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...
Fervo Energy's $462 Million Geothermal Gold Rush: Google Joins the Heat By: Robert Buluma December 10, 2025 In the fast-evolving world of clean energy, where solar panels dominate skylines and wind farms stretch across horizons, a deeper and quieter revolution is rising from beneath our feet. Fervo Energy, the Houston-based innovator in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), has just announced an astonishing $462 million Series E funding round. This isn’t just another climate-tech investment,it's a tectonic moment for geothermal energy. The round was led by B Capital , joined by major players including Google , Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, and nuclear industry leader Kris Singh. With continued backing from Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Devon Energy, Fervo’s total funding now exceeds $1.5 billion. Why the sudden rush? As AI-driven data centers consume unprecedented amounts of electricity and political winds shift around renewable priorities, geothermal’s promise of 2...