Mazama Energy, Inc.backed by Khosla Ventures and Gates Frontier has achieved a major milestone in clean energy.
At its pilot site in Newberry, Oregon, the company has developed the world’s hottest Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS), reaching a bottom-hole temperature of 629 °F (331 °C). This breakthrough establishes a new global benchmark for geothermal power and represents a critical step toward delivering low-cost, carbon-free baseload electricity on a terawatt scale.
As data centres and artificial-intelligence workloads proliferate, there is an urgent need for uninterrupted, high-density power. Traditional renewables such as solar and wind are intermittent, while fossil-fuel power remains carbon-intensive. By tapping geothermal resources with temperatures above 300 °C, Mazama is able to offer round-the-clock, weather-independent, carbon-free power—an ideal match for hyperscale data centres and industrial electrification.
“Geothermal gives you energy that is global, continuous, carbon-free, cost-stable and independent of the grid,” said Sriram Vasantharajan, CEO of Mazama Energy. “Our achievement extends geothermal technology into much hotter and more variable rock conditions than ever before. The Newberry pilot provides a blueprint for utility-scale, carbon-free energy from the Earth’s crust—just what the next wave of AI and cloud infrastructure demands.”
According to John McLennan, Reservoir Management Lead at Utah FORGE, this project “validates an integrated development programme that successfully tied two slightly deviated wells and circulated a representative working fluid … fulfilling a vision launched nearly fifty years ago.” This demonstration opens the door to deeper and hotter development beyond Newberry.
Mazama will next move into commercial deployment, starting with a 15 MW pilot in 2026, followed by a 200 MW project at Newberry. It also plans to expand into the “SuperHot Rock” regime (>400 °C) using proprietary high-temperature technologies. These advances promise up to ten times more power density, 75% less water and 80% fewer wells compared to current conventional approaches putting terawatt-scale, competitive dispatchable power into reach globally.
At the Newberry site, Mazama’s engineers built on one of the US’s largest geothermal reservoirs and upgraded a legacy well for injection, then drilled a new 10,200-foot deviated production well, achieving optimal alignment and connectivity. Drilling rates exceeded 100 feet/hour at peak, zero downhole failures were recorded and well integrity was maintained under ultra-high-temperature conditions - thanks to innovations including the patented Thermal Lattice stimulation process, cross-linked fracturing fluids, nano-tracers, fibre-optics and sliding-sleeve tools.