Cascade Institute

Canada is taking action to build a stronger, more secure and competitive economy by investing in a Cascade-led coalition of geothermal experts and innovators.

On June 11, the Honourable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced approximately $468,000 in funding through Natural Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program to support the Canadian Deep Geothermal Roadmap project, led by the Canadian Deep Geothermal Coalition.

This project will develop Canada’s first national roadmap for deep geothermal energy resources, which harness the Earth’s natural heat to provide reliable, clean energy. CDGC will lead the development of the roadmap, with Cascade Institute serving as the Secretariat to support co-ordination and delivery. CDGC will work with industry, researchers, Indigenous partners and governments to identify technology opportunities and research and development priorities to support next-generation geothermal development in Canada.

“Canada’s clean energy future relies on the talent and innovation of Canadian researchers, businesses and industry leaders, and British Columbia is leading the way,” said Minister Hodgson. “Our government is committed to creating new jobs for Canadians while supporting technologies that will help meet future energy needs.”

Thomas Homer-Dixon, founder and executive director of the Cascade Institute, applauded the announcement as an vital step toward addressing serious challenges: “Canada has a strong foundation for next-generation geothermal — from world-class geology to deep subsurface expertise and a highly skilled workforce. What’s been missing is a clear, shared path forward. This roadmap will bring together industry, researchers, Indigenous partners and governments to define that path, grounded in evidence and focused on practical opportunities. With federal support, the Coalition can develop a strategy that helps translate Canada’s strengths into real projects and long-term sector growth.”

Conventional geothermal technologies can already provide clean and reliable heat and power. Next-generation geothermal systems have the potential to do this across more regions of Canada while leveraging Canadian expertise in areas such as drilling and subsurface engineering. The roadmap will help enable investment and support the growth of Canada’s geothermal sector.

The Canadian Deep Geothermal Coalition, launched in 2025, is a growing alliance of organizations committed to accelerating deep geothermal development in Canada.

Ask 2,000 Canadians what they think about geothermal energy, and most will answer with a shrug.  

That shrug is loaded with meaning to Katherine Matos Meza, a Cascade Institute researcher studying public perceptions of geothermal.  

When she and Carlos Gorraez Meraz, a collaborator at Royal Roads University, recently asked 2,603 people in western Canada to share their impressions of the clean-energy option, the predominant response was a vague, fuzzy familiarity.  

That’s both good news and bad news, according to the new report they co-authored, Deep Listening: Assessing the social acceptance of geothermal energy in Alberta and British Columbia. 

“Public perceptions around geothermal are still forming,” says Matos Meza. “That’s a great opportunity to engage people, to educate them, to help them understand the important role geothermal energy could play in ensuring clean, secure, and affordable electricity for Canadians.” 

Recent advances have made geothermal energy — clean, inexhaustible power extracted from hot rock kilometres below the surface — a powerful addition to the mix of technologies like wind and solar.  

But of all the energy sources Matos Meza asked about in a survey of Albertans and British Columbians last year, geothermal had the lowest familiarity. Acceptance is moderate and opinions are soft. People have not yet decided what to make of geothermal because, in general, they’ve barely heard of it.  

For Matos Meza, that gap in understanding is simultaneously a big opportunity and a flashing red warning.  

“Right now, they’re subject to misinformation, or to other actors who might give them negative insights.” 

Matos Meza contributes research to all of Cascade’s programs — geothermal, polycrisis, democracy — thanks to her background in stakeholder mapping, survey design, and environmental impact assessment. She has worked in both the public and private sectors, and holds a master’s degree in Environment and Management from Royal Roads University. She also built the data behind the Polycrisis Community Map, which links researchers working on the world’s interlocking crises.  Her study of public acceptance of geothermal is aimed at helping entrepreneurs, policymakers, and communities realize the environmental, financial, and social benefits of the technology.  

Matos Meza says the key finding of her research is that there’s still time to positively shape public perceptions of geothermal, whereas perceptions of other energy forms are tougher to budge.  

