Craig shares why he believes geothermal is one of the most overlooked and compelling energy solutions available today. Drawing on his background in engineering and high-tech leadership, he reframes next-generation geothermal as a solvable materials and systems challenge: drilling deeper, managing extreme temperatures, and optimizing heat transfer in hard rock environments.
The conversation covers:
- Why geothermal is not limited to volcanic regions
- The role of materials science in unlocking deeper heat
- How 24/7, local power can support energy-intensive industries and AI-driven data centers
- Why engineering fundamentals and problem-solving skills matter more than ever
From Moore’s Law to subsurface heat, this discussion connects technology, infrastructure, and long-term energy strategy.
If you are interested in reliable, scalable clean energy and the engineering required to deliver it, this episode offers a thoughtful perspective from one of the most respected leaders in technology.
Ghazal Izadi: Welcome to PowerShift, where we explore the bold ideas and leaders, driving the future of energy. Today we have the honor of speaking with Craig Barrett, former CEO and chairman of Intel, a pioneer in semiconductors, advanced materials and high tech innovation.
Welcome, Craig, to PowerShift. Maybe you want to give us a little bit introduction about yourself for the audience.
Craig Barrett: Well, so first of all, Gizelle, thank you for having me. And, fun to talk about this subject. It’s quite a bit different than semiconductors. I mean, I’ve spent my life making things super small and and, getting power for the world is sustainable. Baseload power is a super big job. So it’s it’s kind of a dimensional change.
Ghazal: I would like a little bit deep dive on, that you spent two decades on, leading Intel, and the high tech, technological, challenges that you resolved. So what do you think in terms of the material science and the breakthroughs that we can bring to energy system, especially for geothermal, because we are going, you know, that we need heat because you mentioned about heat beneath our feet. When we go hotter and deeper temperature, high temperature has, some challenges that, on accessing this hot rock.
Craig: I mean, if you get hot rocks right on the surface, if you go to Iceland, you go to New Zealand. You see geothermal everywhere. You know, all you need to do is have some water and pour it on the surface of rocks and get steam, and you’re okay. It’s a little bit of more of a challenge. And the rest of the world, we have to drill, you know, a mile or thousands of feet down to get hot rocks. And it’s a little bit like your home, when you, have a home in Montana, it gets hot in the summer, it gets cold in the winter. I try to insulate my house from the outside, because there’s thermal losses. Just a conductive loss. Windows in that walls. Collecting heat is a thermal issue. And what you want to do is, very effective heat transfer, first of all. And so you need to worry about sticking a pipe down, getting good heat transfer to that. And there’s an interface between the rock surface and the pipe surface. And you need to, do the opposite of what I do in my house. I want great thermal conductivity from the surrounding rock to the pipe. And that poor thermal conductivity like I have in my house. So that’s a great materials problem. It’s a problem to get down there because it’s hot rock that you have to drill through. So drill bits and there’s great drill technology that’s happened. That’s all materials problem. And you need to so super hard surface to grind to rock. And that you need wear resistant. You need data information about the nature of the rock your drilling tool. You need sensors and the drill bit to monitor temperature pressure. You need all sorts of cool stuff, all materials problems. So the drill sites, you know, it’s pretty much everywhere around you and everything, whether you’re doing atomic engineering to make transistors or you’re drilling a 5000ft hole through solid granite, it’s all materials problem.
Ghazal: You mentioned about Iceland and New Zealand. I know you love to go there and you spend time there, but most of the people when we talk about geothermal, they think about the volcanic hot reservoir water. So why do you how do you think this, innovation in material science in terms of heat transfer technologies, next generation of geothermal that really relax the constraint from the subsurface water and geology, like what we do at just bring geothermal like a forefront of development globally.
