

"Is the market large enough for the commercialization of technology?"

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The future of geothermal means drilling very deep and hot wells

We're talking potentially 15,000 ft.- 20,000 ft. deep and temperatures as hot as 700 degrees F

In contrast, oil wells in the U.S. are typically around 10,000 ft deep and the hottest formations are ~300 deg F

The tools we use to drill oil wells won't work to drill these geothermal wells.

The stress from hot temperatures degrades tools to the point where they are dysfunctional or have to be replaced so many times that it is uneconomic.

There are a lot of smart people working on this and money pouring in to the space to solve the challenge of creating new drilling tools like millimeter-wave drilling systems.

Here's where I think the big challenge is:

Drilling tools are extremely capital intensive to design and develop

In oil and gas, if you were able to make it to the point of having a tool that is commercially viable, you would have a market to scale into

We drill ~15,000 oil and gas wells per year in the U.S. alone

There were 180 geothermal wells drilled globally over the last six years according to Rystad and estimate that 500 will be drilled in 2025

Not a great market to deploy a technology that you have spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to develop

The volume isn't there

I'm an optimist and I believe we can figure out solutions— this is just the challenge I see.

One potential answer is that tools developed for geothermal can be used for oil and gas drilling, but unless we break the laws of thermodynamics, we don't need to go deeper on land.

It would have to make drilling faster and more efficient.