Please note that the transcript provided below is AI-generated and intended for reference. It may contain missing words, misspellings, or other small errors. To request a correction or clarification, please contact info@theclimatecenter.org.
Barry Vesser, The Climate Center (00:04:37):
My name is Barry Vesser. I work for The Climate Center, and if you’re here to hear about geothermal, advanced geothermal energy, you are in the right room. So I’m just going to run through some quick thank yous. The first two are sponsors who have really made this day possible. So we’re really grateful to them and also to donors who have likewise contributed to making this event happen year after year. And then all of our partners who have contributed to getting the word out about this. So thanks to all of them. I’m going to skip over this because if you haven’t gone on EventLeaf yet, you’re probably not going to.
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Our comms teams does ask if you’re doing social media on this, if you just use the hashtag CAclimatesummit, they would be extremely indebted to you. So it’d be great if you could help us out with that. And I just want to introduce the moderator of our panel. And first of all, I always like to uplift the moderators because it is the challenging role. A lot of things to balance. So Julia Sebastian, thank you so much, Julia, for being here. She is the climate policy director to Jobs with Justice, San Francisco, and a lead legislative staff for California Labor and Climate Jobs, a statewide coalition of 17 labor unions, advancing a worker-led transition to a just and climate-safe world. And I just want to say that geothermal is a great labor issue. So we’re really happy to have you with us. Thank you, Joe.
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Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:06:27):
Great. Well, we have a full panel. Thank you all for being here. Obviously, if you haven’t heard already, California is entering a new phase of the energy transition, and we’ve seen a lot of headwinds coming out of Washington DC, and yet our state continues to pursue ambitious climate goals, but we’re also trying to balance real issues around affordability, which have been talked about a lot today. Energy, reliability, environmental justice, obviously, as well as the creation of high road jobs. So excited to talk about that today. Meeting all of these goals at once will require more than just technological innovation. We’ll learn a lot about the tech I think today, because this is a newer technology that not everyone knows about, but I’m curious about the real durable coalitions that are powerful enough to really move policy and sustain implementation over time, because it is not just about the technology.
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We really have seen a lot of promising low carbon technologies struggle to build support across labor, environmental justice, government business, and community interests because of competing priorities, uneven benefits, or unresolved impacts. So that fragmentation has really made it harder for California to move at the scale and speed that we really need to right now. Geothermal technology has increasingly been touted. I know I’ve been in a number of webinars that have spoken, have been trying to get these coalitions together to make the case as a potential area of alignment. It’s a clean firm energy source that could strengthen grid reliability, create skilled jobs, and supports domestic supply chains while also reducing emissions. So we are told, so let’s see. We’ll hear about that. So it could really be a basis for a broader coalition with the political strength to win, and yet it remains significantly underutilized compared to solar, wind, and storage.
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So the coalition behind it has not fully cohered maybe to its maximum capacity. So today, hopefully the panel can help to answer some of the questions that we might have that we’ll definitely do Q&A at the end and see if the technology has the opportunity to become a meaningful part of the California clean energy mix. And what stands in way, particularly with I think we’ll talk about barriers, a lot of policy barriers.
(00:08:44):
We have four expert panelists here with us today. Ann Garth leads the US policy advocacy for the geothermal team at the Clean Air Task Force. Katie Smith is the director of stakeholder engagement at XGS Energy, which is a leading California based next generation geothermal company. Chris Snyder is the political director of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which is a core workforce that’s critical to building out our geothermal infrastructure and our newest edition, Miles Horton, legislative policy and community engagement manager at Sonoma Clean Power, which is a community choice aggregator in one of the regions of California that is kind of most advanced in this, actually getting this technology out. So we’re just going to dive in and kick it off. I’m going to start with you, Ann. Each panelist is going to give a little presentation. You have written, if you haven’t read her reports, a tremendous amount about the tremendous untapped geothermal potential in California and across the west, and would love to hear in your presentation, just if you can provide an overview of what it is, what is advanced geothermal, why it’s attracting so much attention right now, and what are some of the biggest policy barriers that make those projects difficult to develop in California?
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Ann Garth, Clean Air Task Force (00:10:10):
All right, great. Thank you so much. So yes, excited to be here today and share a little bit about next generation or advanced geothermal. So to start with, what is geothermal and how does it work? So for any geothermal system, you need to have three components in place. You need heat, something, that hot rock, you need water or another type of fluid that can carry that heat from the rock up to the surface, and you need permeability, which is some kind of pathway that allows the water to travel through the rock and collect the heat. And for over a hundred years, we’ve been producing geothermal where all three of those system components are naturally occurring in the same place. That’s known as conventional geothermal. And that’s great when you have it, and California has some of the best conventional geothermal resources in the world. But even in California, it is limited.
(00:11:06):
There just are not that many locations where you happen to have all three of those things occurring together. And so conventional geothermal is an important but small part of the energy mix in California and in the US. Fast forward to about 15 years ago, and we now have the ability, thanks to a lot of technological innovation, to do what we call next generation geothermal. So next generation geothermal, instead of requiring all three of those system components in the same place, you’re just looking for one, you’re just looking for heat, and you can bring your own fluid. A lot of the time folks will use gray water that’s not suitable for agricultural use or human consumption, and you can create your own permeability. And as you can imagine, that dramatically expands the scope of where geothermal is possible. We call that next generation or advanced geothermal.
