vox--2020-11-13--The Earth itself could provide carbon-free heat for buildings

The heat stored in the Earth ’ s crust , known as geothermal energy , is carbon-free and effectively inexhaustible .
There ’ s enough of it to run all of civilization for generations , if it could be cost-effectively tapped .
Tapping it turns out to be no small feat , but efforts have ramped up recently due to new urgency by the climate crisis and the search for low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels .
The cutting edge technological developments in the field ( including , yes , lasers ) are devoted to drilling deeper and deeper , into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from 302°F ( 150°C ) up to 703°F ( 373°C ) , where water enters its “ supercritical ” phase and above , can be used to profitably generate electricity .
But electricity is only half of the geothermal story .
Well before humans generated electricity with it , they used geothermal heat directly , to bathe , cook , and heat buildings , among other things .
Geothermal direct heat is still used today in industry , agriculture , and for buildings , but only a tiny fraction of its potential has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ direct use of heat , geothermal resources don ’ t need to be quite so hot .
It doesn ’ t require 300°F to heat the air in your home to 68°F .
Just about anything 50°F or above ( which is available just 10 feet down or so ) can be used for something , whether drying grain , running a greenhouse , melting ice on airport runways , or heating commercial buildings .
Geothermal heat is accessible almost everywhere and useful in a wide range of applications .
The US Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to these “ low-temperature and co-produced resources.
” But the most important application , in my mind , is the use of low-temperature geothermal resources for large-scale heating and cooling of buildings .
Heating and cooling buildings isn ’ t as sexy as electricity in the energy world these days , but it is important , representing just over 12 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions and a larger proportion of emissions in cities , many of which have aggressive decarbonization goals .
To achieve those goals , they need to figure out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the best ( out of very few ) options .
In this post , we ’ ll dive into the other half of geothermal : heat .
First we ’ ll take a look at the market and the need for low-carbon heat .
Then we ’ ll look at the technologies and companies involved , and wrap up by considering how government might help accelerate the development of geothermal solutions .
It ’ s hot , or at least warm , stuff !
Cities across the world are setting aggressive decarbonization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ direct carbon emissions by 2050 .
The first three challenges facing a decarbonizing city are electricity supply , transportation , and heating and cooling of buildings .
The pathways to decarbonization of electricity and transportation , while extremely challenging , are at least fairly well understood : renewable energy , electric vehicles , and good urban design that minimizes the need for cars .
For most cities , though , heat is a big unanswered question .
Oil and natural gas furnaces will need to be phased out , which means cities will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to compensate .
And low-carbon options are much more limited in heat than in electricity .
Some furnaces can run on biomethane , other biofuels , hydrogen , or hydrogen-derived fuels , but in a mostly electrified world , low-carbon liquid fuels are likely to be used for high-value applications in industry and transportation — not heating your living room .
That leaves geothermal district heating or , at an individual building level , electrical options like electric resistance heating or heat pumps .
In heat pumps , it ’ s either air-source @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) or ground-source ( exchanging heat with the earth ) .
The latter is far more efficient .
And geothermal district heating is the most efficient of all .
In a decarbonizing world , it is these — the other low-carbon heating options — that will eventually comprise the competitors in the heating and cooling space .
It ’ s a competition some decarbonizing cities , like Boston , are already grappling with .
Boston will have trouble building lots of new electrical infrastructure to heat buildings with electricity , so it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are the technologies that can provide heat from the Earth ?
There are two basic categories .
Let ’ s start by looking at the smaller side .
Ground-source heat pumps are the most efficient source of individual building heat It ’ s a bit of a fudge to include ground-source heat pumps ( GSHPs ) here , because technically they do not make use of geothermal energy .
They make use of stored solar energy , from sunlight striking the Earth ’ s surface .
It ’ s only when you get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ areas , where you get into heat from the planet ’ s core .
If you want to be precise , GSHPs harvest solar heat stored in the shallow earth .
I don ’ t think this terminological issue matters all that much though — it ’ s heat in the earth !
Anywhere from 10 to 1,000 feet beneath the surface , the temperature is a steady 54°F , year-round , everywhere in the country .
GSHPs take advantage of that fact to heat and cool buildings .
When the air is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the earth ; when it ’ s hotter than 54°F , they dump heat into the earth .
A GSHP consists of two parts .
The first is the “ ground loop ” pipe buried beneath the ground with water circulating through it .
Via conduction , the water draws heat from ( or returns heat to ) the earth , so the more pipe surface area there is , the more efficient the system .
That ’ s why there are often several loops of pipe in the overall ground loop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loop equals one ton of capacity , which equals about 12,000 BTU per hour .
An average US home will need 2 to 3 tons of capacity , thus two to three loops ( or one very deep one ) .
The second part is the heat pump itself , which sits inside , connected to the ground loop , exchanging heat with the water via a vapor compression refrigerant cycle ( not unlike the way your refrigerator exchanges heat with the surrounding air ) .
In the winter , it takes heat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it into the air , thus warming the building ; in the summer , it takes heat out of the air and puts it into the water , thus cooling the building .
You can think of a GSHP as two linked heat transfers .
Via the ground loop , the water exchanges heat with the earth ; via the heat pump , the water exchanges heat with the indoor air .
Because ground temperature is basically the same 10 or 1,000 feet below the ground , somewhat counterintuitively , the depth of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much .
What matters is the square footage of pipe exposed to earth .
Installers use either long horizontal loops or deep vertical loops depending on the project .
( Most projects these days are “ closed loop , ” meaning no fluids are exchanged with the ground , but in the right circumstances , an “ open loop ” system that works directly with water heated by the earth can work . )
A GSHP is not generating heat , like an oil or gas furnace , but harvesting heat from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself , of course ; it requires electricity to run a GSHP .
But in terms of units of heat out per units of energy in — what they call , in the business , Coefficient of Performance ( COP ) — it is the single most efficient way to heat a building .
An oil or gas furnace has a COP less than 1 ; one unit of energy input produces about 0.7 to 0.9 units of heat .
Electric resistance heating ( baseboard heaters , wall heaters , space heaters ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ source heat pumps ( ASHPs ) , which draw heat from the outside air rather than the earth , vary somewhat with the temperature of the air , but generally can reach a COP of 3 .
GSHPs , depending on the climate , can get to 4 , or as high as 6 .
( They work better in extreme climates , with a high temperature differential between air and earth , than in temperate climates . )
In the best circumstances , GSHPs are 600 percent efficient .
Nothing else , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buildings , can match that efficiency .
GSHPs are an old technology — they first popped up in the US around 1940 — with well known benefits and drawbacks .
On the benefits side , the system runs quietly , operating costs are low , maintenance costs are low , there are no indoor pollutant emissions or GHGs , and it lasts a long time .
( Heat pumps inside can last 25 years ; ground loops can last 50 years or longer . )
It is a nice thing indeed to already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it has also been expensive as hell to install one .
They typically run from $ 20,000 up to $ 50,000 in upfront costs ( quite a bit more than your $ 1,000 natural gas furnace ) and installing them has typically involved extensive drilling and excavation that can last for weeks ( quite a bit more than the 1-2 day turnaround for a gas furnace or ASHP ) .
These limitations have made them impractical for most homeowners .
At least at the moment , when it comes to a remodel , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GSHPs are worth the additional cost over and above ASHPs , which have improved enough to work in almost any climate .
If an ASHP isn ’ t enough for a given building , it ’ s generally cheaper to reduce heating needs through insulation and efficiency than it is to buy a bigger system .
For new builds , though , “ geothermal is a no brainer , ” says Adam Santry , the president of Allied Well Drilling .
“ You don ’ t need any [ tax ] credits .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ mortgage , you are cash flow positive that first month.
” The savings on heat are greater than the loan payment on the GSHP , right off the jump .
“ Yes , there ’ s an upfront cost , ” says Alan Skouby , a 40-year veteran of the industry now with GeoPro , Inc. “ But it will pay for itself in relatively short order , and once it ’ s paid for , it ’ s a money printer.
” GSHPs face a problem that all sorts of clean-energy technologies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have encountered : Though they pay off in the long run , the substantial upfront investment often deters customers .
The two key strategies for growth , then , are reducing those upfront costs and spreading them out over time through clever financing .
One new company is currently attempting to do both , focusing on the residential market .
Dandelion is trying to make ground-source heat pumps easy The secretive X Lab at Alphabet ( Google ’ s parent company ) has been working away on clean energy problems , spinning off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them , formed in 2018 , is called Dandelion , and it is directly attacking the problems that have held GSHPs back .
Dandelion ’ s team “ didn ’ t grow up in this industry , they grew up in the solar industry , ” says Skouby .
“ They ’ re coming to all of this with a fresh perspective.
” Typically an HVAC contractor can install a furnace or an ASHP themselves , harvesting all the profits and tax credits .
For a GSHP job , they have to find @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — more hassle for less money .
