With natural gas price increases of over 25 percent and a global recession on the table, now is the time to diversify domestic energy resources like geothermal and geologic hydrogen to ensure American energy security.
For decades, US energy strategy has focused on what can be readily deployed—oil, natural gas, coal, wind, and solar—with relative ease across a large, interconnected grid. Yet recent conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, along with rising trade tensions with China regarding critical minerals and other key inputs underscore a hard truth: Reliance on centralized grids exposes military installations and critical infrastructure to risks from adversary targeting, cyberattacks, natural disasters, and blackouts. As threats to fuels and energy infrastructure proliferate, ensuring reliable power becomes a national security imperative.
Beneath US soil lie untapped resources that could reshape this equation: geothermal energy and naturally occurring geologic hydrogen. These domestic, continuous sources offer resilient power that reduce dependence on external infrastructure while leveraging US expertise in oil and gas. Advancing them would strengthen both energy security and national defense, particularly on federal lands and military bases—if policymakers move quickly to enable exploration, pilot projects, and deployment.
