Shallow geothermal works fine for heating. And you can use the ground as a heat sink. But if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells. Fervo Energy claims to have found 270C at 3350 meters well depth. That's progress.

> if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells.

That’s going to be very dependant on location.

Here in NZ there are regions where water is boiling at surface level.

According to the below, 18% of our power is produced with it.

https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/energy-in-new-zealand/rene...

I think this looks interesting, but still very early stage. The “150 GW revolution” sounds more like theoretical potential, not something we will see soon in real deployment.

Main problems: drilling is still expensive, managing induced seismic activity is not trivial, permitting can take long time, and you also need transmission infrastructure. Also not yet proven that companies like Fervo can scale this in reliable and low-cost way.

Nope. To efficiently tap geothermal energy, you need to boil something but not necessarily water. Isopentane, for example, boils at 28º at standard pressure, so they pressurize the secondary loop to raise the boiling point close to whatever the primary loop temperature is.

The idea that geothermal only works well at steam temperatures is outdated 20th-century thinking.