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A RASEI engineer and a geographer have won a New Frontiers Grant to find out why geothermal energy, abundant across Colorado, remains largely untapped.

Geothermal is one of the few renewable resources that runs around the clock, rain or shine. Colorado has plenty of it, but very little is being used.

Geothermal energy draws on heat stored beneath the Earth’s surface, and it comes in two main forms:

• Deep geothermal taps hot rock and water far underground to generate electricity.
• Shallow geothermal uses the steady temperature just below ground to heat and cool buildings, either one building at a time or through networks that serve a whole neighborhood or campus.

This project looks at both.

The big picture: Colorado is betting on geothermal. Governor Jared Polis that aims to cut regulatory hurdles for thermal energy network providers and encourage local utilities to help develop geothermal power projects. In April, the state and funding for seven new geothermal projects, spanning both building heating and cooling and electricity generation.Ìý

However: Policy and funding alone haven’t unlocked the resource. Technical and social barriers have both slowed development, and neither is well understood. Getting to the bottom of these problems takes more than engineering, and that’s the gap this project aims to fill.

The team: The project pairs two very different areas of expertise.

• Bri-Mathias Hodge leads the project. He is a Professor and Associate Chair for Research and Graduate Education in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, and an Associate Director and Fellow of RASEI. His research centers on modeling and simulating power and energy systems, especially the challenges of integrating renewable sources like wind and solar.Ìý
• Shae Frydenlund brings the social science lens. She is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Center for Asian Studies and earned her PhD in geography at CU °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï, with research interests including political ecology, dispossession, and urban development.

Helping move the transition forward: Energy projects succeed or stall based on people as much as technology: who lives nearby, who owns the land, who benefits, and who decides. Putting an engineer and a human geographer on the same team lets the project study the full picture.

The team will investigate the barriers holding geothermal back. The goals are to expand the use of this renewable resource in Colorado and to build CU °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï’s leadership in the field.

New Frontiers is a campus-wide program run by CU °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï’s Research & Innovation Office. It funds interdisciplinary projects with the potential for high impact. This award builds on a planning grant the team received in 2025.