A new darling of renewable energy is emerging in President Donald Trump’s America.

It’s located deep in the fiery depths of the Earth’s core.

Geothermal is rapidly gaining popularity in the U.S. since Trump’s election, despite generating less than 1 percent of electricity on the grid in recent years.

Federal staffers say the industry has the support of the Trump team — a stark contrast from the administration’s antagonistic stance toward the two largest sources of renewable energy in the U.S., wind and solar.

“They’ve been very clear that geothermal is going to be a major emphasis,” said a DOE career staffer who was granted anonymity to speak freely to POLITICO’s E&E News.

Geothermal energy involves drilling deep into earth to harness heat to generate power. It’s a potentially zero-carbon fuel more prevalent in some areas of the western United States, where high temperatures are close to the Earth’s surface. It could also prove vital in meeting new power demand forecasts that are daunting policymakers.

For now, geothermal is too expensive to compete with other energy sources, such as coal and natural gas. But new breakthroughs are changing the game for the industry.

Producers are now using horizontal drilling and fracking, two oil and gas drilling techniques that have transformed the fossil fuel sector in recent decades. Leaders in the geothermal industry, such as Fervo Energy’s Tim Latimer, say the new drilling systems will slash costs and allow operators to go much deeper in the Earth’s core to unlock heat previously thought unreachable at competitive prices.

So-called enhanced geothermal systems will not only expand the geography of where energy can be produced beyond the easy-to-access spots,= but could also help bring the overall cost down by creating a larger market, experts say. Fervo recently received grant money from DOE.

A January article in the journal Nature Review, meanwhile, found that enhanced geothermal could be cost competitive with the national average cost of electricity generation by 2030. That fits with the Biden administration’s target of $45 per megawatt hour of geothermal electricity by 2035.

In the waning months of 2024, the previous administration kicked off a grant program to use oil and gas drilling expertise in the geothermal sector to slash costs.

Amid the enthusiasm, geothermal’s emergence is raising some ethical issues. Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s company Liberty Energy invested in Fervo. Wright resigned from Liberty, a fracking services firm, after his confirmation.

Industry leaders say this year is pivotal for U.S. energy.

That’s because the U.S. is now scrambling to prepare for huge electricity demand increases, driven in large part by artificial intelligence data centers.

So far, the Trump administration has signaled it will block federal spending for some clean energy projects. But the president’s Inauguration Day executive order declared an energy emergency that gives preferential treatment to geothermal alongside fossil fuels and nuclear power, while not mentioning wind and solar power.

Wright recently called geothermal an “awesome resource that’s under our feet.”

That support will be put to the test in the coming months and years as DOE will be in charge of handing out geothermal grants authorized by Congress in normal annual appropriations and Biden-era climate legislation. Many geothermal programs fall under the department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

“There’s a huge amount of work [at EERE] that the Trump team acknowledges really supports their goals,” said the DOE staffer.

“Geothermal is the one that they’re clearest about,” the staffer added.

DOE spokespeople declined to comment.

Speaking on a panel at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, Latimer said that he was “completely confident” geothermal would be a priority for the Trump administration, even after years of federal investment in the technology have been essentially a “rounding error.”

Cindy Taff, the CEO of Houston-based firm Sage Geosystems, also predicted federal support will continue under Trump.

“Geothermal has always enjoyed support from both sides of the aisle,” Taff said in an interview. “We saw support from before this administration. We’re seeing support from the current administration.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration could use DOE’s multibillion-dollar Loan Programs Office to underwrite geothermal projects. Wright has recently indicated that he would redirect DOE loans away from “incumbent” technology, like wind and solar, toward emerging tools.

That could benefit enhanced geothermal. In a press conference this month, Wright said his goal was to use the office to “nudge things that ultimately can deliver much more affordable, reliable, secure energy.”

No new DOE loans have been given to geothermal companies since 2011, despite an unprecedented four years of clean energy lending under the Biden administration.

Companies are also calling on Republicans to keep Inflation Reduction Act tax perks in place for geothermal production. Industry experts also say efforts to speed up permitting of new infrastructure projects will help the emerging sector.

A 2023 report from the Western Governors’ Association also said that the DOE could consider cost-share programs for new drilling projects and recommended extending oil and gas industry tax breaks to geothermal development.

New analysis from Rhodium Group suggests geothermal could meet a majority of new data center demand. The sector is seen as a viable partner for data centers because it can provide the around-the-clock generation that tech companies need without producing additional emissions.

But that will require huge cost reductions. Latimer said Fervo’s partnerships with tech giants like Google show that geothermal can be scaled to be flexible for different client’s needs.

“Our industry is radically different than just about anything you see in the climate and clean energy space,” said Latimer.

For its part, Sage produces energy from underground heat but also uses pressure from the hot water discharge to store energy that can be sent back to the grid. The company announced last summer that it would partner with Meta on a 150-megawatt data center project and is working with the Department of Defense on demonstration projects.

Taff, having previously worked for Shell, is one of many geothermal leaders who earned their chops in oil and gas.

She said that getting geothermal past the cost “tipping point” will require concentrated work to speed up the interconnection process, as well as technology investments that make the drilling and power production process more efficient. Taff compared the geothermal industry to wind and solar 15 years ago, when cost curves started to shift and production grew exponentially.

Geothermal boosters have also said that advancing the industry will require more data collection and mapping from the federal government to better assess where the best resources are and using government support to defray the heavy up-front cost of exploratory drilling and technology development.

Meanwhile, private funding for the sector is growing. Fervo secured $255 million in December, with backing from fossil fuel firm Devon Energy.

“We’re seeing a real skyrocket of startups,” said Robert Mellors, a program director at DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy who works on subsurface programs, at CERAWeek.