They also frequently have furnaces in stock that they need to move , and might need to special order a GSHP .
The incentives don ’ t line up .
One of Dandelion ’ s key moves has been to vertically integrate , to pull all those links in the supply chain into one organization .
The people who find customers , assess properties , drill ground loops , and install heat pumps all work for Dandelion , so they can coordinate efficiently .
Vertical integration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high-quality equipment .
“ Because they ’ ve got a game plan to reach much bigger scale , ” Skouby says , “ they can leverage that and buy down cost .
Nobody else has been willing to do that.
” For instance , the company designed its own heat pump .
“ We looked at what was taking installers a lot of time , ” says Kathy Hannun , Dandelion ’ s founder and president , “ and every time , there was an opportunity to take those things and just build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s less on-site assembly required and it has a smaller form factor than comparable heat pumps .
It is also covered in sensors , which provide real-time information on how it performs in the field , something the industry has lacked .
It ’ s also cheaper than its competitors .
The company has ordered purpose-built drills , smaller than typical geothermal drills and able to fit into tighter spaces .
Similarly , they have optimized piping , grouting , and other components .
The strategy is more like a solar startup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to drive down costs and begin scaling up ; trust that scale will pay back the investment .
Drilling vertical ground loops — 4 to 6-inch holes around 500 feet deep — Dandelion has substantially cut down on the time and disruption of installation , from weeks or months to one week .
The company has got the upfront , delivered cost of a system down to $ 18,000 from $ 25,000 .
Just as importantly , it has devised a financing model to overcome the upfront cost barrier .
It loans the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who pay nothing upfront .
Instead , they repay the loan at a fixed monthly rate that is lower than their previous heating and cooling costs .
They save money from day one .
“ They ’ re targeting the type of customer our industry needs , ” says Santry , “ medium- to lower-income people that this was not available to.
” The loans are still attached to the homeowner , though .
What the industry needs , says Hannun , is a model like rooftop solar ’ s , with “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re a homeowner and you don ’ t plan on living in your house forever , you can put no money down — just buy solar power , essentially , instead of buying normal electricity.
” This kind of “ solar as a service ” model could work just as well with “ heat as a service.
” Dandelion is taking off in New York , where some localities like Westchester County have banned gas in new buildings , and there are millions of people heating with expensive propane and fuel oil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pay itself off in five years ) .
“ When they see that they can get renewable energy for less than they ’ re paying for fuel oil , ” says Hannun , “ it ’ s very compelling.
” The company recently expanded to Connecticut .
“ I think they ’ re going to be successful , because the scope they ’ re projecting is attracting a lot of utility types that have the financial wherewithal to help drive what they ’ re doing , ” says Skouby , “ or get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which they wouldn ’ t be willing to do with a local contractor.
” New York also has substantial incentives for low-carbon heat , which will likely be needed anywhere GSHPs must compete with natural gas .
But the company is learning as it goes and sees plenty of room to bring down costs “ across the board , ” says Hannun .
And of course , in a carbon-constrained world , natural gas will be fazed out .
So that ’ s the smaller geothermal heat technology .
Now let ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my previous post on geothermal , I described how a traditional geothermal system works .
One well , the production well , taps into hot water trapped in underground aquifers ; the water comes up , the heat is extracted , and the water is cooled and returned to the earth via a second well , the injection well .
To access the high heats needed to generate electricity , such systems typically must be sited in specialized ( and relatively rare ) areas near volcanic activity , where there is extremely hot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But saline aquifers containing warm water — not hot enough for electricity , but plenty hot enough for direct heat — are practically ubiquitous , in the US and elsewhere .
Geothermal systems that tap into warm ( sub-300°F ) water can be used as a source of heat for a district heating system , i.e.
, a single connected system of hot water loops that heats multiple buildings .
District heating found one of its very first expressions in the US — Boise , Idaho , has used geothermal to heat buildings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it to this day — but it is far more popular and advanced in Europe , especially Iceland ( though China is , in this as in all things , scaling up quickly ) .
Paris , Munich , and Reykjavik are all known for their extensive district heating systems .
In the US , district heating has never quite caught on , but it is a frequent feature of college campuses .
As part of its decarbonization goals , Princeton University is shifting from a natural gas steam system to geothermal .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ College in Minnesota , and Ball State University in Indiana ( among others ) already heat with geothermal district heat .
Once the upfront capital costs are paid off , geothermal district heat is dirt cheap , for decades or even centuries .
( The world ’ s oldest working geothermal district heating system , in Chaudes-Aigues , France , has been going since the 14th century . )
But the upfront costs remain daunting .
There are some new technological developments in the space .
The Department of Energy is studying deep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which go deeper to find suitably warm temperatures in almost any geography and use them as large-scale heating sources for campuses , military installations , hospital complexes , or residential developments .
“ Large-scale , fully integrated DDU geothermal systems have not been realized in the United States , ” the DOE writes , “ although efforts of this type are increasingly popular in Europe and elsewhere.
” Some of these DDU efforts are using “ closed loop ” systems ( not unlike GSHPs ) that don ’ t exchange fluids with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any possibility of groundwater pollution .
The Canadian company Eavor ( covered in my previous post ) is working on closed-loop systems that can , in addition to going deep for electricity-level heat , be used for lower-temperature systems that harvest heat for buildings .
Some DDU systems , if they tap high enough heat , can “ co-produce ” electricity and heat , thus blurring the line with geothermal power systems .
The fact is , though , when it comes to shallow saline aquifers , the oil and gas industry already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low hanging fruit [ for geothermal heat ] is our sedimentary basins , between two and three kilometers depth , ” says Marit Brommer , who runs the International Geothermal Association but started out her career as an oil and gas engineer , “ and they have been mapped extensively because of our oil and gas runs .
We know their temperatures extremely well — and we found more water than oil in those reservoirs , by the way.
” “ We have a lot better tools now [ than in previous decades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better geophysical logging capability , better seismic reflection imaging , ” says Jeff Tester , a professor of sustainable energy systems and principal scientist for Cornell University ’ s Earth Source Heat project .
“ We know so much more about how to find permeability and fluids in the rock.
” Drilling at that depth , avoiding pollution or seismic disruption , is something oil and gas has been working on for decades .
Geothermal district heating is a no-brainer for anyone building new housing developments , campuses , or industrial clusters .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( rather than the fluctuating costs of oil and gas ) for generations .
Forward-thinking cities like Munich ( which is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 2030 ) have begun to think of geothermal loops as part of city infrastructure , to be installed and maintained alongside water and sewer lines , so that any new building or development can simply connect to the main line through a utility , like other basic services .
The larger such a system grows , the more its unit costs fall .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that generates local jobs ; it is not dependent on imports or global markets .
It gives cities some measure of independence .
Again , the barrier is the upfront costs .
A decent-sized geothermal district heating can run $ 25 million , says Brommer , and though , “ on average , it takes you about a quarter of your life cycle in order to get rid of your [ debt ] burdens , ” the capital costs are often enough to scare off developers and municipalities .
Costs will come down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we need is multiple companies who work in multiple countries in similar subservice settings , that understand the drilling requirements and the service needs , ” Brommer says , “ meaning that the lessons learned in country one can be applied to reduce costs in countries two , three , and four.
” But that kind of learning requires growth .
Just as with GSHPs , the trick is finding tools to bring down upfront costs and spread them out over time .
Geothermal costs more upfront , but less overall .
Government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ development of geothermal electricity is mostly about technology research and demonstration , but when it comes to geothermal heat — both GSHPs and larger solutions like DDU — the primary need is for the kind of public policy pull that draws demonstrated technologies into a broader market .
That means incentives like grants , tax credits , or feed-in tariffs ( heating tariffs , in this case ) to bring down the upfront costs .
At the city or county level , it means regulatory reform to reduce the costs of permitting , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps most importantly , it involves financing mechanisms .
Remember , a geothermal district heating system or a GSHP is already a better value than their competitors over the lifetime of the system .
They just face the awkward problem that almost all of the costs are stacked upfront , while the benefits accrue over time .
It is the timing of the costs and benefits that poses the challenge .
That is the kind of problem financing mechanisms , which move costs and benefits around in time , can solve .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 1930s to spread the large upfront costs of a house out over decades , thus opening home ownership to millions of Americans .
Dandelion ’ s fledgling financing model , which requires no upfront money from the customer , could do the same thing for GSHPs if it can be scaled ( and attached to the property rather than the owner ) .
The government can help by offering low-interest , long-term loans for low-carbon heating systems , or backing such loans if banks or other private institutions offer them .
Those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risks of exploring for new resources .
“ Iceland addressed this risk in the 1960s with the establishment of a National Energy Fund , which offers loans to fund the initial cost of drilling and exploration , ” says Tester .
“ If the initial drilling stage is unsuccessful , the loan defaults to the state ; if the drilling is successful , the loan will be paid as planned.