A second part of the research, currently ongoing, includes qualitative analysis of the survey’s open-ended question about perceived risk. Open-ended questions like these are about more than tallying yes and no answers, says Matos Meza. 

“From there we can identify information gaps, emotional threats, technical concerns, structural distrust. And we can do it at an early stage, before concerns harden into positions.” 

This is where Matos Meza’s work plugs into Cascade’s overarching mission. The Institute sees geothermal energy as a “high-leverage intervention” to address the polycrisis — a single push that can simultaneously address climate heating, energy insecurity, and economic inequalities.    

Matos Meza understands that technological transitions are also social ones. Without social acceptance, the advancement of this promising but underdeveloped clean energy resource could stall. With strong social acceptance, geothermal can be part of the positive snowball effect the Cascade Institute calls a virtuous cascade.  

“Perceptions are evolving fast,” she says. “The sooner people are introduced to the benefits of geothermal energy, the better.” 

That’s why she believes we need to investigate social acceptance now, while the ground for growing public perceptions is still fertile: “My goal is to understand the forces shaping social acceptance of geothermal well enough that we can actually address them through effective and transparent communication.” 

The Cascade Institute has partnered with Seequent, 400C Energy, INRS, and Simon Fraser University to develop the Canadian Thermal Model — a comprehensive mapping of the vast geothermal resources beneath our feet.

This national initiative will reveal Canada’s deep geothermal resources and accelerate the development of renewable energy. The announcement happened on the opening day of the world’s biggest geothermal event, being held in Calgary from June 8 to 11.

As investment in geothermal energy surges globally as a reliable, always-on clean power source, the Canadian Thermal Model will create a comprehensive national view of deep heat resources using novel machine learning methods to address a long-standing challenge for the sector: limited subsurface data coverage. Seequent is providing access to its world-leading geophysics software to accelerate research into the Earth’s subsurface.

This initiative advances knowledge of Canada’s geothermal energy reserves by integrating geologic and geophysical datasets into InterPIGNN machine learning algorithm for deep heat modelling. By improving confidence in where geothermal resources are located, the model provides a critical foundation to inform investment, policy planning, and project development nationwide.

“Canada has a significant opportunity to advance geothermal when the need for reliable, always-on clean energy has never been greater,” said Jeremy O’Brien, Energy Segment Director, Seequent. “Realizing that potential starts with greater subsurface certainty and making data accessible to key stakeholders. Combining this access with best-in-class geophysics enables more accurate mapping of heat at depth. The Canadian Thermal Model brings these elements together to create a national view of deep geothermal resources, helping to reduce risk, guide investment, and accelerate development.”

Cascade Institute specialists, working with a team of geoscientists and research partners, including Simon Fraser University, 400 C, and the Geological Survey of Canada Pacific Division, the Institute will develop the model using data integration workflows supported by Seequent’s Oasis montaj geophysics software. Seequent’s technology will process and visualize the data required to inform energy markets on resource availability and development costs.

“Canada has world-class subsurface expertise and a growing opportunity to lead in geothermal,” said Thomas Homer-Dixon, Executive Director of the Cascade Institute. “This project will provide a foundational resource to demonstrate the technical and economic viability of geothermal energy at scale.”

The Canadian Thermal Model reflects a broader industry shift toward data-driven geothermal development, including next-generation technologies and national-scale resource assessment. It also underscores the growing importance of partnerships between research institutions, technology providers, and the wider energy sector to scale geothermal from opportunity to infrastructure.

Seequent supports more than 60% of the world’s geothermal power generation, with experience spanning next-generation projects such as Fervo Energy’s Cape Station in Utah, and long-established operations including Ormat’s global footprint, reflecting deep expertise that drives the sector forward.

To kick off the collaboration, Cascade and Seequent hosted a discussion at WGC on June 8, titled “The Next Frontier: Exploring the Potential of Canada’s Deep Geothermal Resources.

Rebecca Pearce is building a model of something nobody can see: the intense heat trapped kilometres beneath Canada. It’s also a model of a better future for all. 

