A startup discovered a hidden source of abundant, clean energy and did it in an unusual way

Utah-headquartered startup Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals announced last week it had used artificial intelligence to locate a 250-degree Fahrenheit geothermal reservoir under this stretch of land.

(CNN) — Nothing on the surface of this scrubby expanse of western Nevada desert, overlooked by towering, craggy mountains, gives even a hint of what lies beneath. But a few thousand feet underground is a hidden source of abundant clean energy — and it was discovered in an unusual way.

Utah-headquartered startup Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals announced last week it had used artificial intelligence to locate a 250-degree Fahrenheit geothermal reservoir under this stretch of land. They named it “Big Blind,” because this kind of site — which has no visual indication of its existence, no hot springs or geysers above ground, and no history of geothermal exploration — is known as a “blind” system.

It’s the first industry-discovered blind site in more than three decades, said Carl Hoiland, co-founder and CEO of Zanskar. “The idea that geothermal is tapped out has been the narrative for decades,” but that’s far from the case, he told CNN. He believes there are many more hidden sites across the Western US.

Geothermal energy is a potential gamechanger. It offers the tantalizing prospect of a huge source of clean energy to meet burgeoning demand. It’s near limitless, produces scarcely any climate pollution, and is constantly available, unlike wind and solar, which are cheap but rely on the sun shining and the wind blowing.

The problem, however, has been how to find and scale it.

It requires a specific geology: underground reservoirs of hot water or steam, along with porous rocks that allow the water to move through them, heat up, and be brought to the surface where it can power turbines.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were high levels of excitement around geothermal, with oil and gas giants spending huge amounts drilling to find hidden systems, Hoiland said. By the mid-80s, however, many had started to give up, put off by high costs and low success rates.

It’s a “classic needle in the haystack problem,” said Joel Edwards, co-founder and CTO of Zanskar. “There’s no one type of data that tells you that a system is below you, even if you’re right on top of it.” Instead, there are multiple indicators which are really hard for humans to put together to figure out if a system exists.

That’s where AI comes in.

The AI models Zanskar uses are fed information on where blind systems already exist. This data is plentiful as, over the last century and more, humans have accidentally stumbled on many around the world while drilling for other resources such as oil and gas.

The models then scour huge amounts of data — everything from rock composition to magnetic fields — to find patterns that point to the existence of geothermal reserves. AI models have “gotten really good over the last 10 years at being able to pull those types of signals out of noise,” Hoiland said.

Once a potential location has been found, the next step for the company is to drill down to confirm the reserve exists and is hot enough to produce utility-scale power.

That’s exactly what they did at Big Blind over the summer, drilling wells to depths of around 2,700 feet where they found porous rock at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. They know the site is at least the minimum size needed to support a power plant, but don’t yet have a sense of how big it could be.

There is also work to be done to navigate permitting processes and grid interconnection, but the company estimates the first electricity could be produced here in three to five years’ time.

Zanskar’s discovery “is very significant,” said James Faulds, a professor of geosciences at Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology. (Faulds does not work with the company, but two of his former graduate students do.)

Estimates suggest over three-quarters of US geothermal resources are blind, Faulds told CNN. “Refining methods to find such systems has the potential to unleash many tens and perhaps hundreds of gigawatts in the western US alone,” he said.

An oft-cited government analysis from 2008 estimated undiscovered geothermal reserves in the US could provide around 30 gigawatts of power, enough to power around 25 million homes. Hoiland thinks the real figure could be at least 10 times higher.

Over the last three years of scouring the Western US, Zanskar has identified many “hotspots” with the same characteristics as Big Blind, Hoiland said.

Big Blind is the company’s first blind site discovery, but it’s the third site it has drilled and hit commercial resources. “We expect dozens, to eventually hundreds, of new sites to be coming to market,” Hoiland said.

If Zanskar can keep its costs down, “that will go a long way in attracting investment,” said Sophia Bauer, geothermal project manager at Global Energy Monitor, a non-profit. Geothermal has a big advantage because it can harness drilling techniques already fine-tuned by the oil and gas industry, she told CNN.

Another advantage is political. “In the United States right now, the atmosphere is quite friendly to geothermal,” Bauer said. While the Trump administration has taken an ax to solar and wind, geothermal has gone under the radar and is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, according to a March report from Global Energy Monitor, authored by Bauer.

There’s plenty of scope to grow. The US leads the world in geothermal energy, accounting for about 24% of global installed capacity, but geothermal accounts for only 0.4% of the country’s electricity mix.

Some experts hope geothermal will help fulfill the soaring electricity demand from data centers, many of which are used for AI. “Perhaps we have a close future of AI powered by geothermal discovering more geothermal!” Bauer said.

Zanskar’s discovery is the latest development in what some are calling a geothermal renaissance. Much of the recent buzz has been around next-gen geothermal techniques, which use advanced tools of the oil and gas industry — including fracking — to drill very deep wells and artificially create the conditions needed to harness geothermal energy.

But Hoiland says Zanskar’s work shows conventional geothermal still has huge untapped potential.

Joseph Moore, a University of Utah geologist, said AI could be a “gamechanger” for the industry, provided its success at finding hidden geothermal systems can be replicated multiple times.

“It’s the latest advancement for this benign, renewable energy source,” he told CNN. “Frankly, it’s all very exciting to see.”

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