Drill, baby, drill in Brooklyn: Lets tap the energy bonanza beneath our feet

The American energy sector is on the cusp of a tectonic transformation.This week, members of the House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony on the vast potential of geothermal energy as “a new era of American energy — built with American innovation, American technology and American workers,” as one witness put it.Chris Wright, President Donald Trump’s new energy secretary, has fervently endorsed geothermal as a way to “energize our country,” and a March study found that geothermal could meet roughly two-thirds of the voracious energy demands of AI data centers by the early 2030s.Even right here in New York City, new residential and office developments underway in Greenpoint, Coney Island and Manhattan are being built to rely significantly on this power source.  Geothermal has the potential to be the Holy Grail of energy: unlimited and right under our feet.But there’s a problem.Geothermal is expensive because it’s difficult to access .

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until now.Today, American innovators are supercharging the geothermal energy revolution with directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the same technologies that delivered the miracle of American shale. “This isn’t a concept or a pilot, it’s a full-scale energy project in motion,” Tim Latimer of Fervo Energy told the House committee Monday, as he described the 500-megawatt plant his company is building in Utah.“We’ve unlocked geothermal energy in places where it was previously impossible.”Here’s how it works.The interior of the Earth is an inferno of hot rock and molten metal, and heat — whether from natural gas, nuclear or something else — is what we need to spin generator turbines to create electricity.Shallow geothermal wells for small residential systems can access sufficient heat anywhere from a couple feet to several hundred feet below ground — the city-block-long Greenpoint project, for example, will use a geo-exchange system of 300 bored holes going down n...