(00:12:03):
There are a lot of different types of geothermal, and I’m not going to bore you with every single detail, but the important thing to note is that within next generation, you can use enhanced geothermal systems, which use stimulation to create subsurface pathways. You can also use closed loop geothermal systems, which use drilling to create a sort of underground radiator. And then there are multiple other systems that blend aspects of both. What every next generation geothermal system has in common is the enormous resource potential, because again, you’re just looking for heat. So when we say enormous resource potential, what does that actually mean? How big is it? Well, nope, nope. The anticipation builds. CATF has done some modeling on super hot rock. This is the highest temperature form of next generation geothermal. Our model estimates that just 1% of the super hot potential at the five to 7.5 kilometer depth, so that’s accessible with today’s drilling technologies could produce 35 gigawatts of energy, which is basically all of the energy that California needs.
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So this is just to give an indication that we are talking about an order of magnitude, multiple orders of magnitude difference of the role that geothermal can play to the role that it has played in the past. And there has been enormous and dramatic technological innovation. Katie’s going to talk more about that soon that make geothermal viable in a way it didn’t used to be before, which is really exciting. I’ll mention a couple of other pieces as well. I’m not going to say every word on this slide, but I’ll highlight a few other aspects of the geothermal value proposition. One is that geothermal energy is base load or firm power. And as we’re seeing increasing penetration of intermittent renewables like wind and solar into the grid, even with storage, modeling from CATF and from a lot of other organizations, indicates that you need some amount of base load power to complement those intermittents as you get to higher penetration of intermittents into the grid for reliability and for affordability.
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And so adding geothermal as an option in that baseload set can be a really good complement to intermittents and can be really important for grid stability as we’re looking towards 100% zero carbon goals. Geothermal is also renewable, zero carbon technology. Obviously that’s very important. And I’ll also mention the small land footprint. Again, as we’re seeing increasing build out of other energy sources, having an energy source that’s very dense and has a very small land footprint per megawatt produced, again, can be a really good compliment to some other energy sources and can help us kind of with the last mile of our build out.
(00:14:59):
So that’s how geothermal works, and that’s some of the reasons that CATF is very excited about geothermal. Who we are, so that you have some context. CATF, where I work, is a global climate NGO. We work on pragmatic solutions to address affordability, obviously the need for zero carbon energy, and hopefully a world with abundant energy. We’ve been working on geothermal since 2022, which was a couple years before most other NGOs leaned in. We were kind of early adopters of the potential of geothermal. And in the last maybe two years, we’ve started to really lean into California. Last summer, we published a report with California policy recommendations, and there’s another report focused on the Western US that’s coming out in the next couple of months. And across both of these reports, the kind of key buckets that we’ve used for geothermal deployment can be organized into five pillars.
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And I could spend many hours talking about all of the recommendations under each of these pillars, but I don’t have many hours. So I’m just going to highlight a couple of the key recommendations under the first four. And if you would like to talk more about any of these, come find me afterwards and we can discuss. So it’s a little bit smaller than I thought, so that’s okay. If you can’t see it, I’ll just say it out loud. So the first pillar here is characterized. This is mapping the resource potential. If you don’t know where the resource potential is, it’s very hard to build projects. So it’s kind of the foundational step. And there are two ways to do a good job of mapping. One is actually go out and do more mapping, fund the geologic survey to go collect more data. The other option is to digitize historical records that can provide relevant data for geothermal.
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And so having some combination of both of those strategies in place will help us learn more about the geology in California.
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Next up is govern. So we, CATF, as an environmental NGO, believe very strongly that it’s possible and in fact imperative to protect the environment while supporting efficient and speedy deployment of more renewable energy, which is another way, of course, of protecting the environment. And so the way we can do that is by streamlining permitting and environmental review processes, making sure that agencies have capacity to actually move those processes quickly to action applications, creating a permitting guidebook so that industry knows what steps they have to do in what order and who they need to talk to. And then also making sure that the regulations in California that govern geothermal are updated to be fit for purpose for the technologies that are in use today as we’re continuing to see a lot of innovation, making sure our regulatory system is responsive to that.
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Next up is finance. So de- risking, exploration and demonstration. We talk to a lot of investors and they are so excited about geothermal. They are so eager. They are so ready to finance the 10th project. Great. So who’s going to finance projects one through nine? This is where public sector support can play a catalytic role by financing early projects and helping de- risk those. And then that risk goes down, the private capital kind of flows in, and so it’s an opportunity to crowd in private capital. And as the federal government is unclear to what extent they’re going to be interested in playing that role, that’s also an opportunity for California to really take the lead. And so that means things like because geothermal is upfront capital intensive, making sure that the grant amounts offered from state grant programs are large enough to move the needle.
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And considering other creative financing tools, California has really been a leader on procurement, world-class leader on procurement, so continuing and building off of that strength. And then also thinking about an exploratory drilling program, which would de- risk development, not just in the places where it’s already happened, but across the state to really expand where geothermal is de- risked.
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And then finally, my last slide is on supportive infrastructure. So transmission and interconnection is one of the biggest bottlenecks to deployment that developers report across all of the pillars that we’ve looked at. And so, California, there’s a lot that can be done there, including considering whether the current framework for deliverability and resource adequacy based on some or peak conditions reflects that clean firm base load value that geothermal can provide to the grid. Okay. I think … Yes. Thank you.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:19:55):
Awesome. Thank you. We’ll just do a quick follow-up question, which is of the curious if you can lift up the role that the state in particular could play in kind of the early stage development support that private companies might not be able to do on their own.
Ann Garth, Clean Air Task Force (00:20:18):
Yes. So this is where I think de- risking new parts of the state and providing some funding for early projects. A lot of folks are familiar with like first of a kind cost curves, right? It starts out expensive and the costs go down. In the case of geothermal, that kind of repeats in different geologic basins. So the first project in any new basin is a little bit risky, and then the costs kind of come down a curve. So if the state is able to support the first project or two in different basins, that can de- risk it, and then that kind of crowds in the private capital.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:20:50):
Awesome. Thank you. Great. Well, we’ll move. Caity, I think is your perfect compliment. You guys work together a lot, as I hear. And so Caity would love as a staff, a lead staffer for one of the leading next generation geothermal companies in California. If you could say more in your presentation about the landscape for geothermal development from the private sector perspective, and what makes it California so attractive for advanced geothermal investment and what makes it challenging?
