Dear Readers,

Geothermal is no longer an outlier. And if there’s a place that reflects this quiet shift, it’s New York.

What’s happening here this week doesn’t feel like a rally, it feels like a working session. The tone is practical, not performative. There are field demos, yes, and policy panels—but more than anything, there’s a sense that the people in the room are focused on doing the work. Not talking about transformation, but actually building the scaffolding for it.

The growth stats are impressive: NY-GEO’s membership has tripled since 2014, and federal projections point to 80 million homes with ground source systems by 2050. But the more compelling story lives in the people, like the recent grads of the HEET and GDA pilot drilling tutorial. Just months ago, none of them had geothermal on their radar. Now, a few are already working on rigs. Others are waiting for opportunities to reach their zip code. That matters. Training people is one thing. Keeping them close to home is another.

That tension—between momentum and infrastructure, readiness and reach—keeps surfacing. Panels on workforce development circle back to a common truth: scaling geothermal isn’t just about tech. It’s about trust. Trusting the drillers. Trusting communities. Trusting the process. That means shifting how we hire, how we write contracts, and how we think about what success looks like.

There’s no chest-pounding here. Just a recognition that progress is uneven, and scaling up means slowing down in some places to do it right. It also means creating careers that allow people to stay rooted—something the industry hasn’t always been built to do.

NY-GEO 2025 feels less like a moment and more like a marker. A check-in point for an industry still defining itself. A place where people show up to trade notes, challenge assumptions, and figure out how to move forward with both speed and care.

I’m glad I showed up. I think you would be too.

Sincerely,

Johnny Oldani, The Driller