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Canadian oil and gas drilling companies are world-class. Highly respected expertise. Innovative technology. A long, successful track record. The perfect foundation for a domestic geothermal industry.
The question is whether Canada will use that foundation to build a geothermal industry capable of supplying reliable electricity, serving industrial customers, and selling Canadian technology to the world.
That is the opportunity Peter Massie lays out in this interview. The director of the Cascade Institute’s Geothermal Energy Office argues that geothermal deserves a place in Canada’s electricity strategy. His case reaches beyond adding another source of power to the grid.
New industrial loads need electricity they can count on. Massie points to LNG facilities and data centres as potential customers. Over time, geothermal heat could also help meet building heating needs, reducing the pressure that electrification places on the grid during periods of peak demand.
Canada has companies developing the technology. It has drilling expertise, experience managing underground resources and workers whose skills could carry into a new industry. What it needs, Massie argues, is a deliberate strategy to turn those advantages into commercial projects.
The obstacle begins underground. Developers must establish what resource is available and prove their technology can work in those conditions. That exploration and testing can demand more capital than a small company can raise, even when the innovation itself is inexpensive.
Massie proposes shared test centres where companies could try their technologies without having to finance all the drilling infrastructure themselves. The same work would improve knowledge of local geology, potentially helping commercial projects get started nearby.
There is an American example: Utah FORGE. There is also a Canadian precedent: the public research effort, called AOSTRA, that helped unlock deeper oil sands resources. Governments helped create the conditions for companies to develop and commercialize technologies.
“Canada really does need to think about taking a more deliberate approach to industrial strategy generally,” Massie tells me.
That does not settle geothermal’s economics. Different technologies still have to prove themselves across different geological settings. Cost targets are promises to test, and repeated drilling is where companies can learn how to deliver projects more efficiently.
But waiting carries consequences, too. Canada could expand its electricity system while allowing other countries to capture much of the industrial opportunity that comes with it.
In this conversation, we explore enhanced and closed-loop geothermal, the case for public investment in testing, and the commercial opportunities Massie sees in Western Canada.
The question running through it is straightforward: will Canada build an industry around the expertise it already has?