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:21:20):
Yeah, great. Thanks, Julia. And thank you, Ann, for teeing up my remarks here. Just to follow up on what Anne was just saying about the state’s role, I do have to give a huge shout out to the state of California. Right now, the US Department of Energy has a funding opportunity out for geothermal and the CEC here is offering cost share that’s required. We don’t see that in other states, so super exciting there. But yeah, so as Julia said, I’m going to talk a little bit about what next generation geothermal really looks like in practice in California. So it’s really a conversation about how California can scale clean firm power and not whether geothermal works because we already know that it does.
(00:22:08):
So XGS is a next generation geothermal technology developer headquartered here in California in Palo Alto. We also have offices in Houston as well as remote staff. We’re not just a technology company though. We are permitting, building, and operating projects. Our first 300 hour commercial demonstration was in Southern California at China Lake, the Coso geothermal field. And just this morning, actually, we announced that we signed an agreement with CC Power to provide 115 megawatts of geothermal power here in California. And what’s I think really exciting about that is that we will be creating that power in state so it doesn’t have to come from out of state. So geothermal in California for Californians, and I actually did not check my slides apparently. We had some formatting issues.
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So next generation geothermal, Anne talked a little bit about those kind of three main things that you need for geothermal. At XGS, we’ve actually taken two of those out of the picture. We don’t need the water or fluids and we don’t need the permeability. We only need the hot rock. So globally, we’re looking at about 40 terawatts of hot rock potential to create power. And a lot of these next generation systems remove the constraints that we worry about here in California and elsewhere. So simpler resource evaluation and engineering shortens timelines, reduces permitting uncertainty, and really helps to mitigate risk for the developers, for the agencies, and for the communities where these projects are being built.
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Maybe. And Anne, I apologize. I just realized I didn’t credit you on this graphic. So the graphics from CATF, everyone. So as I said, XGS is a California based company and we are very excited about developing geothermal here in state. California has over 35 gigawatts of geothermal opportunity, as you heard Anne say just a few minutes ago, and we have already permitted and demonstrated our system here in California, so we are ready to go. We are currently advancing multi-gigawatt project pipelines throughout the state, both southern and northern California. And from that environmental and permitting standpoint, we have no consumptive water use, there’s no fracking, and we have that great small surface footprint.
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I think it’s really key to remember for everyone that geothermal is that base load power. So it really helps to stabilize the grid and provide that reliability that everyone needs. I don’t know who was in here for the last session, but we were talking about data centers. Geothermal provides that twenty four seven power that they need and also helps to firm just the larger grid as a whole, as well as meeting the long-term decarbonization goals of the state. So as far as advancing geothermal in California, from the policy side of things, I think I look at things kind of into three different buckets. There’s permitting and really the key thing here is in no way are we asking as an industry to cut back on the permitting or anything like that, but we want predictability in permitting. We want that guidebook that Anne mentioned that tells us these are the steps you have to go through and we want those steps to be the same project over project.
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Whereas sometimes things change. In California, permitting geothermal is interesting and there’s different rules. If your project is under 50 megawatts, the county can be your late agency for CEQA, but if it’s over, you have to go through the California Energy Commission and now there’s the opt-in process as well. So it’s really a choose your own adventure type of game, but not the kind of adventures that I like.
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So just having that predictability and knowing how we can do things and replicate them will help us to bring more of this energy online and to the grid in a faster manner. As Anne said, Grind and interconnection are a huge thing. The interconnection process is not a fast one and the grid across the United States and in California is an aging grid that needs quite a bit of upgrades and work to take on the additional load that we are seeing. And then finally, incentives. So as I just said, California is providing cost share for DOE projects if they’re awarded, but we’re also seeing in states like New Mexico and Colorado, actual state tax credits that are for geothermal power development that are attracting developers into those states. And then also some of the research and demonstration funding that Anne was talking about. So yeah, I think I’m trying to keep my remarks short, Julia.
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So California has the geology, you have the demand, and to tee it up for Chris, you’ll have the workforce as well. So I really think that geothermal and California are poised to really take off and for California to be leading in the US in next generation geothermal development. And hopefully we can get that title here rather than some of the other Western states that have been focused on over the past five to 10 years.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:28:28):
Awesome. Thank you. Great. Well, let’s move on and then I think we’ll have more time for questions across all. Okay, great. So Chris is up next and geothermal development is often talked about as a climate and energy issue, but it is also a workforce issue,
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(00:28:48):
Is great for us. And so just curious to hear in your comments, what kind of jobs can geothermal projects create for particularly for unionized workers in California, especially for those transitioning from the oil and gas sector. We’ve seen, as we’ve talked about today, a lot of refinery shutdowns, and my understanding is that there is some great compatibility there, so I’d love to hear that. And what role policy plays in ensuring the creation of high road jobs in this Birginian industry?
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (00:29:17):
Yeah. So good afternoon, folks. My name is Chris Snyder. I’m with the Operating Engineers Local 3, and we are the largest construction local in the United States. We cover four state jurisdictions, so I get to see a lot of different policies from state to state. We have about 40,000 members and most of our members, I mean, we’re probably one of the more conservative unions in the United States. Our guys, they think of any yellow piece of equipment is pretty much us, excavators, bulldozers, cranes. We also do all the dredging. So as it relates to refinery work, we’re in there doing all the shutdowns. We get tens of thousands of hours, work hours out of the refineries. Also, all the pipeline work, the Excel pipeline, all those fights, we were on the other side of that stuff. And So we have built the entire pipeline system in the United States.
