After more than a decade of stagnation, U.S. geothermal has seen a genuine resurgence.
The industry is riding real momentum: startups have seen breakthroughs in project development; tech giants including Google and Meta have spearheaded a rapid rise in private-sector interest in geothermal as a means to power data centers; and early this year President Trump tapped fracking CEO Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy, an appointment that the domestic geothermal industry met with cautious optimism.
Could geothermal also prove to be the most resilient to new tariffs?
Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs, which imposed sweeping duties on all of the U.S.’s trading partners, are the latest upheaval. Many clean tech sectors, including solar and storage, stand to be severely hampered by the disruption of global supply chains. But geothermal, with its bipartisan support in Washington and a largely domestic supply chain, may be more insulated than most.
The geothermal supply chain tends to be “very off-the-shelf,” explained Andrew Beebe, an investor at Obvious Ventures, which is active in the sector.
“The beauty of geothermal has always been that once you find the heat resource underground, the top-side piece is very interchangeable in terms of the parts you need,” he said. Geothermal doesn’t require imported power electronics or rare earth minerals or metals, he added. And the requisite thermal heat exchange systems can be sourced from many different types of suppliers. “That’s not true of a lot of other power sources.”
Geothermal also leverages existing domestic strengths, like transferable tech and skills from the oil and gas industry.
“Of all the types of new generation available today…I think the geothermal community feels that they are in an extremely good position,” Beebe said.
The U.S. also has a fairly strong geothermal sector, explained Sagatom Saha, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “We have the companies, and they’re not super exposed to the ‘China factor,’” Saha said.
In the current high tariff environment, he added, geothermal is relatively well-positioned to continue building. Saha pointed to green hydrogen as an example of sectors that could struggle. “The market hasn’t really materialized, and there’s no administration support anymore,” he explained. Geothermal is on the other end of that spectrum: even without federal incentives, it would likely be heading in a positive direction.
The early months of the second Trump administration have proven tumultuous for many domestic clean tech sectors. Some have already faced project cancellations, due to uncertainty over the fate of federal awards and disruptive trade policies.
Of course, Geothermal has seen its own share of project cancelations. In February, Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary Black Rock Geothermal suspended its permitting process for three new plants in California. The company cited permitting delays and uncertainty around power purchase agreements. National Grid also canceled a pilot planned in Lowell, Massachusetts, pointing to higher-than-expected costs including inflation and supply chain costs.
Power sector problems
Trump’s blanket 25% tariff on steel imports — which is expected to add billions of dollars in costs for U.S. businesses — is likely the biggest challenge for geothermal projects and companies.
The U.S. currently imports around a quarter of its steel in 2024, primarily from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and South Korea. Imports have been rising steadily since 2021. In January 2025, total imports were more than 20% higher than the same month last year.
Steel piping makes up a significant portion of geothermal’s capital costs, explained Ted Bardacke, who leads the Clean Power Alliance. Exactly how much of an impact the tariffs will have, he said, really depends on the situation of individual projects.
“If you don’t have domestic supply, or if [imported steel] is not in the country already, that’s a headwind,” he added.
Bardacke, for his part, isn’t convinced there’s an upside to the tariffs, even for geothermal. “This is not good for clean, firm power in general,” he said.
The uncertainty, he added, is particularly harmful for the development of new firm power sources, whether or not they’re clean. (“Gas plants take transformers and turbines and things that have long lead times and may be subject to tariffs too,” he explained.)
“A month ago we were talking mostly about tariffs on Canada and Mexico…now we’re talking about other countries,” he said.
“The uncertainty about where this is all going to land is slowing decision making,” he added. “And slowing decision making has real-world consequences for our ability to handle growing electricity demand.”
