Carlos Gorraez Meraz is a research-driven sustainability and energy transition professional specializing in the adoption and acceptance of geothermal energy. Gorraez Meraz emphasizes that geothermal energy—including building heat, industrial process, and reliable baseload electricity—offers a largely underutilized pathway for decarbonization and climate change mitigation. He also highlights that geothermal diffusion depends not only on technical feasibility, but also on social acceptance, including the underexplored dimension of market acceptance.

His doctoral research will explore the market acceptance of geothermal systems in North America, informed by prior work on social acceptance in Western Canada and the United States through his Master’s thesis and his Earth Energy Fellowship with Geothermal Rising.

His research interests include how investors and developers evaluate geothermal opportunities, how preferences may vary across system types, and how financial, regulatory, and business-model conditions shape investment willingness and market adoption.

Through this work, Gorraez Meraz aims to generate evidence-based insights to support management practice and policy design for scaling geothermal across Canada and the United States.

He brings over 30 years of senior leadership experience in the Mexican Navy, retiring at the rank of Captain. His roles included Commanding Officer of the Tall Ship Cuauhtémoc and leadership positions in disaster response operations and information security incident response.

Gorraez Meraz holds an M.A. in Environment and Management from Royal Roads University (2026), an M.A. in National Security from the Center of Higher Naval Studies (CESNAV) (2023), and an M.Sc. in Information Security from CESNAV (2008). He has published peer-reviewed research in Estudios en Seguridad y Defensa (2023; 2024), reflecting his broader interests in strategic systems, leadership, and analytical modeling, which underpin his applied research on the social dimensions of clean energy transitions.