” It is the single most powerful policy tool for expanding geothermal in Iceland , he says .
Along with financing , new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ needed .
“ The challenge for the energy transition is that oil and gas companies are unlikely to be operating heat , ” says Brommer .
“ There is a need for smaller intermediary operating companies that understand what it takes to mine heat and can sell it as a service to utility companies .
That ’ s the way forward.
” Such intermediaries could even be owned by local communities , along the lines of the popular “ community solar ” model .
There is plenty of room for innovation around geothermal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in policy and financing .
But the US will need to get serious about the investments , policies , and regulations necessary to scale it up to the necessary size .
A large investment of time , money , and policy attention in geothermal heat could help create jobs in almost every US zip code .
The DOE ’ s comprehensive 2019 Geovisions study found that “ technology improvements could enable more than 17,500 geothermal district-heating installations nationwide , and 28 million U.S. households could realize cost-effective heating and cooling solutions through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of geothermal systems would require over 50 times the number of wells dug by the entire US oil and gas industry — a bonanza of skilled trade jobs .
Geothermal heat could help towns and cities achieve a measure of energy independence , giving them a reliable source of heating and cooling that never changes price and requires no imports .
It could help put retired , laid-off , or just bored oil and gas engineers to work ; Dandelion recently hired Jeremy Smith , a 20-year oil and gas veteran , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But most of all , it could help solve the riddle of how to rapidly decarbonize the heating and cooling of buildings , a problem that has not gotten nearly enough attention and is not exactly awash in solutions .
Geothermal is such a solution , right beneath our feet .
We just need to get digging .

The heat stored in the Earth’s crust, known as geothermal energy, is carbon-free and effectively inexhaustible. There’s enough of it to run all of civilization for generations, if it could be cost-effectively tapped.
Tapping it turns out to be no small feat, but efforts have ramped up recently due to new urgency by the climate crisis and the search for low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels.
The cutting edge technological developments in the field (including, yes, lasers) are devoted to drilling deeper and deeper, into hotter and hotter rock. Heat anywhere from 302°F (150°C) up to 703°F (373°C), where water enters its “supercritical” phase and above, can be used to profitably generate electricity.
But electricity is only half of the geothermal story. Well before humans generated electricity with it, they used geothermal heat directly, to bathe, cook, and heat buildings, among other things. Geothermal direct heat is still used today in industry, agriculture, and for buildings, but only a tiny fraction of its potential has been unlocked.
When it comes to direct use of heat, geothermal resources don’t need to be quite so hot. It doesn’t require 300°F to heat the air in your home to 68°F. Just about anything 50°F or above (which is available just 10 feet down or so) can be used for something, whether drying grain, running a greenhouse, melting ice on airport runways, or heating commercial buildings.
Geothermal heat is accessible almost everywhere and useful in a wide range of applications. The US Department of Energy has a research program devoted to these “low-temperature and co-produced resources.”
But the most important application, in my mind, is the use of low-temperature geothermal resources for large-scale heating and cooling of buildings.
Heating and cooling buildings isn’t as sexy as electricity in the energy world these days, but it is important, representing just over 12 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions and a larger proportion of emissions in cities, many of which have aggressive decarbonization goals. To achieve those goals, they need to figure out carbon-free heating, and geothermal is one of the best (out of very few) options.
In this post, we’ll dive into the other half of geothermal: heat. First we’ll take a look at the market and the need for low-carbon heat. Then we’ll look at the technologies and companies involved, and wrap up by considering how government might help accelerate the development of geothermal solutions.
It’s hot, or at least warm, stuff!
Decarbonization means an improved competitive landscape for geothermal heat
Cities across the world are setting aggressive decarbonization goals, pledging to zero out their direct carbon emissions by 2050. The first three challenges facing a decarbonizing city are electricity supply, transportation, and heating and cooling of buildings. The pathways to decarbonization of electricity and transportation, while extremely challenging, are at least fairly well understood: renewable energy, electric vehicles, and good urban design that minimizes the need for cars.
For most cities, though, heat is a big unanswered question.
Oil and natural gas furnaces will need to be phased out, which means cities will need an extraordinary amount of low-carbon heat to compensate. And low-carbon options are much more limited in heat than in electricity.
Some furnaces can run on biomethane, other biofuels, hydrogen, or hydrogen-derived fuels, but in a mostly electrified world, low-carbon liquid fuels are likely to be used for high-value applications in industry and transportation — not heating your living room.
That leaves geothermal district heating or, at an individual building level, electrical options like electric resistance heating or heat pumps. In heat pumps, it’s either air-source (exchanging heat with the outside air) or ground-source (exchanging heat with the earth). The latter is far more efficient. And geothermal district heating is the most efficient of all.
In a decarbonizing world, it is these — the other low-carbon heating options — that will eventually comprise the competitors in the heating and cooling space. It’s a competition some decarbonizing cities, like Boston, are already grappling with. Boston will have trouble building lots of new electrical infrastructure to heat buildings with electricity, so it is leaning toward geothermal.
So what exactly are the technologies that can provide heat from the Earth? There are two basic categories. Let’s start by looking at the smaller side.
Ground-source heat pumps are the most efficient source of individual building heat
It’s a bit of a fudge to include ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) here, because technically they do not make use of geothermal energy. They make use of stored solar energy, from sunlight striking the Earth’s surface. It’s only when you get much deeper, or in active volcanic areas, where you get into heat from the planet’s core. If you want to be precise, GSHPs harvest solar heat stored in the shallow earth.
I don’t think this terminological issue matters all that much though — it’s heat in the earth!
Anywhere from 10 to 1,000 feet beneath the surface, the temperature is a steady 54°F, year-round, everywhere in the country. GSHPs take advantage of that fact to heat and cool buildings. When the air is colder than 54°F, they draw heat from the earth; when it’s hotter than 54°F, they dump heat into the earth.
A GSHP consists of two parts. The first is the “ground loop” pipe buried beneath the ground with water circulating through it. Via conduction, the water draws heat from (or returns heat to) the earth, so the more pipe surface area there is, the more efficient the system. That’s why there are often several loops of pipe in the overall ground loop. The rule of thumb is one loop equals one ton of capacity, which equals about 12,000 BTU per hour. An average US home will need 2 to 3 tons of capacity, thus two to three loops (or one very deep one).
The second part is the heat pump itself, which sits inside, connected to the ground loop, exchanging heat with the water via a vapor compression refrigerant cycle (not unlike the way your refrigerator exchanges heat with the surrounding air). In the winter, it takes heat out of the circulating water and puts it into the air, thus warming the building; in the summer, it takes heat out of the air and puts it into the water, thus cooling the building.
You can think of a GSHP as two linked heat transfers. Via the ground loop, the water exchanges heat with the earth; via the heat pump, the water exchanges heat with the indoor air.
Because ground temperature is basically the same 10 or 1,000 feet below the ground, somewhat counterintuitively, the depth of the ground loop doesn’t matter much. What matters is the square footage of pipe exposed to earth. Installers use either long horizontal loops or deep vertical loops depending on the project. (Most projects these days are “closed loop,” meaning no fluids are exchanged with the ground, but in the right circumstances, an “open loop” system that works directly with water heated by the earth can work.)
A GSHP is not generating heat, like an oil or gas furnace, but harvesting heat from the ground. The water does not circulate itself, of course; it requires electricity to run a GSHP. But in terms of units of heat out per units of energy in — what they call, in the business, Coefficient of Performance (COP) — it is the single most efficient way to heat a building.
An oil or gas furnace has a COP less than 1; one unit of energy input produces about 0.7 to 0.9 units of heat. Electric resistance heating (baseboard heaters, wall heaters, space heaters) have a COP of 1. Air source heat pumps (ASHPs), which draw heat from the outside air rather than the earth, vary somewhat with the temperature of the air, but generally can reach a COP of 3. GSHPs, depending on the climate, can get to 4, or as high as 6. (They work better in extreme climates, with a high temperature differential between air and earth, than in temperate climates.)
In the best circumstances, GSHPs are 600 percent efficient. Nothing else, except a district heating system serving multiple buildings, can match that efficiency.
GSHPs are an old technology — they first popped up in the US around 1940 — with well known benefits and drawbacks. On the benefits side, the system runs quietly, operating costs are low, maintenance costs are low, there are no indoor pollutant emissions or GHGs, and it lasts a long time. (Heat pumps inside can last 25 years; ground loops can last 50 years or longer.) It is a nice thing indeed to already have a GSHP installed.
Unfortunately, it has also been expensive as hell to install one. They typically run from $20,000 up to $50,000 in upfront costs (quite a bit more than your $1,000 natural gas furnace) and installing them has typically involved extensive drilling and excavation that can last for weeks (quite a bit more than the 1-2 day turnaround for a gas furnace or ASHP). These limitations have made them impractical for most homeowners.