Pearce is a geophysicist and the science lead for the Cascade Institute’s Ultradeep Geothermal program. She studies a resource tucked so deeply out of sight that most people don’t realize it’s there. Pearce is modelling an inexhaustible zero-carbon resource that could power Canada’s prosperity for generations. 

“Geothermal energy is our next energy revolution,” she says. She and her Cascade Institute colleagues have conducted research and published reports demonstrating that existing Canadian technology and expertise (inherited from the oil and gas industry) can quickly spark big advances in geothermal.  

The Cascade Institute studies the polycrisis: the tangled web of compounding climate, energy, economic and geopolitical crises we’re living through. The Institute identifies high-leverage interventions (well-timed nudges that can ripple outward to address numerous problems at once) and works with governments and frontline actors to act on them. Geothermal energy is among the most promising of those interventions.  

Just as multiple crises can interact and snowball in pernicious cascades, so too can the right intervention at the right time spark a virtuous cascade of improvement toward a better future.  

Research shows that geothermal energy can significantly ease some of the pressures straining the global energy system while accelerating the shift to clean energy sources in response to climate change.  

Pearce aims to translate the complex geophysics of geothermal into language that resonates with the policymakers and communities who stand to benefit from it. To that end, she delivered an impassioned TEDx Talk at Royal Roads University in 2025: 

 “Beneath us lies an infinite supply of heat,” she says in the talk. Energy from just the top 10 kilometres of crust, she explains, “could supply our current global energy needs for over 200 million years.” 

Pearce has chased underground heat round the planet since pursuing her PhD at University College London. She is an expert in applied magnetotellurics (think X-rays for the ground, which allow scientists to locate geothermal hotspots deep below the surface). 

“Geothermal can truly be found anywhere,” says Pearce, who lives in Victoria, BC.  

Her fascination with the underground began early, during childhood hours spent gazing at the Royal Ontario Museum’s volcano exhibit. She was fascinated by the hidden forces that shoved continents together and pushed up mountains.  

Although the geophysics Pearce pursues is complex, the basic principles behind geothermal energy are simple: heat from underground makes steam, which spins a turbine to make electricity. It’s similar in that regard to oil and gas, with a key differentiator—geothermal doesn’t burn anything, so there are no emissions. The power is constant and clean.  

The heat beneath Canada, and much of the world, has been largely inaccessible until recent advances have made geothermal both widely achievable and affordable.  

But there’s a problem: large swaths of Canada’s underground remain unmodelled. Without a model, there’s no government support, no drilling, no progress.  

The goal, Pearce says, is for the model to be “akin to a wind or solar map, so we can illustrate to policymakers that geothermal resources exist across Canada.” 

Pearce and her Cascade Institute colleagues will be part of the World Geothermal Congress, which is being held this June in Calgary. Hosting the event on Canadian soil is a rare opportunity to showcase the incredible potential for geothermal energy in the country.  

Pearce points out that in 2023, the world invested $2 billion in geothermal technology; wind power, by comparison, received $200 billion That kind of money could have funded 400 full-scale geothermal demonstration projects, Pearce says, “but we currently have four.”  

“Geothermal isn’t failing us,” she told her TEDx audience. “We are failing geothermal.” 

Pearce is convinced this can change, and that Canada is unusually well-placed to change it. The country’s decades of oil and gas drilling expertise transfer almost directly to geothermal. She hopes to change that, and believes geothermal energy is on the cusp of a boom for those who seize the opportunity.   

“It will sustain us for thousands of generations to come,” she says. “That is our return on investment.” 

Emily Smejkal is on a mission to unveil what she calls Canada’s “invisible resource.” This month, the world arrives in Canada to see it.  

Smejkal is a Cascade Institute researcher and an organizer of the World Geothermal Congress, which, from June 8 to 11, will host global experts and innovators seeking to accelerate the adoption of the clean energy resource.  

