PA Environment Digest Blog: Guest Essay: Geothermal Might Have The Answer For Pennsylvania's Clean Energy Needs

By John Walliser, PA Environmental Council & Kevin Sunday, McNees Wallace & Nurick

This guest essay first appeared on PennLive.com March 10, 2025--

Pennsylvania, long an energy powerhouse, is facing a dilemma: How can we secure our long-term energy future, ensuring we remain a top producer of energy, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting the environment?

And how can we provide job opportunities for the tremendously skilled workers in traditional energy domains while also training the workers we need to accelerate emerging technologies?

Energy demand is projected to significantly increase in coming years, as data centers, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and new and expanded manufacturing facilities come online.

Pennsylvania will need to generate more energy in the next two decades, even as the state has set a goal to reduce greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050 from 2005 levels.

The good news is that these goals are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, pursuing more climate-forward energy policies can be an opportunity to do right by our neighbors working in Pennsylvania’s oil and gas fields.

There is a path in Pennsylvania where clean energy advocates and the traditional oil and gas industry can meet: geothermal energy.

Pennsylvania has utilized its vast energy resources – coal, oil and gas – to fuel the Commonwealth and our industries for more than 100 years, creating a skilled extraction workforce in the process.

A new report produced by researchers at Penn State and other leading universities in the state now finds that the Commonwealth’s subsurface also stores thousands of times more potential energy – in the form of clean, naturally abundant, always-on heat produced from geothermal sources – than we consume annually. [Read more here]

The men and women in our existing oil and gas workforce have the skills and the resources today to take advantage of these geothermal resources.

New and emerging geothermal technologies allow us to tap into and extract the earth’s naturally occurring heat in ways that were not possible a decade ago.

In Engineered Geothermal Systems, engineers create a hydrothermal reservoir deep underground by drilling and connecting wells in hot rock.

Fluid is circulated through the hydrothermal reservoir to absorb heat and then returned to the surface for direct heating or power generation.

For Advanced Geothermal Systems, drillers create a closed loop of pipes through deep wells to capture the heat and bring it to the surface.

Each geothermal project requires a skilled workforce numbering in the hundreds.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Geothermal EnergyAssociation estimate that a 50-megawatt geothermal plant needs between 697 to 862 workers.

The Pennsylvanians who now drill, produce, refine and distribute oil, gas and coal would find that many of their skills fit easily into the geothermal industry.

Oil and gas geologists, hydrologists, drillers, engineers and landmen can develop geothermal resources with minimal retraining.

Utility workers and pipefitters can install and repair geothermal pipes in the same rights-of-way used for natural gas.

Geothermal energy’s environmental profile offers much for our communities to embrace.

In addition to being climate-friendly, its small footprint and ability to meet site-adjacent heating and cooling needs eases pressure on land use and wildlife.

While construction of wells must be properly managed, the operation of geothermal systems generates little pollution, making our air cleaner.

Even abandoned and non-producing oil and gas wells – of which Pennsylvania has plenty – can be converted as productive geothermal systems.

There are economic benefits, too.

Many of the areas with the greatest potential for geothermal development are also places that would benefit from increased economic activity and new jobs that the industry would bring.

Our neighboring states have recognized geothermal’s potential and are moving fast to capitalize on it.

Maryland last year passed the WARMTH Act, creating a geothermal network pilot project to explore geothermal energy as an affordable, healthy home heating solution.

In 2022, New York passed the Utility Thermal Energy Network and Jobs Act to promote the development of thermal energy networks throughout the state and to provide jobs for utility workers.

In Pennsylvania, the most practical use of geothermal energy now is for ground source heat pumps and thermal energy networks.

Not only can such systems directly heat and cool homes, we can also deploy geothermal heat for agricultural and manufacturing applications like dairy pasteurization, beer brewing, grain drying, and pulp and paper production.

As the Commonwealth considers its energy future, we must take steps to ensure its continued subsurface energy leadership by investing in geothermal.

That means adopting policies that encourage the use of this abundant, clean energy source, such as clarifying regulatory authority, incentivizing ground source heat pumps, and helping get these projects online.

If we act now, we can have an all-of-the-above energy policy –and all-of-the-below, too – that helps the state meet its energy, employment, economic and environmental goals.

John Walliser is senior vice president of legal and government affairs for the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.

Kevin Sunday is an energy policy consultant with McNees Wallace & Nurick.

Geothermal Energy From Abandoned Mine Water

Pennsylvania also has tremendous potential for geothermal energy from underground abandoned coal mine water pools as well [Read more here] and federal funding is available to develop this resource [Read more here].

Upcoming Event

-- June 4-5: Shamokin Creek Restoration Alliance Mine Pools As Beneficial Resource Conference. Bucknell University.

Resource Links:

-- Penn State, Project InnerSpace Report: Leverage Oil & Gas Workers To Generate Enough Geothermal Energy To Meet 100% Of Pennsylvania's Electricity, Heating, Medium Industrial Process Needs [PaEN]

-- Post-Gazette - Anya Litvak: A Geothermal Push In Pennsylvania Enlists Oil & Gas Industry: ‘Hot Everywhere Underground’

-- Observer- Reporter: Project Aims To Increase Geothermal Energy Use In State [PDF of Article]

-- Kleinman Center For Energy Policy: Heat Beneath Our Feet - Pennsylvania’s Prospects For Geothermal Energy - By John Quigley, Senior Fellow, Kleinman Center

-- Marcellus Drilling News: PA Study Promotes Geothermal With Aim To Kill Off Shale Energy [PDF of Article]

-- PennLive Guest Essay: Geothermal Might Have The Answer For Pennsylvania’s Clean Energy Needs - By John Wallizer, PA Environmental Council & Kevin Sunday, McNees Wallace & Nurick

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