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Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet by caminante on Sunday March 02, 2025 @05:10PM (#43235743)
Not quite.

The original comment (by @animats) specified shallow (viable) versus deep (unviable).

> nobody seems to have a profitable deep geothermal power operation.

That nuance got lost.

Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet by citadel_melon on Sunday March 02, 2025 @08:09PM (#43237219)
The original comment stated that shallow geothermal can be useful for heating, but did not say anything about shallow geothermal electricity generation.
Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet by caminante on Sunday March 02, 2025 @08:45PM (#43237436)
No.

See the first paragraph. [0] The reference explicitly gets into "deep geothermal" (i.e., EGS) and talks about power applications that are viable because of limited drilling (i.e., shallow).

> The more than 1 gigawatt of geothermal power currently produced globally — from California to Iceland to the Philippines — relies nearly exclusively on such natural outpourings of the earth’s heat.

The building heat comment is just a reference to another residential/C&I application with ground loops. They're not dismissing or not acknowledging the grid-scale power applications.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43234465

Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet by citadel_melon on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @04:13AM (#43252273)
"Shallow geothermal for building heat works fine, but it takes a lot of drilling just to get some heat."

From my understanding, this is all the original comment says about shallow geothermal. Correct me if I am misunderstanding.

Moreover, I do not see the quote: "The more than 1 gigawatt of geothermal power currently produced globally — from California to Iceland to the Philippines — relies nearly exclusively on such natural outpourings of the earth’s heat" anywhere.

Are we referring to the same comment, or am I misunderstanding something?

Re:Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet by glenstein on Monday March 03, 2025 @09:02AM (#43241809)
You're right that that nuance got lost and I'm sorry I overlooked it.

Insofar as it relates to the commenter I'm replying to, they also seem not to be making a distinction about deep geothermal, but insisting that the difference between Iceland and the rest of the globe is an indictment of geothermal's viability deep or otherwise. Which doesn't follow.