Deep underneath Canada, in rock pressure-cooked by seismic forces, is a limitless supply of non-polluting energy just waiting to be accessed.  

“It’s an invisible resource because it is hiding beneath our feet,” says Smejkal. “Most Canadians aren’t even aware we have it, let alone the important role it could play in unlocking abundant, clean energy to power our future.” 

Unlike solar and wind power — which you can feel warming your face or messing up your hair — deep geothermal energy lies so far underground that its mere existence isn’t obvious. Its potential benefits, however, are widely understood by experts like Smejkal, who hopes the World Geothermal Congress will help turn the tide of public awareness.  

As policy lead for the Cascade Institute’s Geothermal Energy Office and a research fellow on Cascade’s Ultradeep Geothermal team, Smejkal is one of the scientists working to pull geothermal energy out of obscurity and into production. 

Smejkal has been instrumental in pulling together the 2026 World Geothermal Congress in Calgary. The triennial event is an opportunity to showcase Canada’s largely untapped geothermal potential on a global stage — and, she hopes, demonstrate to Canadian policymakers that geothermal should be an essential part of Canada’s clean energy transition.  

The Cascade Institute views geothermal energy as a vital intervention for addressing and mitigating the polycrisis – the web of interconnected crises afflicting the world. Smejkal’s role involves demonstrating to policymakers, regulators, and the public that geothermal energy can power a better future.   

Smejkal spent the first decade of her career as a geologist in Canada’s oil and gas industry, studying the hidden architecture of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin kilometres below the prairie.  

“What’s below the Earth’s surface really fascinates me,” she says, “but I really wanted to lean into using those skills in a more environmentally sustainable way.” Geothermal was the natural fit. 

Although geothermal energy requires complex science and technology to unlock, the basic idea behind it is stunningly simple.  

“Geothermal energy literally just means earth heat,” she explains. “You bring the planet’s own warmth to the surface, run it through a turbine, and you get electricity that is renewable, carbon-free, and always on.”  

For most of history, that heat was only accessible where it was right up at the surface of the Earth, at volcanoes and hot springs. This was great for places like Iceland, but not for places where heat is trapped much deeper, like most of North America.  

Thankfully, Smejkal explains, Canada already has enormous drilling expertise from the oil industry, which translates almost perfectly to geothermal exploration. 

“Canadians are really good at drilling wells,” she says. Canada is the world’s sixth-largest oil and gas producer, and the International Energy Agency estimates that about 80 percent of oil-and-gas skills transfer directly to geothermal. 

At a time when energy is quickly becoming the world’s most contested currency, Canada sits on vast geothermal reserves while remaining reliant on energy from elsewhere. Clean electricity accessible almost anywhere in Canada is about more than climate policy, Smekjal says — it’s about sovereignty too. 

Unlike solar and wind, whose supply chains were long ago captured by China and the United States, geothermal is nascent and the supply chain is still largely up for grabs. The overlap with oil and gas also means that much of that supply chain already exists in Canada. 

“If we don’t do it now, we’re going to be a technology taker instead of a technology maker,” says Smejkal.  

Canada’s signature energy achievements of the past — the CANDU reactor, the oil sands, the unconventional gas boom — were no flukes. Each was a made-in-Canada technology driven by industrial strategy, public research, and implementing partnerships. 

There’s a lot of work ahead. Only three provinces have geothermal regulations in place. Renewable tax credits, written for wind and solar, exclude the cost of drilling. The last federally funded national geothermal energy program ended in the 1980s. 

So Smejkal does the essential work of drafting model regulations, speaking with policymakers, and coalition-building with like-minded scientists and entrepreneurs.  

The World Geothermal Congress in June is the biggest opportunity Smejkal — and Canada’s entire geothermal coalition — has ever had to showcase the invisible resource that could revolutionize clean energy.  

As vice-president of Geothermal Canada, the group hosting the conference, Smejkal has invited the world’s experts to a country that, historically, has underestimated the opportunity that lies beneath it. She believes this June in Calgary will mark a turning point for her field, especially in Canada.  

