Ucs, the controversial organization, has an interesting analysis of geothermal.<p><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-geothermal-energy" rel="nofollow">https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-geoth...</a><p>The takeaway<p>> Enhanced geothermal systems, which require energy to drill and pump water into hot rock reservoirs, have life-cycle global warming emission of approximately 0.2 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour [11].<p>> To put this into context, estimates of life-cycle global warming emissions for natural gas generated electricity are between 0.6 and 2 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour and estimates for coal-generated electricity are 1.4 and 3.6 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour.<p>Nothing is really truly zero carbon currently. Solar has manufacturing and maintenance. Nuclear has construction, mining, refinement, containment, etc. It's nice to see the full lifecycle being looked at.<p>We can't pretend that something essential for the process doesn't matter because we do a classification handwaving. It all counts