Craig: So we are not just looking at this specific geographic location. This is a real challenge. It’s obvious if you’re in a volcanic region like Iceland or a, New Zealand, that it’s easy, you’ve got a lot of water is poured on the hot rocks, you get steam and you got energy. It’s a little bit more of a challenge. Around the rest of the world, we have to drill a deep hole and then have all this thermal conductivity stuff. And you need to convince people that it’s doable. You know, I years ago, I was on the, chaired the advisory committee on the Berkeley National Lab, the Department of Energy facility. They were concerned there about alternative energy sources to hydrocarbons. And I used to talk to them about geothermal, and they just their eyes would glaze over and say, well, if you’re in Iceland, it’s great. But if you’re in California, other than a few spots in California, there are no geysers and they don’t think about geothermal and correspondingly, they, were at that time not interested in it at all. Fortunately, by happenstance, we have a president now who his favorite comment is drill, baby, drill. And President Trump, unknowingly, is really promoting geothermal activity. He wants to drill for liquid gold and that’s oil or gas. There’s another liquid gold down there. It’s heat. But plainly people are recognizing geothermal is an infinite source of energy and clean in 24 by seven and a small surface footprint. It’s everything that everybody wants. But just nobody’s thought about it.
Ghazal: So basically you mentioned three topics. It’s, reliable, affordable, sustainable. And with the next generation technology that really reduce the upfront risk and costs and make it more financing bill and also remove the geographical constraint, which is where we talking about the hydrothermal is mainly in the certain geographies that geology and the water exists. We can really tap into this, source of energy anywhere.
Craig: Drill baby, drill.
Ghazal: Let’s talk about investment. You invested in, yes. You I wasn’t part of the investor committee. And then, also, you believe in this source of energy, so can you walk us through that? How did you come up to this field from Intel to energy, renewable energy domain? And why? Why next generation geothermal?
Craig: Well, first of all, there are certain industries that use a lot of power semiconductor industry, manufacturing uses a lot of power, a lot of high temperature trees and things like that. So, very cognizant about power. But if you think a little bit broader than that, you’d think you’d like to have a power system or a power generating capability, which is not really geographically dependent, that you can do just about anywhere. So you don’t have to worry about massive transmission characteristics, big footprints that spoil the environment. Like, I, you know, I drive to California and Nevada, I see these huge solar farms, and they’re not exactly my idea of the great outdoors. It’s kind of mankind infringing on the great outdoors. But I just got interested in the simplicity and the elegance of geothermal. I mean, if you think about it, you don’t have to burn anything. You don’t have to spoil thousands of acres at the environment. You get no emissions. It’s a 24 by seven clean system. By the way, Montana has got a lot of, hot rocks. Yeah, it’d be very easy to do that there. But it’d be very easy to do nuclear there. But it’s the elegance of this, and it doesn’t face the kind of public reaction that, that nuclear has. So, you know, ten years ago, I ran into one of our board members, the founding board member, Pat and he was describing this to me. This is pretty cool idea. And it’s elegant. And it’s got a lot of materials problems. So I was interested in, and I’ve been bouncing around with this idea when I was at, the advisory committee at the Berkeley National Lab. I energy was a big topic there, and I used to try to get them interested in, but they were kind of set in their ways. And looking at, you know, current sources and not, potential sources.
Ghazal: Along those lines, I think, tech companies like Intel, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they are the biggest energy consumers, right. Do you think that, this type of resource of energy is going part of their energy strategy? So do you think that they need to, co-locate geothermal, a power plant, for their data centers for heating and cooling security? What is your thought about that?
Craig: It’s an interesting issue. Which companies like Intel have fostered on the world, which is what these, data centers and with AI coming into play now, huge data centers and huge power consumption, and most of these folks are very, environmentally conscious and, they want to use green energy if possible, and they want to locate these places, where there’s cheap energy, because energy is one of the biggest costs of the data center. Something like geothermal is phenomenal for them. Because you don’t have to worry about, new, expensive transmission lines and that sort of infrastructure. All you need to do is drill, bring up some hot water, and you have a local power situation which is 24 by seven. And, on demand, and it’s inexpensive. I mean, it’s perfect.
Ghazal: What not to love about.
Craig: Yeah. And in fact, they’re all interested in this and thinking about it because the energy situation is the key situation.
Ghazal: I love when you say all the time geothermal is elegant.
Craig: Geothermal is elegant because it is so simple and simple. Things last. And, they don’t have added complications. Collecting the heat that comes out of the earth is simple and elegant.
Ghazal: We love it.
Craig: I love it.
