Powering Texas’s Future: Geothermal Energy, High Quality Jobs, and a Road to Clean Energy Transition

On January 14th, 2026, the Texas Climate Jobs Project (TCJP) hosted an educational Lunch and Learn in Austin about the potential for geothermal technology, specifically the opportunity for Austin to invest in geothermal electricity and thermal heating and cooling infrastructure. Cornell’s Climate Jobs Institute Assistant Director of Research, Avalon Hoek Spaans, was invited to discuss how geothermal technology can create high quality jobs. This event featured several speakers, including: 

• Bo Delp, the Executive Director of the Texas Climate Jobs Project,
• Sandra Bustillos, Senior Program Coordinator at the Texas Climate Jobs Project,
• Leonard Aguilar, the President of the Texas AFL-CIO,
• Cecilia Begham, Director of Research and Policy at the Texas Climate Jobs Project, 
• Ryan Pollock, the Executive Director of the Texas Building Trades Council,
• Avalon Hoek Spaans, the Assistant Director of Research at the Cornell Climate Jobs Institute, 
• Dr. Shuvajit Bhattacharya, Research Associate Professor at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, and 
• Dr. Silviu Livescu, the Technical Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Bedrock Energy.

The event was attended by Austin city government officials, geothermal energy industry leaders, and leaders from Texas’s diverse union workforce. The speakers discussed pioneering geothermal technology projects in the neighborhoods of Christine and Whisper Valley, and how technological innovations can reduce costs for future projects.1  As this emerging energy economy grows, strong working conditions standards are needed to ensure that geothermal technology can create unionized, clean-energy career pathways for members of Texas’s oil and gas workforce.

Texas Climate Jobs Project supports geothermal technologies as emerging opportunities to continue Texas’s leadership in clean energy production. Texas is the highest producer of wind and solar energy in the US.2 TCJP aims to build on this momentum by using geothermal electricity and thermal heating and cooling to strengthen Texas’s grid, lower energy costs, and help power Texas’s future. The Lunch and Learn focused on these two specific geothermal technologies.

Geothermal electricity produces power by drilling boreholes a few miles beneath the earth’s surface and converting heat from molten rocks into electricity.3 Thermal heating and cooling is a related technology that uses pipes installed a few hundred feet beneath the earth’s surface, where temperatures are stable at around fifty degrees Fahrenheit. These networks of pipes connect to ground source heat pumps in buildings and can help the buildings save on their heating and cooling costs.4 Texas’s oil and gas workforce is skilled in pipefitting and drilling, which is also required to construct both types of geothermal technology projects. If new geothermal technology projects are developed with high-road labor standards, the expansion of geothermal in Texas will create a prime opportunity for an equitable workforce transition to clean energy. 

Constructing new geothermal technology infrastructure could create thousands of union jobs in Texas alone.5 Future construction requires more research on identifying prime locations, energy generation potential, demand analyses, and labor and financial studies. Cities and states across the US can increase their clean energy production and diversify their energy portfolios by investing in geothermal technologies. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) preserved federal tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for several forms of geothermal technology projects until 2033, and several states and municipalities have also created incentives for installing geothermal technologies. Simultaneously, recent drilling innovations have lowered production costs for geothermal technology construction.6 The Lunch and Learn highlighted that the combination of growing energy demand, technological innovations, an existing skilled workforce, and nationwide tax credits makes this a prime moment to invest in geothermal technologies across the U.S. to lower energy costs, create high-quality jobs, and meaningfully address climate change.

• 1

  How Does Geothermal Energy Work in the Summer?, Sustainability, May 15, 2024, https://www.whispervalleyaustin.com/how-does-geothermal-energy-work-in-the-summer/.
  Sonal C. Patel, “Sage’s First 3-MW Geothermal Power and Energy Storage Project Will Feed ERCOT,” POWER Magazine, August 15, 2024, https://www.powermag.com/sages-first-3-mw-geothermal-power-and-energy-storage-project-will-feed-ercot/.

• 2

  Dan Gearino, “Texas Leads U.S. Renewable Energy Generation by a Country Mile,” Inside Climate News, March 6, 2025, 
  https://tinyurl.com/tvcwv29z.
  “United States - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA),” Texas, accessed April 28, 2026, 
  https://www.eia.gov/states/TX/analysis.

• 3

  Silviu Livescu et al., The Future of Geothermal Energy in Texas (University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute, 2023), 
  https://energy.utexas.edu/research/geothermal-texas.

• 4

  Reyna Cohen and Lynda Nguyen, Understanding Thermal Energy Networks (Cornell University Climate Jobs Institute, 2024), https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/sites/default/files-d8/2024-12/understanding-thermal-energy-networks.pdf.

• 5

  Livescu et al., The Future of Geothermal Energy in Texas.

• 6

  Livescu et al., The Future of Geothermal Energy in Texas.