Tell Congress to pass the Geo POWER Act!
Cutting-edge electromagnetic geothermal startup Quaise has started building Project Obsidian in Oregon, set to become a 50 MW superhot-rock clean power plant. Fervo is scaling up fast across the West, and recently drilled its hottest well yet at a new appraisal site in Utah.
And just lately Oxy, an oil and gas company, has started drilling test enhanced geothermal boreholes in Colorado. An encouraging sign of a possible clean-power corporate pivot in the making!
America’s fast-diversifying geothermal appears to have considerable bipartisan support in Congress. That’s thanks in part to its use of very similar drilling skills and technology to the oil and gas industry, making “clean drilling” a perfect off-ramp for fossil fuel workers and suppliers. (Fervo has already announced a deal with oilfield services company Baker Hughes to supply equipment for 300 MW of their 500 MW Cape Station project in Utah, set to come online in 2028).
Now, as fossil fuel prices skyrocket, a new bipartisan Senate bill was just introduced: the Geo POWER Act. It would direct the U.S. Energy Department to use their pre-existing grant and conditional loan funding models to help scale up even more innovation in the fast-developing geothermal domain and accelerate clean energy abundance! The Department already does this for most other energy technologies, but enhanced geothermal is brand-new and was hardly even included in the Iandmark renewables-boosting Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This would be like a mini IRA for geothermal! It’s a commonsense bill that might actually have a chance of passing as more and more oil and gas talent and tech across the West moves towards clean drilling.
“We’re on the verge of harnessing a new wave of geothermal energy to meet surging electricity demand, lower prices, and address the climate crisis!
The key will be in scaling up new, next-generation geothermal projects across the country.”
— Senator John Hickenlooper (D-CO).
Tell Congress to pass the Geo POWER Act!