At least at the moment, when it comes to a remodel, it’s a real question whether GSHPs are worth the additional cost over and above ASHPs, which have improved enough to work in almost any climate. If an ASHP isn’t enough for a given building, it’s generally cheaper to reduce heating needs through insulation and efficiency than it is to buy a bigger system.
For new builds, though, “geothermal is a no brainer,” says Adam Santry, the president of Allied Well Drilling. “You don’t need any [tax] credits. Rolling [a GSHP] into your mortgage, you are cash flow positive that first month.” The savings on heat are greater than the loan payment on the GSHP, right off the jump.
“Yes, there’s an upfront cost,” says Alan Skouby, a 40-year veteran of the industry now with GeoPro, Inc. “But it will pay for itself in relatively short order, and once it’s paid for, it’s a money printer.”
GSHPs face a problem that all sorts of clean-energy technologies early in their cost and development curves have encountered: Though they pay off in the long run, the substantial upfront investment often deters customers. The two key strategies for growth, then, are reducing those upfront costs and spreading them out over time through clever financing.
One new company is currently attempting to do both, focusing on the residential market.
Dandelion is trying to make ground-source heat pumps easy
The secretive X Lab at Alphabet (Google’s parent company) has been working away on clean energy problems, spinning off companies as it goes. One of them, formed in 2018, is called Dandelion, and it is directly attacking the problems that have held GSHPs back.
Dandelion’s team “didn’t grow up in this industry, they grew up in the solar industry,” says Skouby. “They’re coming to all of this with a fresh perspective.”
Typically an HVAC contractor can install a furnace or an ASHP themselves, harvesting all the profits and tax credits. For a GSHP job, they have to find a drilling subcontractor and split the profits — more hassle for less money. They also frequently have furnaces in stock that they need to move, and might need to special order a GSHP. The incentives don’t line up.
One of Dandelion’s key moves has been to vertically integrate, to pull all those links in the supply chain into one organization. The people who find customers, assess properties, drill ground loops, and install heat pumps all work for Dandelion, so they can coordinate efficiently.
Vertical integration also means Dandelion can order custom-built, high-quality equipment. “Because they’ve got a game plan to reach much bigger scale,” Skouby says, “they can leverage that and buy down cost. Nobody else has been willing to do that.”
For instance, the company designed its own heat pump. “We looked at what was taking installers a lot of time,” says Kathy Hannun, Dandelion’s founder and president, “and every time, there was an opportunity to take those things and just build them into the heat pump.” There’s less on-site assembly required and it has a smaller form factor than comparable heat pumps. It is also covered in sensors, which provide real-time information on how it performs in the field, something the industry has lacked. It’s also cheaper than its competitors.
The company has ordered purpose-built drills, smaller than typical geothermal drills and able to fit into tighter spaces. Similarly, they have optimized piping, grouting, and other components. The strategy is more like a solar startup’s: Invest big early on to drive down costs and begin scaling up; trust that scale will pay back the investment.
Drilling vertical ground loops — 4 to 6-inch holes around 500 feet deep — Dandelion has substantially cut down on the time and disruption of installation, from weeks or months to one week. The company has got the upfront, delivered cost of a system down to $18,000 from $25,000.
Just as importantly, it has devised a financing model to overcome the upfront cost barrier. It loans the cost of the system to customers, who pay nothing upfront. Instead, they repay the loan at a fixed monthly rate that is lower than their previous heating and cooling costs. They save money from day one.
“They’re targeting the type of customer our industry needs,” says Santry, “medium- to lower-income people that this was not available to.”
The loans are still attached to the homeowner, though. What the industry needs, says Hannun, is a model like rooftop solar’s, with “third-party ownership models where, if you’re a homeowner and you don’t plan on living in your house forever, you can put no money down — just buy solar power, essentially, instead of buying normal electricity.” This kind of “solar as a service” model could work just as well with “heat as a service.”
Dandelion is taking off in New York, where some localities like Westchester County have banned gas in new buildings, and there are millions of people heating with expensive propane and fuel oil furnaces (against which a GSHP will pay itself off in five years). “When they see that they can get renewable energy for less than they’re paying for fuel oil,” says Hannun, “it’s very compelling.” The company recently expanded to Connecticut.
“I think they’re going to be successful, because the scope they’re projecting is attracting a lot of utility types that have the financial wherewithal to help drive what they’re doing,” says Skouby, “or get behind them on an exclusivity arrangement, which they wouldn’t be willing to do with a local contractor.”
New York also has substantial incentives for low-carbon heat, which will likely be needed anywhere GSHPs must compete with natural gas. But the company is learning as it goes and sees plenty of room to bring down costs “across the board,” says Hannun. And of course, in a carbon-constrained world, natural gas will be fazed out.
So that’s the smaller geothermal heat technology. Now let’s look at the bigger stuff.
Low-temperature geothermal can heat multiple buildings for cheap
In my previous post on geothermal, I described how a traditional geothermal system works. One well, the production well, taps into hot water trapped in underground aquifers; the water comes up, the heat is extracted, and the water is cooled and returned to the earth via a second well, the injection well.
To access the high heats needed to generate electricity, such systems typically must be sited in specialized (and relatively rare) areas near volcanic activity, where there is extremely hot water trapped in porous rock underground.
But saline aquifers containing warm water — not hot enough for electricity, but plenty hot enough for direct heat — are practically ubiquitous, in the US and elsewhere.
Geothermal systems that tap into warm (sub-300°F) water can be used as a source of heat for a district heating system, i.e., a single connected system of hot water loops that heats multiple buildings.
District heating found one of its very first expressions in the US — Boise, Idaho, has used geothermal to heat buildings since 1890 and heats its downtown with it to this day — but it is far more popular and advanced in Europe, especially Iceland (though China is, in this as in all things, scaling up quickly). Paris, Munich, and Reykjavik are all known for their extensive district heating systems.
In the US, district heating has never quite caught on, but it is a frequent feature of college campuses. As part of its decarbonization goals, Princeton University is shifting from a natural gas steam system to geothermal. The Oregon Institute of Technology, Carleton College in Minnesota, and Ball State University in Indiana (among others) already heat with geothermal district heat.
Once the upfront capital costs are paid off, geothermal district heat is dirt cheap, for decades or even centuries. (The world’s oldest working geothermal district heating system, in Chaudes-Aigues, France, has been going since the 14th century.) But the upfront costs remain daunting.
There are some new technological developments in the space. The Department of Energy is studying deep direct use (DDU) geothermal systems, which go deeper to find suitably warm temperatures in almost any geography and use them as large-scale heating sources for campuses, military installations, hospital complexes, or residential developments. “Large-scale, fully integrated DDU geothermal systems have not been realized in the United States,” the DOE writes, “although efforts of this type are increasingly popular in Europe and elsewhere.”
Some of these DDU efforts are using “closed loop” systems (not unlike GSHPs) that don’t exchange fluids with the earth at all, thus eliminating any possibility of groundwater pollution. The Canadian company Eavor (covered in my previous post) is working on closed-loop systems that can, in addition to going deep for electricity-level heat, be used for lower-temperature systems that harvest heat for buildings.
Some DDU systems, if they tap high enough heat, can “co-produce” electricity and heat, thus blurring the line with geothermal power systems.
The fact is, though, when it comes to shallow saline aquifers, the oil and gas industry already knows its way around. “The low hanging fruit [for geothermal heat] is our sedimentary basins, between two and three kilometers depth,” says Marit Brommer, who runs the International Geothermal Association but started out her career as an oil and gas engineer, “and they have been mapped extensively because of our oil and gas runs. We know their temperatures extremely well — and we found more water than oil in those reservoirs, by the way.”
“We have a lot better tools now [than in previous decades] — better drilling technology, much better geophysical logging capability, better seismic reflection imaging,” says Jeff Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems and principal scientist for Cornell University’s Earth Source Heat project. “We know so much more about how to find permeability and fluids in the rock.” Drilling at that depth, avoiding pollution or seismic disruption, is something oil and gas has been working on for decades.
Geothermal district heating is a no-brainer for anyone building new housing developments, campuses, or industrial clusters. It represents low, stable heating costs (rather than the fluctuating costs of oil and gas) for generations.
Forward-thinking cities like Munich (which is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 2030) have begun to think of geothermal loops as part of city infrastructure, to be installed and maintained alongside water and sewer lines, so that any new building or development can simply connect to the main line through a utility, like other basic services.
The larger such a system grows, the more its unit costs fall. And it’s a local resource that generates local jobs; it is not dependent on imports or global markets. It gives cities some measure of independence.
Again, the barrier is the upfront costs. A decent-sized geothermal district heating can run $25 million, says Brommer, and though, “on average, it takes you about a quarter of your life cycle in order to get rid of your [debt] burdens,” the capital costs are often enough to scare off developers and municipalities.
Costs will come down with scale and knowledge-sharing. “What we need is multiple companies who work in multiple countries in similar subservice settings, that understand the drilling requirements and the service needs,” Brommer says, “meaning that the lessons learned in country one can be applied to reduce costs in countries two, three, and four.”