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But we’re also forward thinking and we can talk and walk and do things at the same time. And we’re not climate change deniers, but we also are really interested in maintaining a highly skilled workforce with my union. And we also have, there’s 21 state building trades councils throughout the state that we belong to and work with. And whether it’s pile drivers, cement masons, carpenters, laborers, electricians, and the whole span of crafts that we work with. And we’ve really tried to be thoughtful at our approach to climate policy and embrace California’s goals, climate goals, but also find ways to build into legislation that ability to, I hate … I wish there’s a better term than just transition, but transition. And we did that. I know you’re going to talk about Gina Pappinsbill a little bit. We did with Gina Papin’s bill. All the bills, we try to build labor standards into these CEQA exemptions.
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We try to build labor standards and project labor agreements, which allows us to do the work. And so as these refineries do shut down or the gas, I mean, my union is mostly 80% of our payroll comes from the gas tax. As we grapple with how we kind of fund and maintain our roads, this is the kind of stuff we need to look at. And you saw in those pictures. So I’m also from Sonoma County and we have the largest geothermal fields in the world. So it’s been really exciting for me. I was a leader up there for a long time and when the fires were devastated, we went up there and our folks rebuilt the cooling towers under a project laboratory. So it was all union. But even before that one was built, those pipeline skills, building pipelines, I mean, we could build a geothermal pipeline or a carbon capture pipeline.
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I mean, those are the exact same skillsets. So it’s not a new workforce. Same with like when you’re in a refinery and you have a crane operator, whether you’re working in a nuclear power plant or a refinery or building geothermal cooling towers and everything, it’s the same, exact same skillset and the same with the pipeline stuff. We invest heavily and it’s tax free. I mean, our apprenticeship program is about four years long and you come out with and you get about 50% of your prevailing wage rate. And by the time you’re done, you’re a journey person. And we really support women in the trades as well and reach out across the aisle. We’re non-parson both right and left and bring folks in. And when they journey out to have careers, if these other things are going to weigh, we have to have these careers to support these folks and having a legislative policy that kind of supports what we’re doing instead of it all going.
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I mean, my fear is that it all goes non-union to low wage, out of state workers. And that’s, if this is going to work, what we’re all doing here today, you got to have labor at the table. And I’m also very excited. Jeff Harlock here is my good friend and that we have been really forward looking. There’s the Climate Jobs Resource Center came out of New York and Cornell. It’s basically a building trade centered climate policy institute where we want to work with the environmental and state and local agencies to kind of build in these labor standards to ensure there is a transition. And it’s really very forward thinking. And as conservative as our membership is, I think our leadership is very enlightened. And when we’re talking to our members about whether it’s an oil pipeline or geothermal, it’s still work. And I think they’re really starting to turn the corner on a lot of this stuff.
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And I’m excited to be here and I can answer other questions, but I can go on and on too. But this is great work. And I’ve worked with this guy for a long time and we did a bunch of legislative stuff and I’ll let him talk about that.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:34:14):
Awesome. Maybe I’ll just ask one follow-up question because we have a little time is just if you could say a little bit more about what’s happening in Sonoma County as like a example of kind of what that looks like on the ground for the workforce. How many jobs is that? It’s an amazing.
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (00:34:30):
Yeah. To be honest with you, we struggled with … This crowd might know. Has anybody seen Inequality for All with Robert Reich that came out a few years ago. Anyway, there’s a scene in that where he’s actually doing a union drive and it was at Calpine. So we haven’t done a real good job at capturing the workers up there, but we have captured the work previous to that. And we’ve also worked with Calpine and some of the other folks to build at union. So we do have a project labor agreement up there, but this is all the kind of stuff we need to keep working on. And I will say this about … Lake County is really dear to my heart. I was up there. I’ve seen the whole thing almost burn to the ground twice. People’s lives lost. My members also represent the public sector county workers there, and it is a very, very … It’s one of the poorest communities in the United States, in California.
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And the only decent paying jobs, even though they’re non-union, is Calpine. And the largest income up there is social security benefits and disability benefits. So this, I’ve seen how it has impacted the community on a really positive level. I know Wells is going to talk a little bit about what’s going on up there with Sonoma Clean Power, but we’ve been in support hand in glove with Sonoma Clean Power and the developers up there to make sure it’s going to be done union. We’ve worked on legislation to try to ensure and capture that work going forward. And we’re excited to partner with the industry. And we’ve had a great partnership so far with both the industry and with the local government.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:36:12):
Awesome. Cool. Well, I’ll pass it to you, Miles. And does everyone here know what a project labor agreement is or some of these terms like- Calpine. Yeah. Do you guys want to just define-
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (00:36:24):
Calpine, I mean, I guess that’s what they call … I’ve been thinking about … Calpine is the complex of geothermal that it’s the largest one. It’s a great … If you’re ever in Lake County, come on up, they do tours from time to time, but it’s the largest geothermal. In the world, right? And it’s crazy. It’s right in Sonoma and Lake County. Yeah. The
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:36:44):
Operator
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (00:36:45):
Up there. We call it the Geisers, Calpine.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:36:49):
Yeah, because there’s a couple other power plants out there that are owned by companies other than Calpine, although I don’t know if any of those are operating right now. Two. NCPA.
(00:36:49):
Miles Horton, Sonoma Clean Power (00:37:03):
Yeah. Basically all owned by this Calpine corporation.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:37:05):
Yeah. Which is now owned by Constellation. But yes, as Chris said, the Geisers is the largest operating geothermal field in the world.
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (00:37:15):
It’s pretty impressive.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:37:16):
Yeah. And Calpine has a visitor center as well that you don’t have to have an appointment or to a report.