Ghazal: So you have spent your career working, the cutting edge of the technology? As we mentioned. So if you want to work on something very exciting and it’s not the part of the energy industry, what do you work at?
Craig: Oh, well, I have I have two things that that come to mind. I mean, one is, I’ve lived through the vacuum tube to transistor transition, and we’re still after 60 years, we’re still following Moore’s Law. You know, when I joined the semiconductor industry, the biggest chips at that time had maybe 250 or 1000 transistors. Today, the chips have maybe 100 billion transistors. That’s Moore’s law. And that has been so exciting. So nothing doubles every year or two for 60 years. I mean, it just it doesn’t happen. But the exciting thing that I would if I was a young engineer just getting going, did I’d like to work on is, Moore’s law won’t last forever. It’s still going. It’s still got another 10 or 20 years. And every time we say it has 10 or 20 years, we get a lot of great engineers working on it, and it lasts another 10 or 20 years. But I’d like to work on the replacement for the CMOs transistor.
Ghazal: Okay.
Craig: You know, transistors are made out of atoms. So you’re doing atomic engineering. The next level down is, kind of quantum computing. Electron and electron spin a lot smaller than an atom. If that is the electronic switch of the future. And in various instantiations. But if that’s the electronic switch of the future, I’d love to be part of that.
Craig: The other one is, the reason I go to New Zealand all the time is I’m a fly fisherman. And, you know, the technology of fly rods, these very light things that bend and cast the light, you know, it’s a fiber technology. Bamboo was the first material that it was fiberglass. It’s second material. And then it was graphite fibers. And what you’re doing here is getting stiffer fibers in a matrix of some sort to make these things lighter and more flexible. And then it’s boron fibers, which has a better modulus of elasticity than graphite. For this, I’d like to work on the next generation of fly rod.
Ghazal: That’s exciting.
Craig: And you know it. It’s not a huge market. But, if you’re an avid fly fisherman, man, you put a lot of importance on the quality of that fly rod in your hand.
Ghazal: Yeah. This is this is fascinating. You, your material, science background and how you applied in terms of efficiency, increased travel from your hobby and to your interest that really fascinating.
Craig: Well, it’s kind of an offshoot, but it is a hobby of mine.
Ghazal: That’s great. So I know that Craig. Yeah. You are really pushing for, Stem and education and this is some of very close to your heart. Do you have any, recommendation or suggestion to younger generation that they are seeking to be part of this journey? They were asking, okay, is geothermal is the right, segment. So what is your thought on that?
Craig: I talk to a lot of young people and started their education and wondering what they should major in. And if they’re engineers, what they should do. And the first bit of advice I give to people is if you study engineering, and engineering is really a a profession of problem solving, and if you learn problem solving skills, you can apply them anywhere. And there’s a good reason why the most common education background of fortune 500 CEOs is engineering. It’s not business school. It’s not law school. It’s engineering. Because running a big company is problem solving. All different types of problem, not just technical problems, people problem, marketing problems, manufacturing problems. So, I, I really am an advocate of engineering education. The second one is, by golly, you can’t look at any area that doesn’t have materials problems in this. Geothermal is got a bunch of really interesting problems. Semiconductors got a bunch of really interesting problems. The marriage of biology and engineering, the bio sciences and bioengineering, huge opportunities. So, the issue, though, is you have to get the background to start with.
Ghazal: Fundamental matters.
Craig: The fundamentals matter. And, you know, one of my sidelight activities is running charter schools, alternative to the standard public K-12 education. But we we get kids a really heavy dose of math and science, in our schools, in preparing them to go to the university, then preparing them to go up into, society. But, the engineering problem solving schools are just critical. And especially as the world becomes more complex.
Ghazal: Okay, cool. Thank you. Craig. It, this has an incredible discussion, and you really helped in the lot of, segment to shape the technology, and make it basically possible. So, we are very fortunate to have you to really work on the future of the clean energy with us. So thank you so much, for being here today. Power shift. Any final thoughts?
Craig: Drill baby drill.
Ghazal: Drill, baby drill. So great. So thanks for your insight. And, back to our audience. Please, stay tuned. We come with more, very exciting, discussion with the leaders in industry to shape our future of the clean energy. See you next time.