“My ultimate goal,” she says, “is for Canada to be a geothermal leader. We have the resources and skill — we just need the collective will.” 

Peter Massie spent a decade inside Canada’s energy bureaucracy, where he learned the importance of strategic industry policy.  

That makes Massie ideally positioned to make the case that Canada needs to rebuild its energy strategy to seize the rare opportunity presented by geothermal energy.  

Canada sits atop an enormous, inexhaustible supply of clean geothermal energy, but the country currently lacks a cohesive strategy to unlock that energy for the benefit of Canadians.  

Massie runs the Cascade Institute’s Geothermal Energy Office from Ottawa, guided by a foundational idea: Canada’s greatest energy achievements were not accidents — they were strategized. For example, Canada’s oil and gas industry it is the result of smart, targeted research and development.  

“Maintaining a strong energy sector is no longer just an economic imperative for Canada,” he argues. “It’s an existential one.” 

Energy, Massie says, is quickly becoming the most sought-after global currency. Canada holds the fourth-largest oil reserves on the planet — and sells almost all of it to a single, increasingly unpredictable customer south of the border.  

“Expanding our infrastructure is already showing returns, but it’s a comfortable half-measure,” he says. “And comfort is no longer a viable strategy.” 

The energy is there, but tapping it requires smart cooperation across government, academia and industry. It requires (sometimes risky) business of a country investing in something new. Massie likes to borrow a line from the Harvard economist Michael Porter: “National prosperity is created, not inherited.” 

“Canada’s natural resources were our inheritance,” Massie says. “The technologies that convert them to prosperity are creations of Canadian ingenuity.” 

Massie sees geothermal as an essential companion to Canada’s other energy industries – each of which emerged from deliberate strategy. The CANDU reactor grew out of the Chalk River laboratories and a postwar federal push. Steam-assisted gravity drainage, the made-in-Canada breakthrough that unlocked the deep oil sands, came from a 1970s coalition of government, industry, and academia.  

“These projects were defined by strategic long-term thinking, calculated risk-taking, and collaboration across the public and private sectors,” Massie says. In recent years, he argues, Canada has drifted into “a non-strategy — much talk, but little clarity over what, exactly, we need to do as a nation to remain competitive.” 

Massie believes Canada should start with what it’s best at; the country’s deep subsurface expertise — built over decades of oil and gas production — transfers almost directly to new industries like geothermal energy, critical minerals, and carbon capture. Canada is perfectly positioned to be a goethermal leader.  

But Massie is also adamant that technology is never enough on its own. “Technology does not exist in a vacuum,” he says. “Technologies exist in social and economic systems. And when we want to drive a transition, we have to drive a socio-technical transition.” 

That requires the unglamorous work of dissecting regulations, markets, institutions, and public opinion. “There is no such thing as technology neutrality,” he says. “Blunt instruments, such as the carbon price and tax credits, can scale existing industries.  But alone, they just aren’t enough for transformative breakthroughs.” 

For the Cascade Institute — which studies the tangle of interconnected global crises called the polycrisis — geothermal is what’s known as a high-leverage intervention. Geothermal can be a well-timed “nudge” that alleviates strains on multiple global systems at once.  

“By providing a source of clean baseload power, geothermal can relieve all kinds of other systemic stressors, including energy security, powering data centres, and addressing climate change” says Massie.  

Massie spent more than a decade in the federal government, most recently as acting director of strategic policy and techno-economic analysis in Natural Resources Canada’s Office of Energy R&D, modelling how emerging technologies could help Canada decarbonize.  

Nowadays, the stakes are far greater to Massie. He’s a new father, so the future he studies and strategizes for is also the one his daughter will inherit. 

“Canada has faced challenging moments before,” he says. “Each time, we made the choice to invest, innovate, and lean into our strengths. With higher stakes than ever, we now face that choice again: strategize or stagnate.” 

By Christopher Collins, Cascade Institute Fellow

The version of record of this op-ed appeared in The Globe and Mail. 