(00:37:23):
(00:37:23):
It’s very informative.
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (00:37:24):
It’s really neat. They got all the topographical maps and it’s pretty amazing.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:37:29):
Awesome. Yeah. Well, kick it to you. You can speak more about that regional project and then, and if there’s anything you would want to add in around how you’ve worked with actually incorporating project labor agreements or how you do that as a way to exemplify that, because not everyone comes from the labor space. So maybe you can speak to that miles too, and then we’ll speak of it more later.
Miles Horton, Sonoma Clean Power (00:37:50):
Yeah, fantastic. Thanks so much for having me. And then thank you, especially the climate center for tapping me in last minute here. So I’m Miles Horton with Sonoma Clean Power. We are a locally owned public power provider, CCA serving Sonoma and Mendocino counties. And the kind of dawn of this journey for us was really back in 2022 when we were approaching 100% clean energy that we were serving our customers somewhat faster than the rest of the state, which we’re really proud of. And we realized we need things that can … We need a lot more energy that can work when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing and batteries charged by those resources are already empty or depleted. So think of that long, dark week in the winter or four in the morning, whatever, right? So we quickly honed in on this next generation geothermal as the right solution for us and we think for the whole state and actually the world for a couple of reasons.
(00:38:52):
So one is, again, like Caity and Ann talked about, it has this ability to operate in a wide variety of locations. Wherever hot rock comes close to the earth’s surface, you don’t need natural fractures, you don’t need lots of water, you can do it pretty adaptively. But then we also liked that, like Chris talked about, like everyone’s talked about, that it has this potential to create really well paid, highly skilled jobs and reinvest in the local community, right? And so we launched this geozone initiative to try to drive the development of a significant amount of new next generation geothermal power in our service area, in Sonoma and Mendocino counties. And quickly, we ran into three big challenges that I’m just going to touch briefly on and then happy to dive into more. So one is the regulatory environment in California. It’s just not favorable to these kinds of technologies.
(00:39:52):
CalGEM, the state agency that oversees geothermal has been in pre-rulemaking on just updating its existing rules for the technology that’s existed for 70 years since 2018. So let alone trying to sort of permit new stuff, right? I mean, it’s very round peg square hole if you’re trying to do something new and different with these regulations that not only are written for the existing technology, but were written back in the ’80s or whatever it is. We’re also in a situation where the federal policy, which is really the law of the land and most of these other states that we’re competing with, says that the exploration well does not have to go through environmental review, assuming you take some basic precautions to protect the environment. And so like in Nevada or Utah, you can just drill that exploration well pair. You don’t have to do environmental review.
(00:40:42):
You still do it on the project itself, but during that really high risk exploration phase, you don’t have to go through this. In California, you could have years of CEQA just to find out if you even have a project. So that’s a big challenge. That’s just two quick examples. There’s many others. So the regulatory environment was one big challenge. The geology in California is better for this kind of next generation geothermal stuff. There’s more heat close to the surface, but it’s also more complex. There’s more layers of rock that are poorly understood. There’s more gases, fractures, different things you have to navigate. And I’ll talk in a second about what we’re trying to do to address that. And then the third is access to transmission. So actually, just to build something in Sonoma County to serve our customers in Sonoma County, we have to be able to prove we can get that power to LA during a summer heat wave when the grid is maxed out.
(00:41:32):
And the problem is no matter how good it is, 97% of the time, no matter how good it is, again, in that long, dark week in the winter, it’s not going to outcompete a solar panel in current county in terms of our ability to get that to LA during the summer, because there’s transmission constraints between us and LA. And so that needs to be fixed too, if we’re going to have a shot here, because that really applies to most of the state. And so we looked at this whole landscape, and I think our thinking is this is the kind of thing that could really move the needle for the state of California on not only climate change, but also again, reinvesting in our communities, creating these high quality jobs. But more broadly too, I think our thought is California needs to take the lead if this technology is going to be catalyzed in time to be used around the world.
(00:42:27):
Well, there’s still time to make a difference on the climate in the next couple decades here. So we’ve gone all in on trying to make this happen in California. The other challenge I’ll just allude to briefly is, again, because of those three issues I mentioned, the developers just want to, and this isn’t a blame thing, this is just the reality, they want to build out of state and sell into the California market. And so without naming the project, I had the chance to go with two of our Sonoma County supervisors to Beaver County, Utah, which there’s a major, major project. My sister works there actually. So again, this is not a critical thing, but there’s a major project being paid for entirely by contracts with California load serving entities, and we’re meeting with the head of economic development for Beaver County, and she’s like, “Yeah, I mean, the money and jobs are just pouring in.
(00:43:13):
It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen.” And I made eye contact with one of the supervisors and we’re like, “Oh my God, how do we have this for ourselves?” So I think what we’re trying to do is overall create an environment where developers want to come build in California and we can really get these projects that we’re paying for, the California rate payer is paying for to meet our climate goals are happening when possible in the state of California. And so I’ll just touch very briefly on some projects we’re working on and then I’ll wrap it up. But on the regulatory environment, the single biggest thing we can do is exempt the exploration phase from CEQA. And we had a bill last year with assembly member PAPIN, and we’re just incredibly grateful to the operating engineers for the deep partnership on that one that said, “Hey, if you have an exploration project that meets the gold standard of protecting the environment that conducts tribal consultation, so you’re protecting tribal resources and then uses a skilled and trained workforce that’s paid at least the prevailing wage.” So really just this very high quality project, you’re exempt from CEQA.
