The Biden administration announced Thursday that it has taken two major steps to advance geothermal energy development on federal lands.
The Bureau of Land Management issued a decision record approving the Cape Geothermal Power Project in southwest Utah, which would have the capacity if fully built to generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power about 2 million homes.
The Interior Department also said it is proposing a new categorical exclusion that would streamline the process to evaluate and approve “geothermal resource confirmation operations” of up to 20 acres. These could include drilling wells that would be used to to confirm the existence of a geothermal resource, the agency said.
The goal is to “accelerate the discovery of new geothermal resources throughout the West,” and particularly in Nevada, which the agency says is “home to some of the largest undeveloped geothermal potential in the country.”
BLM has approved 14 geothermal power projects on federal lands, nine of them in Nevada, since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
“Geothermal energy is one of our greatest untapped clean energy resources on public lands,” said Steve Feldgus, Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, in a statement.
Developers currently must conduct two separate environmental reviews for the initial exploratory drilling, and “to fully test the geothermal resource, even if both have similar environmental impacts,” according to Interior.
Any geothermal power development would require additional environmental analysis.
“Based on previous DOE analysis, these permitting actions could significantly reduce permitting timelines and capital costs of geothermal deployment,” Interior said in announcing the new proposed categorical exclusion.
That measure will be published in the Federal Register “in the coming days” and then be open for a 30-day public comment period.
The announcements on Thursday follow BLM Nevada’s geothermal lease sale last week. BLM sold 64 parcels covering nearly 218,000 acres, bringing in over $7.8 million in high bids.
The Cape Geothermal Project, proposed by Houston-based Fervo Energy Co., shows that the industry recognizes that Utah is also a potential major source of geothermal energy.
The state has the undeveloped resource potential to produce about 49,000 MW of geothermal energy, according to the Utah Geological Survey.
The project is near the already approved Bailey Mountain Geothermal Exploration Project and the Energy Department’s Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy, which is testing a new method of geothermal production.
The project outlined in a final environmental assessment is a so-called enhanced geothermal system that injects water into hot subsurface rock formations and then extracting the heated water to create steam used to power electricity generating turbines.
It differs from traditional geothermal projects that rely on naturally occurring underground hot water, according to the Interior Department.
“The BLM is committed to supporting the responsible growth of geothermal energy on public lands,” BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement. “We need all the tools in the toolbox to reach a clean energy future, and this proposed categorical exclusion will be helpful in accelerating the process of locating new geothermal resources.”
