A massive and valuable energy resource is sleeping deep under the ground in many parts of Colorado: geothermal heat.
It often exists alongside oil and gas reserves, which gives Colorado, with its robust history of fossil fuel production, a running start in developing the industry. Tapping into geothermal produces affordable, reliable, carbon-free renewable energy, but geothermal development in Colorado remains in its early infancy.
“Colorado is set up really well for geothermal energy,” said Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat. He is the sponsor of Senate Bill 142, which seeks to unleash more geothermal development by reducing red tape, encouraging new projects and making geological data publicly available.
Geothermal developers, engineers, municipalities, labor groups and utilities testified in support of the policy during the bill’s first hearing Wednesday in the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee, where it passed on a 5-2 vote.
Backers of the bipartisan proposal say Colorado urgently needs to expand carbon-free energy sources as the clock ticks down to the state’s goal of reaching 100% renewable energy by 2040.
“We think this is a really innovative and exciting place for Colorado to invest to achieve all of our emissions goals in the next several years,” Ball said.
The proposal addresses multiple barriers now causing friction for the developing industry. It would clear away some of the red tape municipalities face when they try to build thermal energy networks. Those are relatively shallow systems of underground pipes that harvest stable underground temperatures through heat exchange to provide heating and cooling to multiple buildings.
Other provisions seek to encourage more geothermal electricity generation, a much more complex technology that involves drilling thousands of feet into the ground to tap significantly hotter temperatures.
One section would use the state’s many abandoned fossil fuel sites to collect data on deep underground temperatures from more than 900 orphaned wells. Orphan wells are disused oil and gas wells with no identifiable owner that remain unplugged. They often create a financial burden for the state, which must assume responsibility for properly sealing and cleaning them up. Supporters of the bill say mining these wells for geothermal data would create a new trove of publicly available geothermal information.
“We can get some of that data out and then make that available to the industry to make more educated decisions on where they can bring future geothermal projects,” Ball said.
While some utilities, including Xcel Energy, support the bill, the electricity generation industry in Colorado has been slow to invest in geothermal, so far shying away from a technology with significant upfront costs that falls outside its typical area of expertise. A third section of the bill would address that hesitance by requiring utilities to develop geothermal project proposals.
“We need investment and support in the terms of policy so that we can get utilities to take a risk,” said geothermal developer Jonathan Power of Game Creek Holdings.
The legislation is not facing outright opposition, but the fossil fuel industry and some environmental groups are seeking amendments.
“This type of legislation is really key to what we believe is the future of electric generation in Colorado,” said Jeremy Ross of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 111. “While we’ve spent a lot of the last several years focused on wind and solar, we have failed to address the baseload need of the future of Colorado, and we believe that geothermal … (is) going to play a big role in this.”
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