Questions,
Answered

Not yet — and we're upfront about that. Fifty Under is a brand-new organization, and as far as we know, the first to bring geothermal to agriculture specifically to decarbonize it. As a company, we haven't built our own projects yet. But our internal team and our network of partners have evaluated and built hundreds — likely thousands — of relevant renewable and geothermal projects. We're just getting started.

Under the Geothermal-as-a-Service model, a lot of the risk of working with a young company comes off the table by design: we're the ones putting up the capital and cutting the check. If you'd rather own the system yourself, we're the developer and operator rather than the financier — and we'll be equally direct about what we have and haven't done before. Either way, we will never ask a partner or customer to carry risk they aren't prepared for. If we're a little early for you, no problem — keep checking in. We're ready to talk when you are.

You can own it. Both paths are real offerings, and neither is the “real” one with the other as a fallback.

Under Geothermal-as-a-Service, Fifty Under funds, builds, owns, and operates the system. You put in zero capital and pay a fixed Renewable Energy Fee for delivered heating, cooling, and dehumidification.

Under Own Your Own Energy, you fund and hold the asset — surface and subsurface. You keep the federal investment tax credit and any state incentives, you keep 100% of the energy savings, and the borefield is a 50-year asset you can pass down. Fifty Under works as your developer and owner’s advisor: feasibility, design, permitting, incentives, subcontractor selection and construction management, commissioning — and then ongoing monitoring, operations, and maintenance under a service agreement, so owning it never means running it yourself.

Which one is right depends on your balance sheet, your tax position, and your horizon — not on how committed you are to geothermal. We’ll model both with your numbers before you decide.

No. This is ground-source geothermal for heating, cooling, and dehumidification — moving the earth's steady, shallow heat. When people say "geothermal power," they mean generating electricity from deep, hot reservoirs, which is a riskier proposition and simply not something we're prepared to offer at this time. We do the proven, shallow kind.

We serve farms across North America — the United States and Canada. If you're not sure whether your region fits, reach out — the ground holds a steady, useful temperature almost everywhere, and we can tell you quickly whether your site works.

Canadian operations sit differently on the economics. There is no REAP equivalent north of the border, but carbon pricing on natural gas is a recurring cost that climbs on a published schedule — so the value of moving off combustion grows every year instead of holding flat. For growers in places like Leamington, that shifts the calculation meaningfully.

A fair question for any young company, and one we take seriously. The system is yours to keep benefiting from regardless — geothermal infrastructure is built to run for decades — and under a service agreement, the arrangements are structured so your service continues even if the company changes hands.

If you own the system outright, this concern is smaller still: the asset is already yours, and our operating agreement is a service contract you could reassign to another qualified operator. Our whole model is about removing risk from your side of the table; that includes this.

Geothermal-as-a-Service only

The Renewable Energy Fee applies only if you take the Geothermal-as-a-Service path. If you own your system outright there is no REF — you pay your own electricity and a service fee for the operations and maintenance we provide.

Under GaaS, the REF is the single monthly fee our customers pay for the heating, cooling, and dehumidification service we deliver. It's designed to cover all of our costs to provide those services — the system, its operation, and its upkeep — rolled into one line.

The REF is fixed, sometimes with a set inflator to account for inflation. Either way, you know what you'll pay years out: no fuel-market spikes, no surprise bills — the savings we capture are embedded in the rate itself.

That depends on which path you take.

Geothermal-as-a-Service: we fund the capital cost of the installation — typically millions of dollars — so you don't put that money in. That's the heart of the model.

Own Your Own Energy: the capital is yours, and so is the asset and every benefit it produces. It doesn't have to be one large check, either — as part of our work we can help you arrange debt financing, so you can hold the asset and still spread the cost over time.

The one thing common to both paths is that we sometimes share with you a portion of the third-party cost of evaluating your opportunity up front. We ask for that for two reasons: it keeps us aligned from day one, and, frankly, interest right now is overwhelming — a shared evaluation cost helps us prioritize the operators who are genuinely ready to move.

Usually, yes — and we'll show you, not just tell you.

Under Geothermal-as-a-Service, the Renewable Energy Fee is built to compete with what you pay today all-in, and because it's fixed while fuel prices climb and spike, the advantage tends to grow over the life of the agreement.

Under ownership, the capital goes in once and after payback the savings are entirely yours — on a borefield with decades of useful life still in it. The tradeoff is that you carry the upfront cost and the asset risk in exchange for keeping all of the upside.

In our first conversations we'll map all three paths side by side, with your numbers — staying on conventional fuel, owning a system, and GaaS — so the comparison is yours to judge rather than ours to assert.

The systems we build qualify for real incentives. At the federal level, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (OBBBA) preserved the investment tax credit for geothermal on a long runway — even as it phased out the credits for wind and solar — which makes ground-source heat pumps one of the few farm-ready ways to decarbonize that still carry durable federal support. On top of that, there are often state and local programs that add to the benefit.

If you own the system, the ITC and state credits flow to you as the owner, not to a third party. We manage the application and compliance process end to end so the credits you're owed actually land.

Under Geothermal-as-a-Service, we capture and administer the incentives as the owner of the asset, and the benefit flows straight back to you as a lower monthly Renewable Energy Fee.

The catch either way is that these incentives are complicated to qualify for and manage, and the rules keep moving. If you'd prefer to handle that process yourself, you can. Our recommendation is to let us do it — and either way, we'll always be upfront about the lay of the land so you understand your options and can make an informed choice.

