For 60 years, Ormat Technologies has been strategically building geothermal power plants wherever nature allows – via underground reservoirs with high-pressure water or steam – including around the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire” from Asia to America. This made Ormat the largest geothermal energy operator in the world.
Today, Ormat hopes to grow exponentially with the AI data center boom, with the goal of building clean baseload power plants across the western United States that leverage both new and old technologies. The goal is called EGS – Enhanced Geothermal Systems – and combines the traditional geothermal energy business with the latest oil drilling and fracking techniques. The idea is that EGS will enable next-generation geothermal energy to be built almost anywhere the customer wants it, by making deeper, higher temperature underground reservoirs much easier to access.
Although the science is proven, Ormat and its competitors are racing to prove that they can build the power plants economically and efficiently enough to compete with other sources of electricity generation, including gas-fired energy and renewable energy. and nuclear. That’s why Ormat is launching two separate EGS pilot projects with different partners – a geothermal energy startup, Sage Geosystems, and the century-old, largest oilfield services company in the world, SLB. Ormat also works closely with Google and data center developer Switch.
“We are in a very rare situation where all the stars align at exactly the right time,” said Doron Blachar, CEO of Ormat Assets. “We have the hyperscalers and the AI demand. That basically puts us in a situation where we see endless demand for our product. The more electricity we can generate, the more we sell, and we’ve done a lot of research in the US over the last few years.”
Blachar’s thesis is that Ormat is already combining traditional geothermal growth with a newer battery energy storage business that is growing across the country with renewable solar energy systems. Even if the push into improved geothermal systems fails, he believes Ormat will succeed. But Blachar is confident that the EGS business – the company’s biggest potential growth driver – will flourish and that Ormat is better positioned than any other geothermal player to undertake EGS at scale.
“We know how to buy land. We have that [contracts] with hyperscalers, with utilities for hundreds of megawatts,” Blachar said. “We know how to get the permits. We know how to make the connections.
“The special thing is that we have all the ingredients to develop EGS. Once the pilots are successful, we will start implementing it,” he added.
On Wall Street, Ormat is now most likely compared to the EGS startup Fervo, which went public with it in May Largest clean energy IPO ever In the US, Fervo’s market cap quickly rose to $10 billion, but after some modest setbacks, it has since fallen to $5 billion, despite its strong longer-term potential.
Ormat, on the other hand, has seen its shares rise nearly 20% in 12 months to a market cap of around $6.75 billion – a little less than an all-time high in early June. And Blachar is quick to point out that Ormat is profitable outside of its pilot projects. Ormat reported revenue of $662.7 million in the first half of 2026, up 43% year-on-year, with net profit of $71.2 million, up 4% year-on-year.
“There is no company in the industry that can use EGS better than Ormat,” he said. “We have been here for 60 years. We are a large power plant operator. We know how to build and operate them efficiently. And once the pilot projects are successful – one or both of them – we will be in a position to develop multiple EGS projects.”
Steady growth before the sprint
Ormat was founded in Israel and grew globally before moving its headquarters to Reno, Nevada over 20 years ago.
Nevada is a geothermal hotspot and both EGS pilots are located there. The Sage pilot will take place at Ormat’s Blue Mountain Power Plant in Nevada, while the SLB pilot will take place at Ormat’s Desert Peak Power Plant. Ormat has also acquired new acreage in New Mexico, Oregon and Idaho. Blachar said he is also optimistic about Texas. Sage’s groundbreaking first pilot – a precursor to its Ormat project – just went online near San Antonio in August.
Blachar, who joined Ormat as CFO in 2013 and became CEO in 2020, still works in his hometown of Tel Aviv, speaks English with a strong accent and regularly travels around the world for Ormat projects, from Reno to Indonesia, Turkey and New Zealand. Besides the US, Indonesia is Ormat’s largest growth destination. “We are developing [in Indonesia]but it takes longer. The processes take longer and we are much more cautious than in the US, where we are willing to take more risks in this environment.”
Ormat’s global operating power portfolio is 1.85 gigawatts – enough to power 1.4 million U.S. homes or approximately two large data center complexes. The growth target for 2028 is to achieve up to 2.8 gigawatts through traditional geothermal energy and battery storage, not counting EGS.
But that’s still small potatoes compared to what EGS could potentially build underground. According to Blachar, Ormat develops about 100 megawatts of geothermal energy per year. Each EGS project with a hyperscaler could easily be 500 megawatts.
There are fewer political doubts — Republicans are attacking wind and solar power while Democrats are targeting fossil fuel emissions — because geothermal energy is popular with both parties, for now. Democrats want clean energy, and Republicans like how traditional oil and gas companies benefit from expanding into the geothermal business. SLB, for example, is driving expansion in geothermal energy and contributing its expertise in subsurface analysis and drilling boreholes.
Ormat’s pilot projects with SLB and Sage will be drilled next and could come online in late 2027, Blachar said. “Once they are ready, we will start developing EGS projects.”
Twenty years ago, Ormat experimented with EGS, but it was too costly and difficult, he said. Drilling technologies have advanced rapidly since then, allowing U.S. oil producers to drill 5-mile-long horizontal wells underground to maximize oil and gas production volumes.
Earlier this year, Ormat launched its Ormega100 power plant unit, a standardized, simplified power plant design with fewer moving parts, intended to be economically scaled using EGS.
“EGS is becoming a much more realistic outcome today,” Blachar said. “Considering Ormat’s experience and business development in planning a power plant, as well as the amount of land and positions we have in the US, we will take advantage of this new technology and grow much faster.”