Solar is nice and all - it's is cleaner than fossil fuels, but requires a bunch of inputs. Geothermal really needs to be pushed for more; after the initial investment, requires basically no inputs and has no toxic byproducts or disposal problems.

"The full technical potential of next-generation geothermal systems to generate electricity is second only to solar PV among renewable technologies and sufficient to meet global electricity demand 140-times over."

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-geothermal-energy/...

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epistasis 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state.

But agreed, advanced geothermal is likely to have a ton of deployment. It's fun to follow all the startups making great progress right now. The big thing to watch will be the degradation in heat levels over 10-20 years; depletion of heat faster than the ability of the surround rock to conduct it is the biggest threat to the technology as a whole right now. But early pilots are showing no fall in output temperature so far, so that's great.

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oidar 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state.

Well more precisely, the inputs for making the solar panels compared to the inputs for making geothermal plants. The best of solar last 30 years atm and the best of geothermal atm last 100+ years. Not to mention you don't need any rare imported minerals to make geothermal plants.

	▲	jeffbee 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It depends on what you're doing. Steam turbines are absolutely full of exotic alloys. But I tend to agree that large-scale geothermal would be an important component of our all-of-the-above energy policy, which would profit from our existing expertise in punching holes in the ground.