Texas' Geothermal Energy Abundance

Texas is hot, and it’s not just the climate. Texas geologies, including geothermal resources in the State’s sedimentary basins, along with the State’s status as the epicenter of the oil and gas industry, present a large and promising opportunity to develop geothermal resources in the Lone Star State.

The amount of heat energy beneath our feet is estimated to be many thousands of times larger than what we would need to power not only Texas, but the world. Put another way, the oil and gas industry has powered the world through the industrial revolution and into modern times on the much smaller of our two subsurface resources – hydrocarbons and heat.

Comparison of total heat energy in Earth’s crust, compared to fissionable materials, and fossil fuels. Note that total fossil fuels, when compared with crustal thermal energy, is the equivalent of less than one pixel at the bottom of the graphic, shown magnified to illustrate scale. Measurements in zettajoules (“zj”). Source: Adapted from Dourado, 2021.

Source of info: https://energy.utexas.edu/research/geothermal-texas