Geothermal energy.
The $3,000 question.

Enhanced geothermal works. That stopped being a debate on September 30, when Fervo Energy's first 33-megawatt unit at Cape Station in Utah went into commercial operation, a day ahead of its contract. Fervo's stock closed at a record low that same day.

The physics question is answered. The price question isn't, and that's the setup for geothermal energy stocks in 2027.

Ordinary geothermal is about as simple as energy gets. Hot rock heats water, the water spins a turbine, and the plant runs day and night with no fuel bill. For a century, that only worked where nature had already done the hard part, with hot water sitting in cracked rock near the surface: Iceland, New Zealand, Indonesia, a few valleys in Nevada and California. Enhanced geothermal borrows the shale playbook of horizontal wells and fracking to crack the rock on purpose, which turns hot, dry rock in a lot more places into a power plant.

Buyers want it. Google signed for most of Cape Station in September, Meta has deals with two startups, and Congress left geothermal's tax credits alone through 2033 while it gutted wind and solar. Cost is the problem. Fervo's first phase came in around $7,000 per kilowatt of capacity, and its own IPO prospectus puts the number that beats a gas plant at $3,000.

Fervo went public at $27 in May and trades around $14.50 now. The market wants proof of the middle bar before it pays for the last one.

Every one of these geothermal energy stocks sits somewhere on that cost curve: the one testing it, the incumbents already sitting on cheap heat, the suppliers paid to push it down, and the private companies trying to skip it.

One company is running the experiment the whole sector is waiting on.

Fervo Energy NASDAQ: FRVO

Fervo Energy is the only way to own enhanced geothermal on a public exchange, which turns its quarterly reports into the industry's cost disclosure. Its CEO started out as a drilling engineer in the shale patch, and Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah, is that playbook pointed at hot granite.

The first phase is about 100 MW, with the last two units due by January 1. The 400 MW second phase, due in 2028, is where the thesis lives. Fervo is targeting $5,500 per kilowatt there, and the second build has to come in meaningfully cheaper than the first for any of the long-term math to hold.

Revenue will look better every quarter now that units are switching on. That's not the number to watch. You're buying a cost curve, and most of it is still on paper.

These companies already sit on rock that works, and the AI power rush is repricing what round-the-clock clean electricity is worth. They're the geothermal energy stocks with the least left to prove.

Ormat Technologies NYSE: ORA

Ormat Technologies has been making geothermal pay for decades. It owns and runs plants in the U.S., Kenya and Central America, and it builds the binary turbines much of the industry buys.

The reason it's here is that it has turned itself into the landlord for the next wave. Sage Geosystems picked Ormat's Blue Mountain plant in Nevada for its next commercial enhanced geothermal facility, and Ormat is drilling its own pilot at Desert Peak with SLB. New technology needs land, permits, grid connections and turbines, and Ormat already has all four.

If enhanced geothermal gets cheap, Ormat collects rent on it. If it doesn't, Ormat still has a business that just raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $1.15–1.2 billion.

Constellation Energy NASDAQ: CEG

Constellation Energy got the biggest geothermal portfolio in the country almost as a side effect. When it closed the Calpine acquisition in January, it picked up The Geysers in Northern California, about 730 MW across 13 plants and the biggest geothermal portfolio in the country.

That matters because Constellation is the company that taught tech giants to pay up for firm, carbon-free power on long contracts. It does that with nuclear today. The Geysers sells the same product, and it gives the best salesman in the business a geothermal fleet to sell.

Contact Energy NZX: CEN

Contact Energy runs a string of geothermal stations around Wairākei and Tauhara on New Zealand's North Island. It is replacing aging Wairākei capacity with Te Mihi Stage 2, a 101 MW plant scheduled for the third quarter of 2027.

That's the quiet tell. A utility with hydro, gas and every other option on the table keeps choosing to rebuild its geothermal. On the right rock, the old-school version still pencils out against everything else.

Pertamina Geothermal Energy IDX: PGEO

Pertamina Geothermal Energy is Indonesia's state geothermal company, with 727 MW running across volcanic fields on the Ring of Fire. It has a roadmap to nearly 1 GW by 2028, starting with two 55 MW units at Hululais.

This is the conventional growth story. No fracking and no science risk, just a huge natural resource that has barely been tapped and a government that wants it built. The trade-off is that you're buying Indonesian state policy along with the steam.

