‘Hot rocks’ have a moment in the quest for renewable energy

Here & Now Anytime

NPR

News

4.1 • 953 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the rise of artificial intelligence, utilities are trying to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for new sources of electricity. Part of the answer may be deep underneath our feet. Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd visits New Mexico, where scientists, entrepreneurs and politicians from both parties are trying to harness the endless supply of heat generated below the surface of the Earth.

Then, Virginia's climate law requires 100% renewable energy by 2050. The commonwealth is also known as the data center capital of the world. Can those ambitions coexist? University of Virginia professor William Shobe weighs in.

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0:00.0	This message comes from Bayer. Science is a rigorous process that requires questions, testing, transparency, and results that can be proven. This approach is integral to every breakthrough Bayer brings forward. Innovations that save lives and feed the world. Science Delivers.com.
0:18.8	WBWR Podcasts, Boston.
0:24.0	We just put our fingers in hot water coming out of the earth, right?
0:27.5	So that's an indicator of what, you know, by some estimates, is 160 gigawatts of geothermal
0:35.6	power that sits underneath the state of New Mexico.
0:40.1	Hot Springs hint at a tremendous reserve of renewable energy right underneath our feet.
1:00.3	This is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR.
1:01.2	I'm Chris Bentley.
1:08.9	Today on the show, Clean Power in the Age of AI.
1:13.7	Virginia's climate law demands 100% renewable energy by 2050,
1:20.5	but the Commonwealth is also known as the data center capital of the world. Can those ambitions coexist? We'd like to have the added generation to support the data centers, but without all the health effects and
1:29.6	environmental effects.
1:30.7	And it's not just Virginia.
1:32.5	For our environmental reporting project, reverse course, Peter O'Dowd and I have been looking
1:37.7	at how the U.S. can generate a lot more electricity without the climate pollution.
1:44.5	In just a minute, we're going to hear about a relatively untapped source of fossil-free power
1:49.9	in the mountain west.
1:52.0	Peter O'Dowd, you and I have been looking at two potential sources of energy that are getting
1:56.2	a new look from these electricity-hungry tech companies, nuclear and geothermal. And what was it
2:03.1	about geothermal in particular that interested you? Well, I think it was the fact that I just started
2:08.8	hearing about it all the time. You know, it went from like, oh yeah, you could make power with
2:14.7	the heat beneath the surface of the earth to like there's news stories
	...

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