The Department of the Interior has announced two significant moves in the geothermal space: the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has approved Fervo Energy’s next-generation geothermal project in Utah, and proposed a new categorical exclusion (CX) meant to help accelerate the discovery of new geothermal resources.
BLM has approved the Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah, which will use technology to generate up to 2 gigawatts (GW) of baseload power. These actions come as the BLM hosted the biggest geothermal lease sale in more than 15 years.
“Geothermal energy is one of our greatest untapped clean energy resources on public lands,” said principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management Dr. Steve Feldgus. “Today’s actions are part of the Department’s work to deliver on new opportunities, new technologies, and new solutions in geothermal energy that support the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to create jobs, economic growth, and clean carbon-free electricity for communities throughout the West.”
The proposed CX would apply to geothermal resource confirmation operations plan of up to 20 acres, which can include drilling wells (core drilling, temperature gradient wells, and/or resource wells) to confirm the existence of a geothermal resource, to improve injection support, or to demonstrate connections between wells. It will be published in the Federal Register in the coming days to begin a 30-day public comment period.
Currently, geothermal developers must conduct two separate environmental reviews: one for initial exploration drilling and another to fully test the geothermal resource, even if both have similar environmental impacts. The proposal would apply only to geothermal resource confirmation operations on public lands and split estates. Further geothermal development would still require additional environmental analysis. Based on previous DOE analysis, these permitting actions could significantly reduce permitting timelines and capital costs of geothermal deployment.
The announcements follow the BLM Nevada State Office’s geothermal lease sale on October 8, which brought in “near-record” revenues, marking the most successful sale since 2008 and the second-most ever, Interior said. The BLM sold 64 parcels covering nearly 218,000 acres, bringing in over $7.8 million in high bids. This marks an increase from the previous year’s sale of 96,600 acres for just over $1 million.
The Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project is an enhanced geothermal system that produces energy by injecting water into hot subsurface rock formations and then extracting the heated water to generate electricity, rather than depending on naturally occurring underground hot water like traditional geothermal systems. If fully developed, the project will cover approximately 631 acres, including 148 acres on public lands, and produce up to 2 gigawatts of clean energy.
Fervo Energy, which raised $244M led by Devon Energy earlier this year, started working with Google in 2021 to develop next-generation geothermal power and has since launched projects sending power back to the Nevada grid to power its own data center operations.
Earlier this year, Fervo announced the breakthrough result of its commercial pilot project, Project Red. Using drilling technology honed in the oil and gas industry, Fervo performed a successful 30-day well test, which Fervo says confirms the commercial viability of its drilling technology. The 30-day well test, a standard for geothermal, achieved a flowrate of 63 liters per second at high temperature that enables 3.5 MW of electric production, which Fervo says sets new records for both flow and power output from an enhanced geothermal system.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sees tremendous potential for geothermal development, suggesting there may be more than 100 GW of capacity in the lower 48 states.
The U.S. has geothermal power plants in seven states, which generated about 16.46 terawatt hours (TWh) of geothermal electricity in 2023, a .5 TWh increase from 2022 and the highest amount ever recorded. That accounted for about 0.4% (17 billion KWh) of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation last year.
The United States boasts roughly 3,900 MW of installed geothermal, about one-quarter of the world’s total capacity. Most of it is in California (66.6% of 2023 total U.S. geothermal generation) and Nevada (26.1%), with smaller concentrations of development in Utah (3.2%), Hawai’i (2.1%), Oregon (1.3%), Idaho (.5%), and New Mexico (.2%).
