WASHINGTON — Utah lawmakers are pushing for ways to make it easier to access geothermal energy, pointing to the Beehive State as a potential leader to harness the clean energy source and secure domestic energy dominance for the United States in the coming years.
Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, has introduced a number of bills related to geothermal energy over the last year, most recently pushing to give the sector the same tax advantages those in the oil and gas industries use to fund projects. Maloy has also introduced the Geothermal Energy Opportunity Act to expedite the approval process for geothermal projects by requiring the Interior Department to process drilling permits within 60 days of submitting an application.
And Maloy, who represents Utah’s 2nd District, is banking on the fact that domestic energy and permitting reform is a largely bipartisan issue within the halls of Congress.
“(Permitting reform) is kind of the cool buzzword of 2025,” Maloy told the Deseret News in an interview. “Hopefully by 2027 we’re not even talking about it because we’ve reformed it all. But even with geothermal, it’s definitely bipartisan. There are some areas that are hard to get the two sides together. Renewable energy is not one of those areas.”
Utah is considered a hotbed for geothermal energy sites thanks to the geologic fault zones that trap in the earth’s heat close to the surface. Developers capture the heat by drilling wells deep below the earth’s surface, which can then be converted into a renewable electricity source.
Utah is home to the Milford Geothermal Project in Beaver County that has become one of the most prominent geothermal power plants in the state and produces electricity for tens of thousands of homes. Since becoming operational, the plant has been able to reduce drilling times by about 70% and the cost of development has already begun to decrease nearly a decade faster than original predictions.
Developers say those projects are strong evidence that Utah can lead the way on geothermal energy production, which can later be expanded on a national scale.
“Every well we drill, we get faster drilling. We develop better technology. We learn from the process of drilling those wells, so that we’re drilling faster, we’re drilling to higher temperatures,” Tim Latimer, CEO of Fervo Energy, said in a meeting with Maloy in her office this week. “We think that this is going to be something that starts in Utah, expands around the U.S., and then expands around the world. And we think the U.S. is uniquely positioned to be able to do that.”
That’s where Congress can step in, he told the Deseret News. For example, Latimer said lawmakers should carve out categorical exclusions for geothermal energy similar to how gas and coal groups operate. Part of why that hasn’t happened yet, he surmised, was that education about the renewable energy source is not widespread.
“Geothermal is not necessarily new, but it’s a much smaller resource compared to oil or gas or even other renewables,” Latimer said. “So as a result, a lot of those learnings on how to permit it and developed standards that people have for drilling an oil well, for example, have not been developed for geothermal. Even though it’s similar, because we’re a more emerging industry, they just have not had the time to understand it as much.”
That’s where permitting reform comes in, according to Maloy — paired with her legislation currently making its way through Congress.
By making updates to the permitting process, the federal government can standardize impact reports and research to expedite project approvals.
“We analyze everything as if we have no idea what the impacts of directional drilling are. We’ve been doing directional drilling for a long time. But the person sitting at the desk, even if they want to be efficient and helpful, they’re required to analyze it as if it’s the first geothermal well we’ve ever drilled,” said Maloy, who serves on the House Appropriation Committee. “Congress is starting to update permitting to acknowledge that some things have become routine. We know exactly how to do them, and unless you’re doing something that’s way outside of normal practices, we know what the environmental impact is going to be.”
By expanding geothermal energy development, Latimer said it could promote domestic energy production and increase national security by ensuring AI and data centers get the energy they need while keeping the U.S. energy sector competitive.