U.S. Bets $171.5 Million on Geothermal as Oil and Gas Rolls Hit 2026 Low
The Energy Department's funding targets the workforce gap between a shrinking oil patch and a geothermal sector still short of trained drillers.
The U.S. Energy Department committed $171.5 million to next-generation geothermal testing on Saturday (2026-07-18), the announcement landing as domestic oil and gas employment slid to its lowest point of the year even as production set records.6
The funding arrives with a workforce architecture attached. A federal advisory panel has called for dedicated training centers to move experienced oil and gas crews directly into geothermal operations, alongside a mentorship structure designed to keep veteran workers on site long enough to transfer the knowledge that decades of wellsite work accumulates and that no curriculum captures.6
The timing reflects a measurable divergence in U.S. energy labor markets. Clean energy now employs 3.56 million Americans, more than three times the roughly 1.9 million across oil, gas and coal combined, and is growing approximately three times faster than the wider economy, according to data cited by Oilprice.com.6 The oil patch has shed staff even as output climbs — and Washington's move suggests it intends to direct that outflow toward geothermal before experienced hands retire or relocate out of the sector entirely.
The practical case for skills transfer already exists at the company level. One driller who spent a decade in New England wells now runs drilling operations for a geothermal company and has said the safety training and technical capabilities carried over almost untouched, according to the same report.6 Directional drilling, pressure management, well cementing — the operations are structurally similar; the subsurface target changes.
The U.K. has been running a smaller version of the same exercise. The UK and Scottish governments jointly allocated £6 million in late June (2026-06-24) to retrain more than 1,000 North Sea oil and gas workers for energy transition roles, expanding a pilot scheme from Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.4 At roughly £6,000 per worker, the scheme funds individual requalification costs. The U.S. funding is aimed at building the training infrastructure itself — a different layer of the same problem.
The resource rationale is large and remains partially unmapped. The International Energy Agency estimates cumulative global investment in next-generation geothermal could reach $1 trillion by 2035, against $1 billion to $2 billion deployed in 2024.1 The DOE projects enhanced geothermal could supply 90 gigawatts of carbon-free capacity in the U.S. by 2050, enough to power approximately 65 million homes.5 Yet less than 10% of the contiguous western United States has been sampled for subsurface temperatures, meaning the forecast rests on data covering a fraction of the prospective acreage.3
Commercial deployment is moving ahead regardless. A privately held geothermal developer valued at approximately $1.4 billion has arranged a 500-megawatt deal with Shell's power division and a California utility, with first electricity production expected next year.1 Princeton University researchers project that widely available geothermal could, by 2050, produce nearly triple the current output of U.S. nuclear plants, which supply around 20% of American electricity.1
Training infrastructure is beginning to take form at the regional level. The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center awarded $1.2 million in grants in April (2026-04) to allow a Northeast program to acquire a drilling rig and a mobile classroom, with roughly 30 geothermal network projects at various stages across Massachusetts and Colorado.2
The harder test for the advisory panel's mentorship model is retaining experienced workers long enough to make it function. Wellsite knowledge does not transfer through a syllabus; it accumulates through supervised drilling over years. With oil and gas employment at its 2026 low and geothermal still below 1% of the U.S. energy mix, the pool of workers who carry that knowledge may shrink faster than training centers can absorb them.1,6