This is the right question to ask, and the honest answer is that it changes. Today your boiler flue gives you CO₂ as a free by-product of burning fuel for heat. Take the combustion off your site and that free stream goes with it, so enrichment becomes a purchased input — typically delivered liquid CO₂.

We don't paper over that. When we model your project — on either path — the cost of purchased CO₂ goes into the comparison, so the number you're weighing is the true net position and not a heating figure that quietly ignores an input you used to get for nothing. Plenty of operations still come out ahead once the fuel volatility, the maintenance, and the capital are all on the same page — but you should see that math, not take our word for it.

It's also worth knowing that combined heat and power is the usual alternative for keeping on-site CO₂, and it carries its own load: fuel supply exposure, a heavier maintenance burden, and capture equipment to manage. Simple, combustion-free baseload heat plus purchased CO₂ is often the cleaner trade.

Geothermal is long-lived infrastructure, so the commitments are long-term either way — think in terms of the multi-decade life of the system, not a year or two.

Under Geothermal-as-a-Service, the service agreement runs 20 to 30 years. That term is exactly what lets us put up the capital and hold your price steady. We set the specific length with you, and the end-of-term options (below) are part of that conversation.

Under ownership, there's no term on the asset at all — it's simply yours. The only agreement with a term is the operations and maintenance contract, and those are structured to be renewed rather than endured.

As a rule of thumb, if your anticipated energy bill is less than a few hundred thousand dollars a year, we're probably not the best fit — on either path. If you're below that scale, we're glad to point you toward others who may be better able to help — just ask.

Not much to begin. The first step is a conversation and a look at your energy use and operation; from there we run an evaluation, and if it's a fit we move into design. You don't need to have chosen between owning and subscribing before that conversation — the financing question comes after we know whether geothermal pencils for your site at all.

We'll tell you exactly what we need at each stage — and we aim to give you a clear read early, so you're not investing time in something that won't pencil.

Typically 18 to 24 months from the first conversation — covering evaluation, design, permitting, construction, and commissioning. The timeline is broadly the same whether you own the system or take it as a service. We're happy to map it out with you in the first few discussions, so you know what to expect at each step.

Less than most people expect. Where land is tight we use vertical bores that go straight down and leave the surface almost untouched; where there's room, shallower horizontal trenches can lower drilling cost. We plan the work around your operation to keep disruption to a minimum, and we'll walk you through exactly what installation looks like on your site before anything starts.

Then it's on us — not you. We design and operate these systems for a living, and we're comfortable standing behind their performance.

Under Geothermal-as-a-Service, Fifty Under builds, owns, and operates the system, so its performance is our responsibility, full stop. If a system doesn't deliver what we agreed to, there are protections built into every agreement so you're kept whole: miss the performance metrics laid out in the contract, and you're relieved of some or all of your payment obligations for that shortfall.

Under ownership, you hold the asset, so the structure is different — but you're not on your own. Design and commissioning carry performance criteria we're accountable to, equipment sits under manufacturer warranty, and our operations agreement puts verified performance, not just uptime, on our side of the table. We'll be explicit in writing about exactly what we stand behind.

Frankly, we don't expect it to come to that — right-sizing and expert design are exactly what we do, and it's why the numbers work. But you shouldn't have to take our confidence on faith, so we put it in writing.

Often, yes — and by design. We size the geothermal to carry the vast majority of your annual energy, and where it makes sense we pair it with a small backup burner to cover the handful of extreme-cold hours a year. It's called a bivalent system, and it's the most cost-effective way to make sure you're never short on the night your operation can't afford it.

We do — on both paths. Under Geothermal-as-a-Service, we own the system, so monitoring, maintenance, and repairs are our job, not yours, and their cost is already inside the Renewable Energy Fee.

Under ownership, the same work happens under an operations and maintenance agreement: we monitor remotely, schedule maintenance, order parts, and take on major overhauls for the multi-decade life of the asset. You own a 50-year asset without having to run it yourself. The difference is that you're paying a service fee for that work rather than having it bundled into a delivered-energy rate.

A real one, on either path. Switching from combustion to ground-source geothermal cuts your climate footprint from day one, and the gap grows as the electricity grid gets cleaner. That's a story you can tell your buyers, lenders, and community — and we'll give you the numbers behind it, so your sustainability claims are grounded in something real.

Growth is a good problem, and we'd rather plan for it than be surprised by it. Tell us where you're headed and we'll design with that in mind — and when you expand, we can size the next phase to match. It's another reason the first conversations matter: the more we know about your plans, the better the system fits over time.

If you own the system, it's simply part of what you sell — a working, fixed-cost climate system is an asset that adds to the value of the property, not a complication.

Under Geothermal-as-a-Service, the system and the agreement are tied to the operation, and in most cases the agreement can transfer to a new owner — a buyer inherits predictable heating and cooling rather than a liability. We'll walk through exactly how that works for your situation as part of the contract.

Geothermal-as-a-Service only

This question applies to the service path. If you own your system, there is no end of contract to plan for — the asset is yours indefinitely, and the only thing with a term is the operations and maintenance agreement.

Under GaaS, there are several options — various ownership or purchase arrangements — and they're all worked out between us as part of the agreement. The whole process is designed to deliver fixed-price energy and real value to you; working through the contract is where we settle those end-of-term choices together.