(00:44:21):
And then if that turns into a whole power plant, that has to go through CEQA, but you only have to do it once. That could really, really move the needle. On the geology side, this was already talked about. What we need to do is drill a series of wells in high potential geologic regions of the state and then release the data. Part of the reason these exploration wells are so hard to finance is that you just don’t know what you’re going to get, right? When I went to Utah, we saw a place where they drilled that exploration well and they said, “Well, the first 4,000 feet we got through in one day, it was just loose sandstone.” The next 4,000 feet took 28 days. And so if you’re the investor, it’s kind of hard to make the case to your boss that this is something you should put money into, right?
(00:45:05):
This could make a ton of money or it could not make money at all or it could lose a lot of money. You just don’t know until that first well is drilled. But once that first well is drilled, if you can release the data, and this is what they did in Utah, and say, “Hey, you know what? We discovered that this kind of drill bit gets through this rock, and that may have taken us 60 hours to discover when we were drilling the first time at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour to keep the project going, but now it takes no time for that next person to just lift that off the page, right?” So we’re trying to get money from the state to drill a series of exploration wells in these high potential geologic regions and release that data so that anyone can come in and there’s kind of no risk.
(00:45:48):
And I actually, I see Sean McNeil, Jeff Hunterlock, a bunch of people in the audience whose organizations have signed onto this letter supporting this, which we really appreciate. And then on the transmission front, this isn’t unique to geothermal, but it’s unique to these resources that are locationally constrained and they can’t just move where there’s transmission capacity available. We need to really reform the way we’re doing transmission in the state of California. What’s happening now is we have a transmission planning process that’s designed for a system with minimal load growth and everything’s just staying the same and there’s no volatility and that is not what’s happening today at all, right? Everything’s changing all the time. And so functionally, most of the state is now off limits to most clean energy because there’s no ability to interconnect. And actually, this is not a criticism, but I’ll just say, going back to the in- state versus out- of-state, the way the California Public Utilities Commission often makes this work is by saying, “Well, if we have … ” I’m just making this up, 10 gigawatts of out- of-state wind from Wyoming, it all pencils out and we don’t need any more transmission.
(00:46:53):
And then the situation gets worse and we’re building less and less in California and they say, “Okay, well, as long as we have 15 gigawatts of out of state wind, it’ll all kind of come together.” And the problem is this may not be real, right? So we’re sponsoring another bill this year to actually look at, okay, what’s the right sized amount that we need, as well as another bill to make it easier to interconnect even with the grid that we have. So we’re really excited. I think these are big challenges, but they’re surmountable, right? And the thing is the demand is here, the geology’s here. If we can overcome these challenges in the next few years, California could really be the world leader on this stuff. So we’re very excited and thank you again for having us.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:47:37):
Awesome. It’s so convincing. Yeah. But I’ll be curious, everyone’s questions. We have a couple minutes before we do audience Q&A. So I would just give it … I mean, there were pieces here around … You explained it, CEQA exemption. I don’t know if everyone was like … But just as an example, what do you think policymakers in the public most misunderstand about geothermal development? Is there anything from your comments where you’re like, you said something that you think maybe people in the room might need a little bit more information on to be convinced that was just an example. I mean, I think you were clear on it, but this is for any of you. What do you think are like the most seismicity, I think was something that was brought up sometimes. I think you spoke to water use. So I think on the environmental side, but otherwise, I don’t know if they’re environmental justice, anything that you think would be useful to continue to make your case to the audience here.
Ann Garth, Clean Air Task Force (00:48:49):
All right. Everybody’s very polite. I think there’s two things. So one is, as with any technology, there’s always some risk. There’s also a lot of ways that those risks can be managed, and I’m not going to bore everyone with the details of exactly how you model your seismicity and ensure that your operator injection pressure is at a certain point, but there’s a lot of deep technical work that’s already been done to figure out how we can set best practices and hopefully sometime soon those will be entried in regulation and required for everyone. So I think that’s really important to recognize. But the other thing that I’ll mention is just stepping a step further back. I think people don’t realize quite how much potential geothermal has, and so that shows up in a whole bunch of ways. Regulations not being updated, right? As Miles mentioned, there’s for capacity reasons maybe, or for whatever reason, CalGEM is just sitting on those regulation updates, but also for things like staffing agencies that process permits, getting those staff actually trained on what is next generation geothermal and how does it work?
(00:49:52):
Getting geothermal included in transmission planning. For a long time, geothermal was not going to be … There’s Salt and C geothermal and there’s Calpine Geiser’s geothermal and that was it. And all of a sudden we’re in a brand new world where you can do geothermal in a bunch more places around the state and the planning processes, the agencies and the staff just have not taken that knowledge on board and started including it in some of these planning processes. It’s like trying to steer the Titanic, right? So I think we’ve got to get that started soon because climate change is not waiting around for us to get these processes sorted, like that is continuing to happen. And so if we want to deploy geothermal on a timeline that actually is going to make a difference for reliability, for affordability, for climate goals, we need to be moving things more quickly.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:50:38):
Yeah. And I think really just to kind of tag on that from Ann, I think that there’s a misconception that geothermal is slow for development because in the past it has been. With the traditional hydrothermal resources, you really had to find that perfect storm of all three of those things that were together in the same place, and you were lucky enough to actually drill into where they all met and not 15 feet that way. But with next generation technologies, it’s really dramatically shortening exploration and development timelines. So I was talking to someone earlier and they were like, “Well, how soon can you have geothermal on the grid here in California?” And I said, “Well, if I didn’t have CEQA and interconnection, I could have power for you in 18 months and like a hundred megawatts of power.” I’m not talking 15 or anything like that.
(00:51:40):
So I think that we need those policy mechanisms in place to help us speed up this development.