But that kind of learning requires growth. Just as with GSHPs, the trick is finding tools to bring down upfront costs and spread them out over time.
Geothermal costs more upfront, but less overall. Government could help with that.
Accelerating the development of geothermal electricity is mostly about technology research and demonstration, but when it comes to geothermal heat — both GSHPs and larger solutions like DDU — the primary need is for the kind of public policy pull that draws demonstrated technologies into a broader market.
That means incentives like grants, tax credits, or feed-in tariffs (heating tariffs, in this case) to bring down the upfront costs. At the city or county level, it means regulatory reform to reduce the costs of permitting, siting, and constructing systems. But perhaps most importantly, it involves financing mechanisms.
Remember, a geothermal district heating system or a GSHP is already a better value than their competitors over the lifetime of the system. They just face the awkward problem that almost all of the costs are stacked upfront, while the benefits accrue over time. It is the timing of the costs and benefits that poses the challenge.
That is the kind of problem financing mechanisms, which move costs and benefits around in time, can solve. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage was invented in the 1930s to spread the large upfront costs of a house out over decades, thus opening home ownership to millions of Americans. Dandelion’s fledgling financing model, which requires no upfront money from the customer, could do the same thing for GSHPs if it can be scaled (and attached to the property rather than the owner).
The government can help by offering low-interest, long-term loans for low-carbon heating systems, or backing such loans if banks or other private institutions offer them. Those loans can help soften the substantial front-end risks of exploring for new resources.
“Iceland addressed this risk in the 1960s with the establishment of a National Energy Fund, which offers loans to fund the initial cost of drilling and exploration,” says Tester. “If the initial drilling stage is unsuccessful, the loan defaults to the state; if the drilling is successful, the loan will be paid as planned.” It is the single most powerful policy tool for expanding geothermal in Iceland, he says.
Along with financing, new models of ownership and service delivery are needed. “The challenge for the energy transition is that oil and gas companies are unlikely to be operating heat,” says Brommer. “There is a need for smaller intermediary operating companies that understand what it takes to mine heat and can sell it as a service to utility companies. That’s the way forward.” Such intermediaries could even be owned by local communities, along the lines of the popular “community solar” model.
There is plenty of room for innovation around geothermal heat — in technology, but especially in policy and financing. But the US will need to get serious about the investments, policies, and regulations necessary to scale it up to the necessary size.
A large investment of time, money, and policy attention in geothermal heat could help create jobs in almost every US zip code. The DOE’s comprehensive 2019 Geovisions study found that “technology improvements could enable more than 17,500 geothermal district-heating installations nationwide, and 28 million U.S. households could realize cost-effective heating and cooling solutions through the use of geothermal heat pumps.” That number of geothermal systems would require over 50 times the number of wells dug by the entire US oil and gas industry — a bonanza of skilled trade jobs.
Geothermal heat could help towns and cities achieve a measure of energy independence, giving them a reliable source of heating and cooling that never changes price and requires no imports. It could help put retired, laid-off, or just bored oil and gas engineers to work; Dandelion recently hired Jeremy Smith, a 20-year oil and gas veteran, as their new VP of drilling.
But most of all, it could help solve the riddle of how to rapidly decarbonize the heating and cooling of buildings, a problem that has not gotten nearly enough attention and is not exactly awash in solutions. Geothermal is such a solution, right beneath our feet. We just need to get digging.


vox--2020-11-13--Fox News’s election fraud pandering may be its most dangerous lie yet

President Trump is acting badly .
He is being supported by enablers in his government , and by allies who fear him and/or want to take advantage of him .
And he ’ s being supported by Rupert Murdoch ’ s Fox News .
So what else is new ?
The stakes .
There ’ s a very small chance that Trump could actually disrupt a peaceful transfer of power with his baseless claims of election fraud .
He will , more likely , permanently damage America ’ s ability to hold elections by undermining much of the country ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s time for Fox to dispense with its bad-faith , bifurcated approach to the truth it has used for years , which allows its most popular stars to peddle lies to its audience , under the guise that they ’ re merely offering their opinions .
That won ’ t happen , of course .
Fox ’ s well-documented symbiosis with Trump , where its top talent — Sean Hannity , Tucker Carlson , Laura Ingraham , the Fox and Friends crew — act as Trump ’ s on- and off-air advisers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as Trump floats a trial balloon that he ’ ll ditch Fox and take his audience to a much smaller media operation , like Newsmax , or start his own “ rival ” network , his complaints on Twitter are about Fox ’ s news operation , not his TV pals . )
Murdoch , who enjoys conservative politics but truly loves power , has an endgame in mind : By mid-January , Joe Biden will be president , and Fox News will be the disloyal opposition , a position where it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now is a warm-up act .
In one part of the Fox universe , Trump and his team are making as-of-yet-unfounded allegations of election fraud — or Trump and his team are fighting election fraud , but everyone else is against them , and it may not work out .
Either way , we ’ ll get to the same point next year , where Fox News is very comfortable attacking the Democratic president — who some viewers will believe doesn ’ t have the right to be in office .
As NPR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our chat this week on Recode Media , that ’ s a trope Fox News has used since its founding in 1996 .
It pushed the message that Barack Obama was ( supposedly ) an illegitimate president because he ( supposedly ) wasn ’ t born in the United States ( not coincidentally , the main proponent behind this theory was ... Donald Trump ) .
But in Foxland , Bill Clinton was also an illegitimate president — because he won his election with the help of Ross Perot , who ran as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that should have gone to George H.W .
Bush .
So maybe Trump really will stop showing up on Fox and praising its talent on Twitter .
Maybe he really will head to a would-be-rival TV network with minuscule ratings , or try to launch his own online service .
Most likely , I think , he ’ ll end up as a recurring guest on Fox News , where he can keep doing what he does best — rant daily , without having to do anything else — and Murdoch can keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Either way , when Trump leaves the White House , Fox News will spend the next four years laying into his successor .
But in the meantime , Murdoch is once again trying to have it both ways : His news operation — the one Trump tweets angrily about — has told its viewers that Trump lost the election , and that his complaints about voter fraud are made-up .
But in the morning , and at night , it ’ s a different story .
• Last Friday , for instance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chair Ronna McDaniel for a segment in which they both suggested that voter fraud was quite plausible .
That was not a coincidence : According to a GOP memo Folkenflik viewed , the two sides worked out with “ great specificity the intended flow of the show ’ s lengthy opening segment — including its guests , articles and subjects — and the primary points Hannity would make.
” • On Tuesday night , Ingraham hosted someone who said they were a poll worker in Nevada ( her guest ’ s face and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have seen some kind of Biden-Harris ballot chicanery .
• And on Wednesday night , Carlson explained that the mainstream media is refusing to look into plausible vote fraud allegations ( Trump ’ s campaign tweeted this one out ; Trump retweeted it ) : Hannity , Carlson , and Ingraham do their own version of the Fox News two-step : They don ’ t come out and say outright that Trump is a victim of massive voter fraud that cost him the election while simultaneously defeating Democratic House and Senate candidates .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ plausible .
They feed the fire with oxygen .
Fox isn ’ t the only one playing this game .
Much of the Republican Party , from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on down , engages in a similar version : Either flat-out suggest that Trump ’ s claims are legitimate , or at least argue that he should be able to make those claims , and then see what happens .
It ’ s easy for anyone who wants to look to see what ’ s really happening .
There ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the likes of the New York Times , which ran “ Election Officials Nationwide Find No Fraud ” as its banner print headline on Wednesday .
Republicans are eager to tell reporters the same thing , but won ’ t attach their names to their statements .
On background , they announce that they ’ re simply humoring Trump , or treating him , toddler-like , as someone who needs to be gently prodded into accepting his loss .
Some Republicans are telling CNN ’ s Jake Tapper that this is “ all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process emotionally.
” Or , alternately , they say that Trump is in on the joke : A “ top White House aide ” tells NBC ’ s Peter Alexander that Trump realizes his claims are “ theater.
” This is all par for the course for the last four years , and beyond : If you consume a steady diet of Fox News and nothing but , you see the world very differently than the rest of us , even when it comes to life-and-death issues like the Covid-19 pandemic .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you like more : A study this spring concluded that Fox viewers who watched more of Hannity , who consistently downplayed the coronavirus in the spring , were more likely to contract Covid-19 than Fox viewers who watched more of Carlson , who was the rare Fox opinion host who warned viewers about the pandemic early on . )
And maybe this is the time we ’ ll get lucky , and the viewers of the country ’ s most popular news channel will eventually come around to the idea that Joe Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this week , at least 80 percent of the country — and 60 percent of Republicans — say Biden won , per a Reuters/Ipsos poll .