Enhanced geothermal wells are shale wells pointed at granite. That routes the cost curve straight through oilfield service companies.

Baker Hughes NASDAQ: BKR

Baker Hughes is the oilfield major with the deepest geothermal book. It won the order for the power equipment at Cape Station's second phase, five plants totaling about 300 MW.

In June it signed on as the subsurface provider for Mantle Reach Power, an EnCap-backed developer, for up to 500 MW over five years. That puts Baker on both sides of the ground: the work below it and the power plant on top. Geothermal is still a rounding error inside the company, but no other large cap is this close to the work.

Vallourec EPA: VK

Every geothermal well needs miles of steel pipe that can survive hot, corrosive brine for decades. Vallourec has locked in the busiest driller in the business: a five-year exclusive deal with Fervo, signed in April and worth up to $800 million, with the pipe rolled in Youngstown, Ohio.

Faster drilling is how Fervo plans to cut costs, and faster drilling means more wells. Vallourec gets paid per well, so the cost-cutting works in its favor.

Nabors Industries NYSE: NBR

Nabors Industries is a land-rig contractor with a venture bet on superhot rock. In August it paid for a $35 million stake in Quaise Energy with its own stock, making it Quaise's largest shareholder at 14% fully diluted.

Know what this is. The core business still rides the oil and gas rig count, and the geothermal upside is an option on companies that haven't proven their technology. If Quaise works, Nabors owns a big piece of it for the price of some shares.

Each of these companies is betting there's a cheaper way to get the heat out than Fervo's.

Sage Geosystems (Private)

Sage Geosystems builds next to plants that already exist. Its next commercial facility goes in at Ormat's Blue Mountain site, which means an existing grid connection, existing permits and existing land.

In a world where new power plants wait years to connect to the grid, that's a cost advantage that has nothing to do with drilling. Sage also uses its wells to store energy by holding water under pressure, and in August it put that storage system into service on the Texas grid. Meta has signed for up to 150 MW.

Zanskar (Private)

Zanskar is going after the cheapest geothermal of all: conventional hot water that nobody knew was there. Its AI models sift geological data for "blind" systems with no surface hot springs to give them away. Last December it unveiled one in western Nevada that it calls Big Blind. It says that was the first blind system found by industry in the U.S. in more than 30 years.

No fracking means no fracking bill. Zanskar raised a $115 million Series C in January and signed a 100 MW, 20-year contract with NV Energy in May.

Quaise Energy (Private)

Quaise Energy wants to skip the cost curve entirely. Instead of grinding through rock, it vaporizes it with millimeter-wave energy borrowed from fusion research. The goal is "superhot" rock deep underground, where a single well could produce several times the power of a normal one.

If that works, the cost per kilowatt doesn't fall gradually. It collapses. That's a very big if, and Quaise is a true moonshot. It raised a $180 million round this summer, won up to $25 million in Energy Department support in September, and has started drilling near Oregon's Newberry Caldera.

Eavor Technologies (Private)

Eavor Technologies doesn't crack the rock at all. It drills a sealed loop of wells and circulates fluid through hot rock like an underground radiator, with no water lost to the ground. Its plant in Geretsried, Germany, started feeding the grid in December 2025, a first for a closed-loop system.

The catch is that a sealed pipe pulls less heat than fractured rock, so each well makes less power. Eavor is betting that building almost anywhere, and selling heat to district-heating networks as well as power, is worth more than raw output.

The market is grading geothermal energy stocks against a gas plant. That's the wrong test for the next few years.

The first several gigawatts aren't going to buyers shopping for the cheapest electricity. They're going to Google, Meta and the rest, who need power that runs all night, emits nothing and gets built this decade. Their real alternative isn't a gas turbine. It's a small nuclear reactor that doesn't exist yet at commercial scale, or a long wait in the grid queue.

Against that benchmark, $5,500 per kilowatt delivered in 2028 is a good price. That's why Google signed for most of Cape Station before the first unit even switched on.

$3,000 is still the number that turns geothermal into a mass-market fuel. But the industry doesn't have to hit it to grow. It gets there on the back of a few gigawatts that premium buyers are already willing to pay for, because each well drilled teaches the crew something about the next one.

That makes the next few years a race for wells, not for a breakthrough. Whoever drills the most of them while the big tech companies are still paying a premium is likely to be the one that gets to cheap first.