Article written for Canada’s National Observer Nov. 20, 2025 by Darius Snieckus.
Eavor Technologies CEO Mark Fitzgerald. (Photo courtesy: Eavor)
Mark Fitzgerald is having a full-circle moment.
Back in 2017, when he was running the Canadian arm of Malaysian state oil and gas giant Petronas, he cut a “small" corporate cheque for a Calgary-based startup called Eavor that was developing an “innovative but very early-stage” technology to harness geothermal energy.
Eight years later, as Eavor’s newly appointed CEO, Fitzgerald has a personal interest in making that early bet pay off.
“Eavor is the little engine that could, and is creating a really valuable, scalable technology for the clean energy transition,” said the 36-year veteran of the oil and gas industry, who has held senior roles at companies including Penn West Energy, Dominion Exploration and US oil major Chevron.
“I am a big believer that the future of energy supply is moving away from conventional sources, so I am committed to contributing to the decarbonization of our global energy system with technologies such as Eavor’s,” Fitzgerald told Canada’s National Observer.
He took over the top job — replacing founder John Redfern who stepped into an advisory role in June — at a critical time for the company.
Eavor is about to switch on its first full-scale pilot project in Germany. The “radiator-like” closed-loop system uses pressurized fluid run through a network of pipes in ultra-hot zones deep underground to turn electricity-generating turbines on the surface.
“I am a big believer that the future of energy supply is moving away from conventional sources,” says Eavor Technologies CEO Mark Fitzgerald.
If all goes to plan, the seven megawatt lead-off project in Geretsried, a small Bavarian town near Munich, will be expanded to a 200 MW plant that will be able to supply power to around 1,000 homes.
But the bigger win would come in proving the technology is scalable and make much larger geothermal plants — “true industrial powerhouses,” as Fitzergerald describes them — commercially viable to build soon.
That would not only be a huge boost for Eavor, which so far has raised $750 million in equity investments from international developers and venture capital funds, along with $140 million from the Canada Growth Fund, but also for the wider geothermal sector in Canada.
Long seen as having enormous promise as an “always-on” baseload power source in the Canadian energy mix, government estimates in 2012 suggested geothermal could meet the nation’s future power demand “one million times” over. Yet not one commercial well has been drilled due to historically prohibitive costs.
“Whilst geothermal delivers clean, firm, 24/7 baseload power, it remains slightly more expensive than other renewable options,” said Annick Adjei, an analyst with Wood Mackenzie, a market intelligence firm.
“Despite overall funding growth, technology development remains undercapitalized.”
That could swiftly change if Canada commits to capitalizing on its ace in the hole, said Fitzgerald: the country’s industrial oil and gas heritage.
‘Here to stay’
From the decades of drilling experience amassed on the Alberta oilpatch to the range of innovative reservoir stimulation techniques developed in Canada, geothermal “ticks all the boxes” as an energy resource the province should already be poised to develop, he said.
“Geothermal is here to stay and it will be a significant component of future energy supply — it is supportive of energy security, energy independence, and energy ‘anywhere’ as it is not grid-reliant,” Fitzgerald added.
Geothermal’s economics are improving significantly as advances in drilling and reservoir management technologies reduce costs and prompt a positive rethink of geothermal's ability to become a steady, 24/7 power source for a range of industrial applications.
“There are so many advantages that geothermal has as a market-changing energy transition technology."
New modelling by the Cascade Institute, a think tank, concluded geothermal plants built in Western Canada could generate electricity at US$30 to $60 per megawatt-hour. That’s already as cheap as gas ‘peakers’ — power plants that are brought into operation during periods of highest electricity demand.
And if oil and gas-inspired “enhanced,” “advanced,” “geopressured” and “super-hot rock” technologies (see factbox below) were widely adopted, costs could drop by another 40 to 50 per cent, making geothermal comparable to wind and solar power, the cheapest of renewables.
“There are so many advantages that geothermal has as a market-changing energy transition technology,” said Fitzgerald, who studied chemical engineering at the University of Alberta and has an MBA from BC’s Royal Roads University.
The “very small footprint” that geothermal has on land — compared to an oil or gas production facility or a wind or solar farm — as well as its very low consumption of water and critical minerals, has bolstered its “investment attractiveness,” he said.
Along with a vast potential for geothermal power supply, Canada may also have an edge when it comes to future demand.
Arctic sovereignty and AI impact
The federal government’s renewed focus on energy security in the Canadian Arctic and its push for AI-driven growth in data centres across Canada could combine to supercharge the development of geothermal in the country, Fitzgerald said.
“The influence of these two factors are very much aligned to our business model,” he said. “Current geopolitics is changing our views on what is considered secure energy supply — around 50 per cent of the world’s supply today comes from ‘unfriendly’ nations.”
“The emergence of AI and movement of data as it continues to accelerate is heavily dependent on power — which the grids are constrained in supplying. This is a natural space for geothermal and Eavor.”
In the last year, several notable deals have been struck in the US to power data centres with geothermal energy, including between Google and US start-up Fervo, and Meta with Sage Geosystems, as well as XGS Energy.
Fitzgerald thinks geothermal is also an “enormous opportunity” to export Canadian next-generation technologies being developed by his company and other start-ups, including Calgary-based FutEra Power and BC’s Meager Creek Development.
“It is crucial that Canada develops energy resources and infrastructure that will help our economy grow during these uncertain times,” he said.
“But we must also support the Canadian companies that are growing aggressively and are bringing homegrown ingenuity and technological innovation to the global stage today — and that applies to geothermal.”
Size of the global prize
Figures from the International Energy Agency bear out the size of the prize for the Canadian geothermal sector at home and abroad. The agency recently forecast geothermal would meet up to 15 per cent of worldwide demand growth between now and 2050, with as much as 800,000 MW of new capacity. And that’s before data centres are factored in.
“The Canadian government needs to see the opportunity in this sector, not just in terms of power supply that would change the energy markets in this country, but also in terms of the Canadian geothermal start-ups that are soon going to have global reach,” Fitzgerald said.
Signing that cheque for Eavor almost a decade ago may prove to be a prescient decision. But Fitzgerald feels it is now time for the federal government to be similarly future-focused.
“The geothermal opportunity is a distinctly Canadian one. And there are Canadian companies that are leading the way. We would love to be seeing some aggressive and assertive growth in the sector in Canada. We just need some greater alignment between government and industry,” he said.
“Ultimately, we have to go to where the best growth opportunities are.”