Previously in these pages, I argued that the global financial system was developing the “architecture of a polycrisis” – interconnected systemic risks were emerging across sovereign debt, leveraged finance, private credit, equity concentration in technology and geopolitics. These risks were poised to synchronize; if one thread was pulled, the cascading effects could accelerate and amplify the total harm. The question was which thread would be pulled first. The U.S. bond market may have answered that question.

If the bond market is the engine temperature gauge on the global economy’s dashboard, it’s flashing red. Last week, the yield on the benchmark 30-year U.S. Treasury hit its highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. The highly watched 10-year yield – which shapes the price of mortgages, car loans and corporate borrowing worldwide – climbed to more than 4.65 per cent, up roughly 65 basis points since the start of March.

These are not normal moves. Rather, they reflect the fact that the bond market is now pricing something it has spent years politely ignoring: The United States is increasingly behaving like a volatile emerging-market economy. And the U.S. President may be running out of cheap ways to reliably defuse this pressure. In a contest between the bond markets and political rhetoric, the bond markets will win.

For most of 2025, President Donald Trump was able to calm the bond market. When yields spiked after his April tariff announcements, his Greenland threats and his musing about firing then Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, he paused.

Eventually, markets front-ran the pattern: Yields rose, Mr. Trump blinked, yields settled and the so-called TACO traders (Trump always chickens out) who figured this out first made a great deal of money. But now, that escape hatch may be closed. The drivers of this month’s U.S. bond repricing are structural, not rhetorical, and bringing yields down will require more than a few of Mr. Trump’s tweets.

Look at what happened earlier this week when Mr. Trump announced he had called off a potentially imaginary planned attack on Iran. Yields continued their inexorable march upward. Mr. Trump’s announcements do not address the underlying conditions driving the repricing of U.S. Treasuries, and the bond market realizes that the Consumer Price Index does not respond to Truth Social posts.

To bring yields down, Mr. Trump will need to pull structural levers. This may be difficult and politically unpalatable, especially in an election year. While progress has reportedly been made toward a deal with Iran to lower energy prices, a lasting peace would require concessions many supporters in Mr. Trump’s coalition would call appeasement. A China pivot will be difficult. Spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare and defence have all been ruled out, and tax increases are off the table.

This leaves one cheap lever for Mr. Trump: leaning on the Federal Reserve. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, confirmed last week in a highly partisan vote, is now one of the most important figures in global markets. Mr. Trump may try to pressure him into cutting interest rates.

The historical parallel is sobering. More than 50 years ago, then U.S. president Richard Nixon pressured then Fed chair Arthur Burns to keep monetary policy loose ahead of the 1972 election. Mr. Burns largely complied, and while the short-term political win was real, the long-term cost was a decade of stagflation. It took the 1981-82 Paul Volcker recession to break this dynamic.

Even if Mr. Warsh yielded to the President’s pressure, this might not bring down yields. Markets are no longer pricing in rate cuts this year; rather, some traders see a non-trivial chance of a rate hike before year-end. If any future cuts are perceived as politically driven rather than data-driven, yields will rise further as investors demand more compensation for dollars whose purchasing power is politically contested. The trap snaps shut. The easiest move worsens the problem.

Right now, if anything props up the U.S., it is that America remains one of the cleanest dirty shirts in the OECD. British 10-year gilt yields are more than 5.1 per cent, as the country faces the prospect of having its seventh Prime Minister in 10 years. French politics are similarly dysfunctional, and Japanese yields are at multidecade highs. Global pension and sovereign wealth funds still see U.S. Treasuries as the least-bad option.

Yet “least bad” is no solution. It points to a slow grind higher in yields. And this connects directly to the polycrisis risks outlined earlier. Higher yields threaten leveraged Treasury basis trades, pressure bank and shadow-bank balance sheets, and tighten financial conditions at the worst possible moment. The architecture was already fragile; the question now is whether Washington still possesses the credibility to stop the threads from unravelling.