Geothermal should have Categorical Exclusion under NEPA

Note: this Bottleneck has been solved The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized a categorical exclusion for geothermal projects¹.

For further policy actions that build on the Categorical Exclusion, see Thomas Hochman's Categorical Exclusions Aren't Enough.

Rationale for Action

Per the Institute for Progress (IFP)²:

"Congress should create a legislative categorical exclusion. Under Section 390 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, oil and gas receive categorical exclusions (CEs) for activities requiring fewer than five acres of surface disturbance, and for drilling on locations that received an approval under NEPA within the last five years. These exclusions streamline approvals for exploration for oil and gas developers. At the very least, geothermal energy, a clean baseload source of power, should receive parity with oil and gas. Congress could amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to include geothermal energy in the Section 390 CE.

If Congress was inclined to go a step further, it could create a separate legislative categorical exclusion for geothermal exploration. There are strong reasons to go beyond the scope of the 390 CE for geothermal exploration. The technology and exploration process is different, and a new CE could cover the unique technological constraints of geothermal exploration while still protecting the environment and limiting environmental impact. Furthermore, we have commitments to decarbonize that suggest geothermal should be given expedited regulatory treatment.

Congress should ensure that the CE enables the specific use of seismic surveys or other methods like gravimetry, magnetotelluric, or even aero-magnetic surveying. Temporary road construction would be necessary to allow the vehicles on the land, and also may require an expansion of the CE beyond five acres, to eight or ten acres. A geographical expansion could be justified if paired with reasonable mitigation or restoration measures.

Seismic surveys revolutionized the oil and gas industry and became the “primary tool” of exploration for U.S. companies. By analyzing the time it takes for the seismic waves to reflect off of subsurface formations and return to the surface, a geophysicist can map subsurface formations and anomalies. In fact, these methods are currently being deployed across the whole of Denmark to map the potential geothermal resource. Specifically including these types of techniques in legislation would add certainty to an often opaque regulatory process.

The most important requirement for a legislative CE would be allowing developers to drill an exploration well, the most surefire way to confirm a geological resource. Allowing an exploration well to be drilled to depths of 5 to 10km necessary to identify the full heat resource would be a major improvement over the current permitting regime. Pairing this with reasonable mitigation and restoration measures would dramatically improve the outlook for next-gen geothermal energy".

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Rationale for Action

Efforts

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