On the other hand : Four years ago , just weeks after the presidential election , a 28-year-old man with a semi-automatic assault rifle walked into a pizza place and fired his gun because he was trying to “ shine some light ” on claims that Democrats ran a pedophile ring .
At the time , “ Pizzagate ” was a dark conspiracy that lived mostly online @ @ @ @ @ @ @ segments on Hillary Clinton ’ s link to sex traffickers .
( It hasn ’ t gone away , either : Pizzagate has now merged with QAnon , an all-encompassing conspiracy theory that is just as extreme , but has become mainstream enough that it is sending adherents to Congress . )
Now , Fox News is dancing with a conspiracy theory that could be equally upsetting to an angry , suggestible audience .
The best case scenario is that Fox merely convinces its audience that voting is rigged , and against them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just watch Fox , seething .
But that ’ s a terrible range of outcomes .
We shouldn ’ t expect better from Fox ’ s leaders .
But we should definitely ask them to do better .

President Trump is acting badly. He is being supported by enablers in his government and by allies who fear him and/or want to take advantage of him. And he’s being supported by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.
So what else is new?
The stakes. There’s a very small chance that Trump could actually disrupt a peaceful transfer of power with his baseless claims of election fraud. He will, more likely, permanently damage America’s ability to hold elections by undermining much of the country’s faith in them.
It’s time for Fox to dispense with the bad-faith, bifurcated approach to the truth it has used for years, which allows its most popular stars to peddle lies to its audience under the guise that they’re merely offering their opinions.
That won’t happen, of course.
That’s in part because of Fox’s well-documented symbiosis with Trump, where its top talent — Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, the Fox & Friends crew — act as Trump’s on- and off-air advisers and cheering squad. (Even this week, as Trump floats a trial balloon that he’ll ditch Fox and take his audience to a much smaller media operation, like Newsmax, or start his own “rival” network, his complaints on Twitter are about Fox’s news operation, not his TV pals.)
And it’s in part because Murdoch, who enjoys conservative politics but truly loves power, has an endgame in mind: By mid-January, Joe Biden will be president, and Fox News will be the disloyal opposition, a position where it thrives.
What we’re seeing now is a warmup act. In one part of the Fox universe, Trump and his team are making as-yet-unfounded allegations of election fraud — or Trump and his team are fighting election fraud but everyone else is against them and it may not work out.
Either way, we’ll get to the same point next year, where Fox News is very comfortable attacking the Democratic president — who some viewers will believe doesn’t have the right to be in office.
As NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reminded me in our chat this week on Recode Media, that’s a trope Fox News has used since its founding in 1996. It pushed the message that Barack Obama was (supposedly) an illegitimate president because he (supposedly) wasn’t born in the United States (not coincidentally, the main proponent behind this theory was ... Donald Trump).
But in Foxland, Bill Clinton was also an illegitimate president — because he won his election with the help of Ross Perot, who ran as a third-party candidate and drew away votes that should have gone to George H.W. Bush.
So maybe Trump really will stop showing up on Fox and praising its talent on Twitter. Maybe he really will head to a would-be-rival TV network with minuscule ratings, or try to launch his own online service. Most likely, I think, he’ll end up as a recurring guest on Fox News, where he can keep doing what he does best — rant daily, without having to do anything else — and Murdoch can keep Trump’s fans on his network. Either way, when Trump leaves the White House, Fox News will spend the next four years laying into his successor.
But in the meantime, Murdoch is once again trying to have it both ways: His news operation — the one Trump tweets angrily about — has told its viewers that Trump lost the election and that his complaints about voter fraud are made up. But in the morning, and at night, it’s a different story.
Last Friday, for instance, Hannity brought on Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel for a segment in which they both suggested that voter fraud was quite plausible. That was not a coincidence: According to a GOP memo Folkenflik viewed, the two sides worked out with “great specificity the intended flow of the show’s lengthy opening segment — including its guests, articles and subjects — and the primary points Hannity would make.”
On Tuesday night, Ingraham hosted someone who said they were a poll worker in Nevada (her guest’s face and voice were disguised) who claimed to have seen some kind of Biden-Harris ballot chicanery.
This is where we're at right now.
Laura Ingraham brings on an unidentified "whistleblower" -- with hidden face and altered voice -- to claim that folks literally from a Biden-Harris bus were altering ballots in Nevada. pic.twitter.com/b8xGe8KXSb — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) November 11, 2020
And on Wednesday night, Carlson explained that the mainstream media is refusing to look into plausible vote fraud allegations (Trump’s campaign tweeted this one out; Trump retweeted it):
The liberal media says voter fraud doesn't happen. They're lying.
Someone used the identities of dead people to vote in the presidential election. Here's the proof. pic.twitter.com/iFLWvfUvIE — Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) November 12, 2020
Hannity, Carlson, and Ingraham do their own version of the Fox News two-step: They don’t come out and say outright that Trump is a victim of massive voter fraud that cost him the election while simultaneously defeating Democratic House and Senate candidates. But they argue that it’s plausible. They feed the fire with oxygen.
Fox isn’t the only one playing this game. Much of the Republican Party, from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on down, engages in a similar version: either flat-out suggesting that Trump’s claims are legitimate or at least arguing that he should be able to make those claims and then see what happens.
It’s easy for anyone who wants to look to see what’s really happening. There’s the objective truth — hammered away at by the likes of the New York Times, which ran “Election Officials Nationwide Find No Fraud” as its banner print headline on Wednesday.
Republicans are eager to tell reporters the same thing but won’t attach their names to their statements. On background, they announce that they’re simply humoring Trump, or treating him, toddler-like, as someone who needs to be gently prodded into accepting his loss. Some Republicans are telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that this is “all part of walking President Trump through this process emotionally.” Or they say that Trump is in on the joke: A “top White House aide” tells NBC’s Peter Alexander that Trump realizes his claims are “theater.”
This is all par for the course for the past four years, and beyond: If you consume a steady diet of Fox News and nothing but, you see the world very differently than the rest of America, even when it comes to life-and-death issues like the Covid-19 pandemic. (It may also matter which Fox host you like more: A study this spring concluded that Fox viewers who watched more of Hannity, who consistently downplayed the coronavirus in the spring, were more likely to contract Covid-19 than Fox viewers who watched more of Carlson, who was the rare Fox opinion host who warned viewers about the pandemic early on.)
And maybe this is the time we’ll get lucky, and the viewers of the country’s most popular news channel will eventually come around to the idea that Joe Biden is a legitimate president. As of this week, at least 80 percent of the country — and 60 percent of Republicans — say Biden won, per a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
On the other hand: Four years ago, just weeks after the presidential election, a 28-year-old man with a semiautomatic assault rifle walked into a pizza place and fired his gun because he was trying to “shine some light” on claims that Democrats ran a pedophile ring. At the time, “Pizzagate” was a dark conspiracy that lived mostly online; Tucker Carlson wasn’t doing segments on Hillary Clinton’s link to sex traffickers. (It hasn’t gone away, either: Pizzagate has now merged with QAnon, an all-encompassing conspiracy theory that is just as extreme but has become mainstream enough that it is sending adherents to Congress.)
Now Fox News is dancing with a conspiracy theory that could be equally upsetting to an angry, suggestible audience. The best-case scenario is that Fox merely convinces its audience that voting is rigged against them. And its viewers are content to just watch Fox, seething.
But that’s a terrible range of outcomes. We shouldn’t expect better from Fox’s leaders. But we should definitely ask them to do better.


vox--2020-11-13--Democrats are already at odds over how to win in 2022

House Democrats didn ’ t fare as well in the 2020 election as they expected , and the blame game has started .
To moderate members like Reps. Abigail Spanberger ( D-VA ) and Conor Lamb ( D-PA ) , the problem is clear : members of their own party .
Both have said Democrats need to put distance between themselves and left-wing activists .
But to more progressive Democrats , that ’ s scapegoating for broader failures .
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ( D-NY ) and others argue the party ’ s organizing efforts largely failed in 2020 and have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It could take months to know exactly what went wrong in 2020 , but in some ways , both could be right , Cook Political Report House editor Dave Wasserman told Vox .
Democrats ’ messaging wasn ’ t always effective , and it ’ s likely that structural issues — like the party ’ s lack of in-person organizing brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic — also played a role .
“ The Republican message against House Democrats was primarily on law and order and policing , and in most races @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that attack , ” Wasserman said .
“ Democrats effectively let themselves be branded as a down-ballot party by the most prominent figures down [ the ] ballot.
” To be clear , Democrats will have control of the US House of Representatives in the next Congress , albeit with a much slimmer majority than in the current session .
So far , seven moderate Democratic members lost their seats , compared to Democrats flipping just one Republican-held seat ( plus two open seats ) .
But those losses — and the disconnect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Democrats would expand their ranks — have been enough to start dissolving the party ’ s united front against President Donald Trump .
There ’ s a genuine dispute among congressional Democrats about the party ’ s larger vision .
