- The Trump administration has shifted DOE’s focus from decarbonization to expanding reliable electricity generation and grid capacity.
- DOE officials see Utah’s coal, geothermal, nuclear and other energy resources as key opportunities to increase power supply and lower electricity costs.
- Coccodrilli predicts geothermal could become a major energy source for Utah, including potentially powering data centers by 2030.
Things have changed at the Department of Energy since the Biden administration.
Curt Coccodrilli, the acting assistant secretary of the Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office, visited Utah with other federal leaders this week.
While attending the American Coal Council’s annual summer conference, which took place in Park City, Utah, Coccodrilli toured several energy sites around the state including the FORGE site in Milford, the Fossil Rock Mine in Emery County, the Savage Energy Terminal in Price and others.
“You’re blessed here with a lot of coal, a lot of mining and a lot of possibilities for rare earths and critical minerals,” he said during a conversation with the Deseret News. “You have a very supportive governor, a very supportive congressional team that really moves the needle and a very willing workforce that is just phenomenal.”
America’s energy mix is evolving, and Utah appears eager to embrace the shift. Between advancements in small modular reactors, geothermal, hydrogen plants, solar and coal, both Utah and the DOE are focused on one common goal: adding electrons to the grid.
What has changed with energy post-Jan. 20, 2025?
“It’s night and day from the Biden administration,” Coccodrilli said. Old goals focused on decarbonization and the Green New Deal, he explained. New goals “are hyper-focused on adding electrons to the grid, not subtracting.”
The Green New Deal was a 2019 congressional resolution proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., to transition the U.S. to 100% clean, renewable energy within 10 years.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, describing the country’s insufficient energy supply as an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”
In response, the DOE has its attention focused on increasing baseload capacity. As of early June this year, the department has prevented 45 coal plants producing more than 40 gigawatts (powering 29-33 million U.S. homes) from going offline.
“Coal is still the number one generator of electricity around the world — number one,” Coccodrilli said. “And coal can be done well, done right and done effectively. The technology is there and will remain there.”
Coccodrilli referenced Utah’s Intermountain Power Project, which sent coal power down to Los Angeles, California, for 39 years.
“You have a beautiful plant, and we’re trying to stabilize it, optimize it and hopefully grow it someday,” Coccodrilli said. The plant retired last November after its contract ended with Southern California’s municipal utilities, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
The coal-fired plant had a generating capacity of nearly 2 gigawatts across its two coal units. There are no firm plans as to whether the plant will be sold for parts or turned back on.
How to make electricity less expensive
Power costs vary dramatically between states, and their discrepancies are largely correlated with their political leanings.
Of the states with electricity prices higher than the national average, 86% are reliably Democratic; of the 10 states with the lowest average electricity costs, 80% are reliably red.
Policies that seem to influence electricity prices, per The Institute for Energy Research, include carbon-free electricity mandates, natural gas access and independent net-zero goals.
When asked what he would recommend state lawmakers do to lower electricity prices, Coccodrilli said, “You have to drill — you have to harvest your resources.”
He pointed to Los Angeles as an example.
The county, surrounded by asphaltic oil, has the largest share of its power mix (41%) come from renewables. About a third comes from natural gas, 15% comes from nuclear, 11% from coal and 3% from large hydropower. For decades, Los Angeles has outsourced its coal and natural gas production to other states, including Utah.
“It’s really stunning to me that they want to import their electricity, but they don’t want to know where it’s coming from,” Coccodrilli said.
Importing energy can be costly for residents: Californians pay about 33 cents per kilowatt hour, while Utahns only pay 13. Coccodrilli said the current administration is taking the issue seriously. “Affordability is probably our number one issue that the president has us focused on,” he said.
To increase affordability, he explained, states need to increase baseload power, which is the minimum level of electricity a grid needs to meet usage demands.
“There are only a handful of ways to get to baseload power: It’s oil, gas, coal, nuclear, geothermal,” he said. “To me, it sounds like the secretary is pointing to reliable, firm baseload energy with coal.”
Aside from investing in firm, reliable energy sources, Coccodrilli proposed another solution to improving electricity rates: “We have to elect better leaders at the top.”
Geothermal, bipartisanship and data centers
In the past several years, the DOE and the West have begun leaning into geothermal energy, which comes from harnessing heat deep beneath the Earth’s surface.
Since it’s reliable, it earns support from the political right, and since it’s carbon-free, it earns support from the political left.
Coccodrilli said Utah is in a unique position to benefit from it.
“You guys have been blessed out here purely by your geology to make (geothermal energy) a reality,” he said. “And I absolutely see it as one of the frontiers we will get to scale.”
With a thinner crust than most of the East, Utah’s natural features make geothermal economically viable. To access heat beneath the surface, developers drill thousands of feet into the earth.
Coccodrilli referenced “hiccups” that are part of geothermal’s adolescent stages of development, testing and implementation. Difficulties include building equipment that can constantly withstand such high temperatures, and finding ways to efficiently transport the heat upward.
He added that Utah could see geothermal-powered data centers by 2030.
“If it’s on the scale that hydraulic fracturing completion is at, with unconventional generation through natural gas,” he said, “I see it 100% as a possibility, yes. We got to be at the right place at the right time.”
Between now and 2030, developers will have to marry the perfect conditions: Being close to a water source, being near an extreme heat source and existing power lines, he said.
“I guarantee you, with our ingenuity in this country and with our research and development, it will happen,” he said. “It will happen fast, and the U.S. will be the leader.”
A new wave of energy optimism
When asked if he feels optimistic about American energy even beyond Trump’s second term, Coccodrilli said, “Absolutely,” adding, “I will tell you, there has been an absolute paradigm shift about doomsday scenarios.”
He referenced warnings about acid rain, cities being swallowed by rising sea levels and areas becoming hot to the point of being uninhabitable.
“We didn’t fall off the edge of the Earth,” Coccodrilli said. “The Atlantic Ocean didn’t come all the way into New Jersey, and New York State isn’t under water.”
He described Gen Z as more “realistic” and “not so much of ideologues as maybe prior generations post-1960s.”
Coccodrilli said he believes the U.S. is well equipped to meet the demands of an increasingly power-hungry age. “I don’t know how you can go backwards again,” he said. “I’m very optimistic that the reality track is going to maintain itself through the next few generations at least. I can’t go beyond that.”