US Geothermal Tax Credits in 2026: What Is Actually Still Alive After OBBBA For an industry that spent more than a decade building financial models around a stable federal incentive structure, 2026 has been a year of whiplash. The 30% federal geothermal tax credit that developers and homeowners built forecasts around is gone in one form and still alive in another, and even the IRS’s own public guidance has been confusing enough to trigger uncertainty across the market. That confusion is not a minor clerical issue. It is shaping investment decisions, contractor sales pitches, homeowner timelines, and project finance assumptions right now. If you work in geothermal, the key question is no longer whether federal incentives exist, but which incentive applies, to which project type, and under what ownership structure. The law that changed the timeline To understand where things stand in 2026, you have to start with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which created a long runway for clean e...
9,000 households to benefit: Neuruppin’s district heating will come from geothermal energy starting in 2027
Germany's Energy Transition at Work: How a Small City Is Drilling Its Way to Energy Independence By: Robert Buluma The Quiet Revolution Beneath Neuruppin's Streets In the heart of Brandenburg, a transformation is taking place that could serve as a blueprint for medium-sized cities across Germany. By spring 2027, approximately 9,000 households in Neuruppin will be heated not by volatile fossil fuels from distant lands, but by the steady warmth of the Earth itself. The scale of this ambition is considerable. The Stadtwerke Neuruppin (municipal utilities) are investing roughly €32 million to pivot the city's district heating system toward geothermal energy—a move that project developers say will cut up to 30,000 tons of CO₂ emissions annually and insulate the Fontanestadt from the turmoil of international energy markets. The Current State of Play: A Mid-Project Assessment In early June 2026, Landrat Ralf Reinhardt visited the construction site on Heinrich-Rau-Straße, where t...