13-05-2025
The nation's geothermal potential stalls in federal bureaucracy
As the nation seeks to unleash energy production, geothermal has been a high-profile source of attention for multiple presidential administrations because it is clean and renewable, but the average American doesn't seem to know about it.
Geothermal energy is a renewable resource that comes from heated rocks and liquids stored deep in the Earth. When that energy is released naturally to the earth's surface, hot springs, geysers and volcanoes form — typically near tectonic plates.
Geothermal power plants generate electricity by drilling deep into the earth to access the hot solid or liquid below. If happens when solid, cold water is poured down to create steam, which rotates a turbine that then powers a generator, producing electricity.
'In the coming years, the United States will face unprecedented growth and energy demand as we race to win the AI war against China and bring gigawatts of new data center capacity online, and an all-of-the-above approach for energy development is the only option we have to move forward,' Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., said Monday during a field hearing for the House Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources hosted by Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy and Southern Utah University.
Geothermal power, he said, will help meet those needs.
The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that human-made geothermal energy, or enhanced geothermal systems, could ultimately power over 65 million homes and businesses in the states, and will be 'the next frontier for renewable energy deployment.'
It is arguably the least polarizing renewable energy option across political party lines as it is viewed as one of the most practical solutions to the United States' energy demand, and Utah is considered a hotbed of geothermal opportunity.
Utah is third in the nation for its production of utility-scale electricity derived from geothermal energy, behind California at No. 1 and Nevada, which takes second place.
The only issue: The best places to build power plants are on federally owned land.
'Even when the geology is ideal, it can take years to get a green light to drill. In states like Utah, where so much promising geothermal potential lies beneath federally managed lands, the permitting backlog is especially problematic,' Maloy said Monday.
She and two of her Republican colleagues, Stauber and Rep. Nicholas Begich, R-Alaska, held the field hearing, 'Letting Off Steam: Unleashing Geothermal Energy Development on Federal Land,' discussing with energy developers and experts the barriers to developing geothermal energy on federally owned land.
Getting land permits for energy purposes from the Bureau of Land Management is not a new process. In fact, geothermal energy was the first type of renewable energy that the BLM approved for production on public lands in 1978.
The issue is timing.
'We need smart federal policy,' Tim Latimer, CEO of Fervo Energy and witness during Monday's hearing, said. 'Today, 90% of geothermal resources lie on federally managed land, but permitting can take up to a decade, much longer than equivalent wind, solar, oil and gas projects. That needs to change.'
Federal permits can take upward of 10 years to be granted, and that doesn't include litigation, Stauber warned. That's why bipartisan bills like Sen. Mike Lee's co-led Geothermal Energy Optimization (GEO) Act and Utah Sen. John Curtis' Geothermal Energy Opportunity (GEO) Act (same name different legislation) or Maloy's Full Responsibility and Expedited Enforcement (FREE) Act have been pushed at the federal level to 'streamline the federal permitting process' and 'establish a permit-by-rule system.'
Efforts are continually being facilitated. An April auction from the Bureau of Land Management in Utah brought in $5.6 million for 14 parcels of land for leases and potential development.
Paul Thomsen, vice president Of business development at Ormat Technologies, Inc., and longtime geothermal energy advocate, emphasized that despite all the efforts made — not to discredit them — the interagency conflicts add to the issue of long-delayed permits.
For the last four years, he said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has put the Department of Interior under threat of lawsuit for granting geothermal permits at the expense of certain fish species.
'We shouldn't have regulatory capture due to the threat of litigation,' he said, 'So we urge the committee to address the interagency conflicts that hinder geothermal energy exploration.'
Maloy inquired whether expedited geothermal energy permitting could still be carried out in an environmentally safe manner if it were approved.
Thomsen was 'very confident' it could be.
'One of the amazing things about geothermal is it has a footprint disturbance 22 times smaller than solar with integrated storage,' he added. 'We can move the geothermal power plants. We can move the wells and so forth to make them as benign as possible for the surrounding environment. Couple that with no emissions and base load power, the environmental footprint of these facilities is astonishing.'
Contributing: Amy Joi O'Donoghue
