The Mountain West is positioning itself for a new kind of energy boom — one that taps the heat beneath our feet.
Ahead of a public kickoff this week, during the Western Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City, Mike O’Connor, director of the Mountain West Geothermal Consortium, said there have been improvements in drilling and a surge in electricity demand from electrification.
“Over the last five years, we’ve seen remarkable successes in the industry,” said O’Connor,. “The barriers now are policy, financial, and regulatory.”
The consortium brings together Four Corners states energy officials from New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah who want to scale geothermal as quickly and responsibly as possible. The goal is to share best practices across state lines and with private companies, attracting capital and building policies so geothermal can become as common as solar or wind, said O’Connor.
How geothermal work Geothermal energy harnesses heat from deep beneath the earth’s surface. Earth's inner core is about 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is as hot as the sun’s surface, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
Temperatures in the earth's mantle range from about 392 degrees near the crust to about 7,230 degrees closer to the core. "Rocks and water absorb heat from magma deep underground," the EIA says. "The deeper you go, the hotter the rocks and water." https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/
Developers drill wells to access that heat and use it to spin turbines to produce electricity.
In some cases, they adapt drilling technologies pioneered by the oil and gas industry — but instead of pulling hydrocarbons out of the ground, they’re circulating fluids to move heat.
According to O’Connor, the biggest drawback of using geothermal energy right now is cost. Geothermal generated power is currently about two to three times more expensive than high-capacity solar or wind on a first project. But he notes that costs have fallen around 80% in the last five years, and he expects it to fall further.
The environmental footprint is small compared to drilling for oil, O'Connor said. Most production activity happens underground, there are no fossil fuel emissions and the water used in the process is recirculated.
There are risks of small earthquakes linked to subsurface engineering but O’Connor explained geothermal projects in the U.S. operate under a federal seismicity protocol. Continuous monitoring can shut down operations if anomalies appear and O’Connor said, there have been no adverse seismic events from geothermal power since that protocol was adopted in 2012.
With interest growing from Western states and energy-hungry regions like Europe, O’Connor sees “effectively limitless potential” — if regulators, investors and communities can keep the momentum going.