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (00:51:54):
I would say this, I am not an expert on this field. I mean, I know about this much about a lot of things, but these are the kind of folks that I rely on to kind of inform me why it’s good for us. And labor has a lot of political muscle, the building trades have a lot of political muscle. And I would say for folks in the room, if you do want to get things done, I mean, you come to us, I mean, it’s really frustrating here. I’m learning a lot this morning too, or this afternoon. The stuff out of state, I mean, those guys, the minimum wage, they don’t have a prevailing wage in Idaho. They don’t have a prevailing wage in Utah. Our tax dollars are going to … 725 is all they have to pay. And we also do all the drilling on these kind of things.
(00:52:40):
And I mean, having our own money actually … And these jobs that we’re talking about, they have a pension. I mean, it’s a very rare thing now. They have a pension, we have retiree medical, there’s good wages. It is like that little piece of the pie economically that is still there for kind of working class people. And it’s really a magical thing. I’m so blessed to be in the role I have because I’ve seen it transform young men and young women’s lives. We’re able to … They show up with baggy jeans, and next thing you know, they’re pulling into the Union Hall with an F-150 and they’re putting their down payment on their first house. And I’ve watched them get married and buy a house and have kids. It’s just been … Labor still is such an important piece to the mix of all this and having us in those conversations can help you all move the ball forward and help us move the ball forward too.
(00:53:37):
And it really is both frustrating and I think there’s a lot of opportunity. And like I said, every community that you live in in California has a local building trades council that you can work with to kind of shape some of these policies and to kind of move the ball forward. And I know all those labor leaders, Jeff does, and it’s kind of the stuff that we’re really looking closer at and really trying to dive into because we see the writing on the wall and we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to sustain our union and our members and our pensions and our healthcare and this lifestyle that we’re used to living with these seismic change is coming down very, very quickly. And things are going to change in DC. I mean, things are bad now, but we got to be ready to take advantage of the things like the Inflation Reduction Act that are going to come back when it is time in a couple of years here.
Miles Horton, Sonoma Clean Power (00:54:29):
Thank you. Yeah, I’ll just be really brief, but I think what I would say just to maybe people’s thinking and what’s a misconception, not in a cheesy way, but like, I think California just needs to wake up, right? We are not on track to meet our climate goals. And in the process of not being on track, we’re missing this big opportunity to reinvest and actually create these jobs and actually be the tip of the spear on these new technologies. And that’s because we’re very, very sacrosanct about things like, again, I hate to say it, but CEQA or our current transmission planning process that made sense 20 years ago or whatever it is. And it’s like, we need to have a reset at this point in time if we’re going to get there and get there in a way that actually benefits people.
(00:54:30):
Ann Garth, Clean Air Task Force (00:55:15):
I just add one comment about CEQA, not disagree with Miles’ fervor, but I’ll just note for everyone’s context, the CEQA exemption in the Sonoma Clean Power Bill from last session, which CETF endorsed, was replicating an exemption from NEPA that BLM did at the federal level after extensive research and evaluation of past projects that identified particular approaches that are very minimally impactful, such as exploration drilling, which is like a very shallow little well and things like that, that kind of identified these are things that you can do that really don’t have harm to the environment. So just for everyone’s context, when we talk about an exemption from CEQA, we’re talking about an exemption from CEQA for a specific category of minimally invasive activities that BLM already did a whole long process to kind of evaluate. So just so everyone’s clear on that.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:56:07):
And I think it’s really key that I heard you say earlier today last year, that bill, it’s the first CEQA exemption bill that CATF has ever endorsed. I mean, and that says a lot.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:56:22):
And I’m guessing I would know the answer to this, but would each of you live, like put your home, your kids next to a geothermal plant?
Ann Garth, Clean Air Task Force (00:56:29):
I mean, then that means we don’t have to rely on natural gas or diesel that could give my kids asthma. So yeah, that sounds great.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (00:56:36):
Yeah. Cool. I mean, I grew up at the base of the Geisers, so yes.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:56:43):
Awesome. Cool. Well, we’re going to open it up to Q&A from the audience. I think that’s … Yeah, thank you. We got one in the back and then we’ll come up to the front, the very, very back of the room in this one.
Speaker 10 (00:57:05):
Well, this is, first of all, my favorite panel of the day. I’m Tim Frank and I happen to serve as the co-director of the CCA Workforce and Environmental Justice Alliance, which has been working with CCAs around the state to encourage adoption of a common package of environmental, environmental justice and labor policies. And Sonoma Clean Power embraced our package about a year and a half ago, so kudos. So I also serve as a consultant for a bunch of building trades councils, and I do a lot of work around climate issues. And the issue for a building trades council is that we represent all the crafts, right? So it’s not just the HVAC techs, not just the electricians, but also the pipe fitters and the operating engineers, et cetera, and the folks that are actually most vulnerable to losing their jobs from the transition away from gas, it’s the operating engineers and the pipe fitters.
(00:57:58):
And if we can find work for them that allows them to continue their career at their current pay level, rather than having to start all over and retrain as an electrician, that’s super important for their earning potential for their lifetime. And so this is a solution for them that makes sure that there’s no loser, right? So that all of the crafts can actually, not only their current members, but also the institutions can survive and thrive as we build a clean energy future. So this is super important stuff. We were thrilled to support your bill last year. We’re thrilled to support the $40 million allocation in the budget that’s recommended this year for the exploratory wells. This is really brilliant sort of entrepreneurial work by Sonoma Clean Power, and it’s something it’s exciting to see. So thank you very much. I think that’s not really a question, but…
(00:57:58):
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (00:58:55):
No, it’s okay. Expertise in the room. Thank you for speaking.