Democrats still hold the gavel , but Republican competitiveness suggests the 2022 midterms could be even more hard fought .
California Rep. Tony Cárdenas , who ’ s running for chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee , told Vox in a recent interview he ’ s willing to listen to moderates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is competing with Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney , who represents an upstate New York district , for the DCCC slot .
“ At the end of the day , Alexandria [ is ] part of what makes this the majority , ” Cárdenas told Vox .
“ Conor , he ’ s part of what makes this the majority.
” The aftermath of congressional elections laid bare an intraparty debate that ’ s been simmering for a while .
Moderate Democrats like Spanberger and Lamb were clear that they think Republican attack ads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s most left-wing positions were particularly damaging to frontline members — and could be Democrats ’ downfall in 2022 .
Progressives have gotten a foothold in the party on issues such as climate and racial justice .
But even if their goal is trying to move the Overton window on the party ’ s big-picture goals through activism and organizing , members like Spanberger think ideas like defunding police departments and a Green New Deal are politically toxic .
“ Tuesday , from a Congressional standpoint , was a failure — it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a leaked Democratic caucus call last week , adding that the main concern she heard from her constituents was about defunding the police .
“ If we want to talk about funding social services and ensuring good engagement and community policing , let ’ s talk about what we are for , ” Spanberger said during the call .
“ And we need to not ever use the words ‘ socialist ’ or ‘ socialism ’ ever again .
... We lost good members because of that.
” Lamb echoed similar sentiments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , saying Democrats needed to eschew left-wing priorities and focus on commonsense issues such as lowering prescription drug prices , preserving Social Security and Medicare , and protecting jobs — even if those jobs are fracking for natural gas in places like western Pennsylvania .
“ People want to know , ‘ What are you going to do for me ?
’ ” Lamb told Vox .
“ The message I gave directly to some of vice president [ Biden ’ s ] top advisers is , you have to understand that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job like a natural gas job .
Don ’ t tell us about green energy jobs that are abstract ; they ’ re just not here , and they haven ’ t been here for a long time.
” Liberal members , meanwhile , have cautioned not to give up ideas that energize the party ’ s younger and more diverse base .
While conceding those ideas aren ’ t popular in every part of the country , they also point to Democratic wins in places like Georgia , Michigan , and Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Black turnout in urban and suburban areas .
The message from House liberals is that the Democratic Party needs to beef up its organizing because ultimately , there is no platform that will be “ safe ” from right-wing attacks .
“ I think one of the things that is very important is to realize that very effective Republican attacks are going to happen every cycle , ” Ocasio-Cortez said in a recent CNN interview .
“ Not a single member of Congress that I ’ m aware of campaigned on socialism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election .
The question is how can we build a more effective Democratic operation that is stronger and more resilient to Republican attacks.
” Maurice Mitchell , national director of the Working Families Party , a progressive grassroots group , told Vox that Republicans attacking Democrats as socialists is nothing new .
He also pointed to progressives who were successful in tough districts , such as Rep. Katie Porter ( D-CA ) , who supports Medicare-for-all and won a second term in a previously red Orange County district .
Progressives like Porter are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authentic to them , ” Mitchell told Vox , primarily talking about how to help working people .
“ Republicans have now for a generation reliably labeled them socialists , so we shouldn ’ t be shocked when they do that , ” Mitchell said .
“ The Democrats should have a sober postmortem that doesn ’ t have people reliably go to their ideological corners .
If Democrats spend too much time fighting each other or navel-gazing , they may lose too much focus on working people.
” The fight over ideology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ working on House races admitted they ’ d misread the mood of 2020 .
The 2018 midterms were certainly a wave year for Democrats , but hopes that the wave would continue unabated in 2020 were dashed .
Democrats may have convinced their new base of suburban voters to show up in 2018 , but they underestimated Trump ’ s appeal to his base .
Public and private polling data alike suggested congressional Democrats were leading the generic national ballot by 7 percentage points going into Election Day .
As of now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in actual election results , according to RealClearPolitics , compared to a 3-point lead for President-elect Joe Biden .
2020 had many differences from previous elections , as Wasserman explained .
First , both parties increased their turnout exponentially — this year ’ s election had the highest voter turnout since 1908 .
There may have been a blue wave at the top of the ticket for Biden , but there was also a red wave for Trump .
Second , Trump-averse independent voters in some districts split their tickets to cast their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate races — especially if they wanted a legislative check on a new Democratic president .
Third , Democratic weaknesses with Latino voters in states like Florida and Texas were apparent in both the presidential and congressional races .
As Vox ’ s Nicole Narea recently wrote , while most Latinos voted for Biden and the Democrats , Trump also improved with the demographic in key areas .
Florida ’ s 26th Congressional District , which encompasses part of Miami-Dade County , swung from voting for Hillary Clinton by 16 points in 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2020 .
And even though Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell , who represents that district , ran ahead of Biden , it wasn ’ t enough for her to win reelection .
Cárdenas said Democrats need to rethink how they can appeal to Latino voters and recognize it as a truly diverse group .
“ It ’ s a mistake for anyone to think the Latino community is monolithic , it ’ s not whatsoever , ” he told Vox .
“ It ’ s really important people understand at the DCCC , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eclectic and more competent than ever before.
” Some , including Ocasio-Cortez and the more moderate former Rep. Beto O ’ Rourke ( D-TX ) , argued the party simply didn ’ t put enough resources , including digital organizing and strategizing tools , into Latino communities and other communities of color around the country .
O ’ Rourke recently wrote a memo stating that Republicans in Texas continuing to hold in-person campaign events throughout the Covid-19 pandemic , among other factors , hobbled Democratic efforts .
“ The fact that the border @ @ @ @ @ @ @ El Paso , has been ignored for years by the national party , and even many statewide Democratic candidates , hurt us badly , ” O ’ Rourke wrote .
“ The failure to invest in year-round canvassing — so that voters don ’ t just hear from us during an election — also made it harder for us to move voters at the end.
” Political science research backs up what O ’ Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez have said : The Democratic Party has traditionally been lackluster in year-round organizing efforts compared with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historically always lagged behind the Republican Party in terms of building up its organizational capacities , ” Northwestern University political science professor Daniel Galvin told Vox .
“ This is a recurring problem for the Democratic Party , and as everyone ’ s trying to figure out a way forward , we ’ re trying to point out the importance of building the base.
” That base doesn ’ t always has to be left wing , Galvin added .
But the party must be active and responsive to voters all around the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organize itself , ” he said .
“ It takes work , and it takes people to be devoted to the purpose , building strong local organizations and networks .
”

House Democrats didn’t fare as well in the 2020 election as they expected, and the blame game has started.
To moderate members like Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Conor Lamb (D-PA), the problem is clear: members of their own party. Both have said Democrats need to put distance between themselves and left-wing activists. But to more progressive Democrats, that’s scapegoating for broader failures. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others argue the party’s organizing efforts largely failed in 2020 and have urged leaders to not ignore its base.
It could take months to know exactly what went wrong in 2020, but in some ways, both could be right, Cook Political Report House editor Dave Wasserman told Vox. Democrats’ messaging wasn’t always effective, and it’s likely that structural issues — like the party’s lack of in-person organizing brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic — also played a role.
“The Republican message against House Democrats was primarily on law and order and policing, and in most races, Democrats really did nothing to blunt that attack,” Wasserman said. “Democrats effectively let themselves be branded as a down-ballot party by the most prominent figures down [the] ballot.”
To be clear, Democrats will have control of the US House of Representatives in the next Congress, albeit with a much slimmer majority than in the current session. So far, seven moderate Democratic members lost their seats, compared to Democrats flipping just one Republican-held seat (plus two open seats).
But those losses — and the disconnect between them and the nonpartisan preelection prognostications that Democrats would expand their ranks — have been enough to start dissolving the party’s united front against President Donald Trump. There’s a genuine dispute among congressional Democrats about the party’s larger vision.
Democrats still hold the gavel, but Republican competitiveness suggests the 2022 midterms could be even more hard fought.
California Rep. Tony Cárdenas, who’s running for chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Vox in a recent interview he’s willing to listen to moderates and liberals alike going forward. Cárdenas is competing with Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who represents an upstate New York district, for the DCCC slot.
“At the end of the day, Alexandria [is] part of what makes this the majority,” Cárdenas told Vox. “Conor, he’s part of what makes this the majority.”
Democrats are divided on ideology
The aftermath of congressional elections laid bare an intraparty debate that’s been simmering for a while.
Moderate Democrats like Spanberger and Lamb were clear that they think Republican attack ads tying centrist members to the party’s most left-wing positions were particularly damaging to frontline members — and could be Democrats’ downfall in 2022.
Progressives have gotten a foothold in the party on issues such as climate and racial justice. But even if their goal is trying to move the Overton window on the party’s big-picture goals through activism and organizing, members like Spanberger think ideas like defunding police departments and a Green New Deal are politically toxic.
