Fervo Energy plans to drill holes in Utah and extract heat from rocks to power data centers. Enhanced geothermal. The kind where you fracture granite and pump water through it instead of waiting for nature to do the work. They claim this will unlock gigawatts.
Gigawatts. Not megawatts. Gigawatts. That's the kind of word you throw around when you need venture capital firms to stop asking about your burn rate. Back to the Future made one point seven gigawatts sound impressive and now every energy startup acts like they're building a time machine. Fervo just wants to keep ChatGPT running so it can tell you how to invest your Robinhood account into bankruptcy.
The data center boom needs power. Lots of it. AI models require server farms that consume electricity like your cousin Derek consumes White Claws at a barbecue. Steady, constant, and with no plan to stop. Traditional grids can't keep up. So Fervo drills deep, cracks open hot rock, circulates fluid, generates steam, spins turbines. Rinse and repeat until the geology gives out or the subsidies dry up.
Utah gets the project because apparently the state with the salt flats and the Mormons also sits on top of exploitable heat reservoirs. Fervo tested a smaller version already. It worked. Now they scale. That's the pitch. Prove enhanced geothermal belongs in the power mix. Make it commercial. Make it replicable. Make it fundable.
You won't invest in this. You can't. Fervo remains private. You'll invest in some lithium mining penny stock instead because a guy on Twitter with a laser-eyed profile picture told you it's the next Tesla. Then you'll watch Fervo sell power to Microsoft at rates you'll never see disclosed while your portfolio bleeds out slower than the heat from a geothermal well.
Photo by Nicolas HIPPERT on Unsplash
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