House Energy Bill Will Help America Build a Sustainable Energy Future, Geothermal Industry Leader Says

“The United States has vast untapped geothermal resources,” Gawell noted. “The energy bill’s provisions will provide the incentives necessary to encourage investment in new projects and help advance the science and technology needed to develop the full potential of this domestic, renewable energy resource.”   

Geothermal power is an important part of the nation’s renewable energy portfolio because it can meet critical baseload power needs. Because some renewable energy sources operate only under favorable weather conditions or certain times of the day, critics argue renewable energy will be limited in its ability to meet the looming large-scale power needs of the twenty-first century. Geothermal resources, however, provide reliable electricity on a continuous basis -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year -- with significantly lower emissions levels than fossil fuel sources while avoiding problems of radioactive waste disposal.

The DOE research provisions were reported by the House Science Committee as HR 2304, sponsored by Rep. McNerney (D-CA).  According to recent reports from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and GEA, geothermal resources hold the potential to produce hundreds of thousands of megawatts of geothermal power, trillions of cubic feet of gas from geopressured resources, and tens of thousands of quads of heat energy.  “But to utilize the vast untapped geothermal resources of our nation, we will need advances in both science and technology which the strong research provisions of this bill will support,” Gawell stressed. 

GEA also praised the four-year extension of the Section 45 Production Tax Credit (PTC) and the expanded allocation for new Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) included in the House bill.  The Ways and Means Committee had reported these provisions as part of H.R. 2776 the “Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007.” 

“A long-term extension of the PTC is vital for new geothermal power development in the US,” Gawell said.  “It takes several years to bring a geothermal project on-line, and geothermal developers are already facing tough decisions about whether or not to proceed with projects, given the existing law’s deadline requiring projects to be in production by January 1, 2009.   Extension of the tax credits will result in a significant expansion of geothermal energy production, create tens of thousands of new jobs, and stimulate tens of billions of dollars of new investment in geothermal energy production in the US,” according to Gawell. 

The United States is the world's largest producer of geothermal electricity, generating an average of 16 billion kilowatt hours of energy per year.  According to GEA, today there are over seventy new geothermal energy projects under development in over a dozen states that will add 2,900 MW of new power capacity, doubling current geothermal  production.