“Tuesday, from a Congressional standpoint, was a failure — it was not a success,” Spanberger said on a leaked Democratic caucus call last week, adding that the main concern she heard from her constituents was about defunding the police.
“If we want to talk about funding social services and ensuring good engagement and community policing, let’s talk about what we are for,” Spanberger said during the call. “And we need to not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. ... We lost good members because of that.”
Lamb echoed similar sentiments in an interview with Vox earlier this year, saying Democrats needed to eschew left-wing priorities and focus on commonsense issues such as lowering prescription drug prices, preserving Social Security and Medicare, and protecting jobs — even if those jobs are fracking for natural gas in places like western Pennsylvania.
“People want to know, ‘What are you going to do for me?’” Lamb told Vox. “The message I gave directly to some of vice president [Biden’s] top advisers is, you have to understand that nothing has replaced a coal or steel job like a natural gas job. Don’t tell us about green energy jobs that are abstract; they’re just not here, and they haven’t been here for a long time.”
Liberal members, meanwhile, have cautioned not to give up ideas that energize the party’s younger and more diverse base. While conceding those ideas aren’t popular in every part of the country, they also point to Democratic wins in places like Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2020 — wins that were driven by Black turnout in urban and suburban areas.
The message from House liberals is that the Democratic Party needs to beef up its organizing because ultimately, there is no platform that will be “safe” from right-wing attacks.
“I think one of the things that is very important is to realize that very effective Republican attacks are going to happen every cycle,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a recent CNN interview. “Not a single member of Congress that I’m aware of campaigned on socialism or defunding the police in this general election. The question is how can we build a more effective Democratic operation that is stronger and more resilient to Republican attacks.”
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, a progressive grassroots group, told Vox that Republicans attacking Democrats as socialists is nothing new. He also pointed to progressives who were successful in tough districts, such as Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), who supports Medicare-for-all and won a second term in a previously red Orange County district. Progressives like Porter are “leading in authentic ways that are authentic to them,” Mitchell told Vox, primarily talking about how to help working people.
“Republicans have now for a generation reliably labeled them socialists, so we shouldn’t be shocked when they do that,” Mitchell said. “The Democrats should have a sober postmortem that doesn’t have people reliably go to their ideological corners. If Democrats spend too much time fighting each other or navel-gazing, they may lose too much focus on working people.”
The fight over ideology isn’t the whole picture
Democrats working on House races admitted they’d misread the mood of 2020. The 2018 midterms were certainly a wave year for Democrats, but hopes that the wave would continue unabated in 2020 were dashed.
Democrats may have convinced their new base of suburban voters to show up in 2018, but they underestimated Trump’s appeal to his base.
Public and private polling data alike suggested congressional Democrats were leading the generic national ballot by 7 percentage points going into Election Day. As of now, they’re leading by 1.3 points in actual election results, according to RealClearPolitics, compared to a 3-point lead for President-elect Joe Biden.
2020 had many differences from previous elections, as Wasserman explained. First, both parties increased their turnout exponentially — this year’s election had the highest voter turnout since 1908. There may have been a blue wave at the top of the ticket for Biden, but there was also a red wave for Trump.
Second, Trump-averse independent voters in some districts split their tickets to cast their ballot for Republican candidates in House and Senate races — especially if they wanted a legislative check on a new Democratic president. Third, Democratic weaknesses with Latino voters in states like Florida and Texas were apparent in both the presidential and congressional races.
As Vox’s Nicole Narea recently wrote, while most Latinos voted for Biden and the Democrats, Trump also improved with the demographic in key areas. Florida’s 26th Congressional District, which encompasses part of Miami-Dade County, swung from voting for Hillary Clinton by 16 points in 2016 to voting for Trump by 5 points in 2020. And even though Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who represents that district, ran ahead of Biden, it wasn’t enough for her to win reelection.
Cárdenas said Democrats need to rethink how they can appeal to Latino voters and recognize it as a truly diverse group.
“It’s a mistake for anyone to think the Latino community is monolithic, it’s not whatsoever,” he told Vox. “It’s really important people understand at the DCCC, we’re going to be more culturally eclectic and more competent than ever before.”
Some, including Ocasio-Cortez and the more moderate former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), argued the party simply didn’t put enough resources, including digital organizing and strategizing tools, into Latino communities and other communities of color around the country.
O’Rourke recently wrote a memo stating that Republicans in Texas continuing to hold in-person campaign events throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, among other factors, hobbled Democratic efforts.
“The fact that the border, from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso, has been ignored for years by the national party, and even many statewide Democratic candidates, hurt us badly,” O’Rourke wrote. “The failure to invest in year-round canvassing — so that voters don’t just hear from us during an election — also made it harder for us to move voters at the end.”
Political science research backs up what O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez have said: The Democratic Party has traditionally been lackluster in year-round organizing efforts compared with Republicans.
“The Democratic Party has historically always lagged behind the Republican Party in terms of building up its organizational capacities,” Northwestern University political science professor Daniel Galvin told Vox. “This is a recurring problem for the Democratic Party, and as everyone’s trying to figure out a way forward, we’re trying to point out the importance of building the base.”
That base doesn’t always has to be left wing, Galvin added. But the party must be active and responsive to voters all around the country.
“Politics doesn’t organize itself,” he said. “It takes work, and it takes people to be devoted to the purpose, building strong local organizations and networks.”


vox--2020-11-13--The Next Four Years: A Weeds series

The Next Four Years: A Weeds series

What ’ s actually at stake for Americans as the new Biden administration solidifies and approaches a January handoff of power from the Trump White House ?
Starting in mid-November , Matt Yglesias will host a special eight-episode limited series of Vox ’ s original talk policy and politics talk show , The Weeds .
It will run on Fridays for eight weeks , starting on November 13 , 2020 , and running until mid-January 2021 , and Matt will be joined by policymakers and experts to discuss the likely consequences of the election and the challenges facing the incoming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everything from Cabinet appointments to relationships with Congress to the points of tension and the limits imposed by political and procedural reality as the Biden administration begins to develop and enact policies around the pandemic , the economy , immigration , and climate change , as well as potential changes to the Supreme Court .
The debut episode features Karl Smith , a Bloomberg columnist and adjunct scholar at the Tax Foundation , who offers perspective on what worked about the pre-Covid labor market , how Republicans in Congress are thinking about budgetary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collaboration on full employment .
On Friday , November 20 , Emma Ashford of the Atlantic Council and formerly the Cato Institute , will cast a critical eye on Biden ’ s approach to national security — an area where he ’ s most likely to find agreement with GOP leaders but tensions with his own base .
Future episodes on the Covid-19 transition , what ’ s left of the green agenda under a divided government , and how the new administration will handle ongoing antitrust litigation are in the works .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to podcasts — including Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , and Spotify — to automatically get new episodes when they publish .
Be sure to join the Weeds Facebook group to talk about the episodes , and much more , with our growing Weeds community .

What’s at stake for Americans as the new Biden administration takes over the White House?
Matt Yglesias is hosting a special eight-episode limited series of Vox’s original talk policy and politics talk show, The Weeds. It will run on Fridays for eight weeks, starting on November 13, 2020, and running until mid-January 2021. Matt will be joined by policymakers and experts to discuss the likely consequences of the election and the challenges facing the incoming Biden administration.
We’ll cover everything from Cabinet appointments to relationships with Congress to the points of tension and the limits imposed by political and procedural reality as the Biden administration begins to develop and enact policies around the pandemic, the economy, immigration, and climate change, as well as potential changes to the Supreme Court.
How to make a Biden Boom
Episode 1 | Karl Smith, a Bloomberg columnist and adjunct scholar at the Tax Foundation, offers perspective on what worked about the pre-Covid-19 labor market, how Republicans in Congress are thinking about budgetary issues, and the prospects for bipartisan collaboration on full employment.
Joe Biden’s world
Episode 2 | Emma Ashford of the Atlantic Council casts a critical eye on President-elect Biden’s approach to national security — an area where he’s most likely to find agreement with GOP leaders but tensions with his own base.
The Covid-19 transition
Episode 3 | Kaiser’s Jennifer Kates joins Matt to explain the next steps in countering the pandemic.
An optimistic climate agenda
Episode 4 | Third Way’s Josh Freed and Jackie Kempfer explain a path forward for low-carbon policy in a time of divided government.
Beyond the student debt debate
Episode 5 | New America’s Kevin Carey explains loan forgiveness and the deeper problems with American higher education.
Fighting tech monopolies
Episode 6 | Antitrust and competition policy expert Charlotte Slaiman discusses the ongoing antitrust cases against Google and Facebook, the basics of antitrust litigation, and their outlook for the future of regulatory efforts to rein in the power of Big Tech through pro-competition policy.
Subscribe to The Weeds wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify — to automatically get new episodes when they publish. Be sure to join the Weeds Facebook group to talk about the episodes, and much more, with our growing Weeds community.