Speaker 10 (00:58:59):
One final note about CEQA, because this is really important. I think it’s the language we use is sometimes a challenge. If you look at what was called a CEQA exemption, wasn’t really an exemption. There was still in CEQA involvement, right? Because every plant, every exploratory well would have required that initial review, which is a CEQA process. It just didn’t require the EIR. So it is actually an initial form of CEQA that actually is doing this exploratory process to make sure you’re not doing any of the bad things and that you’re working with a relatively clean site, et cetera, employing best practices. And that is a component of CEQA and it’s just a tiered component. So if you then follow up and do a full utility scale build out, then you have to do the EIR and you have to do all the specific mitigations associated with that.
(00:59:56):
This is really just a different, more nuanced sequencing of CEQA. Awesome.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:00:04):
Thank you for that. Yeah. Communications frame is important. I think we had this gentleman in the blue velvet. Love that. And then we’ll continue on.
Speaker 7 (01:00:16):
Somebody said that these welds can be done pretty much any place. Does the proximity to earthquake falls, active falls, play any role in this?
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (01:00:30):
The geologist
(01:00:33):
(01:00:33):
Yeah. Hashtag not a geoscientist. So for traditional hydrothermal geothermal systems, which is all of the geothermal in the United States right now, proximity to faulting is important because that faulting creates those pathways, that permeability that Anne mentioned underground that the fluid is able to move through and heat up. With next generation technologies, it’s not something that we’re worried about or looking for. That’s not to say that we’re not looking to develop in those areas. But the great thing about next generation geothermal is that it’s really expanding where geothermal can be developed. So hydrothermal could still come in and develop in those areas where there’s the faulting and the natural fractures and so forth. And next generation can be stepped out further and further to where hydrothermal does not work.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:01:33):
And does not necessarily, I hear, increase the risk, maybe the risk to the plant of being on a thing, but the actual technology itself would not trigger necessarily earthquakes. I don’t know if that was part of your question.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (01:01:47):
So anytime you’re digging into the earth, there are seismic risks. But within geothermal, in enhanced geothermal systems, which do use wellbore stimulation to create those underground network fracture networks, there are very strict policies that are followed. The Department of Energy and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory worked together to develop an induced seismicity avoidance framework. And the project that Miles was talking about out in Utah, they use that system and it’s essentially a traffic light system. So they have seismometers set up for miles around the project site that are constantly monitoring for any sort of seismic activity. And there’s different levels based on these scales that LBNL set up. And if they reach, I think it’s two point something is the low one. It changes the yellow from on your traffic light. And that actually causes a stoppage of drilling until they come down. And then if it’s a little bit higher, it’s red, and then that actually causes a longer stoppage of drilling.
(01:03:09):
I believe, I don’t think Fervo ever tripped.
Ann Garth, Clean Air Task Force (01:03:14):
No project using that protocol over the last decade has ever created induced seismicity strong enough to be felt by people. So we know that it works.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:03:24):
Thank you. Maybe right here in front … Or did you raise your hand? And then we’ll go to you.
Speaker 11 (01:03:33):
Thank you. Chris, just wondering how involved are the unions or is the union in sort of advocating for these important barrier reductions in California? In my experience, when the unions weigh one way or the other heavily, action follows. So I’m just curious, how involved are you guys
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (01:03:56):
In this process? Well, the Bill, Pap and Bill, I spoke on it. Like I said, we’re setting up a climate kind of policy institute right now that behind you, Jeff. He just started this month, so we’re pretty excited about that. But we’re getting more and more involved. I mean, we finally got our heads out of the sand instead of opposition, opposition, opposition. And we still are supporting … We could do both at the same time. So yeah, I mean, we’re getting more involved in it and we’re paying attention. And not only this, I mean, Jeff also, we worked on offshore wind heavily up in Humboldt, all the solar, all the … We’re looking at carbon capture. We’re looking at the whole … With the hydrogen hubs piece, I know this isn’t that panel, but we actually were the owners with the UC system for the corporation that the money was going to pass through before it got yanked.
(01:04:49):
So I’m pretty excited to be in my role in this time and space. And I have two kids that are in high school right now and they’re always like, “Why you got to be for the oil and I got to go to Chevron.” So I mean, it makes me feel good about coming to work too and really being a part of the solution instead of just continually oppositional and coming into spaces like this and saying, “Hey, yeah, we are going to be on different sides at times, but at the same time, we want to be part of the solution and not a barrier.” And there is, I mean, all these, it is really, going back to my previous comments, these jobs, these skill sets, once you learn them, you can’t take away a crane operator’s ability to hoist something, whether it’s in a refinery or at a geothermal plant we’re building, they’re not new because some folks come to me and like, “Oh, we need to create an entire new apprenticeship program around these new technologies coming online.” But we don’t.
(01:05:47):
We already have it. We have 4,000 acres right outside of Sacramento with over 200 pieces of equipment that we train on. We’re building a two acre pole barn now to train during the rainy season two. And so we’re investing in the youth of California, both men and women, and these are the next high speed rail. I mean, you go on and on and on. All these things we’re heavily involved in and it’s kind of exciting. Thank
Miles Horton, Sonoma Clean Power (01:06:14):
You. Yeah. Yeah. I just got to say really briefly, I mean, the partnership with the operating engineers and the building trades more broadly. And thank you, Tim. I think I missed you in the first round of thank you. It just made all the difference, right? I mean, people don’t know what Sonoma clean power is. Probably most people could not find Sonoma County on a map. So our ability to come into the Capitol and push these important changes now proactively, which we’re continuing, we’re not there yet, but we’ve had some wins and we’re continuing to try. It’s made all the difference. So thank you for the question.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:06:47):
Love it. I’m from Sonoma County. I’m just loving all the Sonoma County love today right there in the back with the white shirt.
Speaker 12 (01:06:57):
Thank you. I’m Herb Bearstock with Climate Action California and also with the United Nations Association. A comment, I appreciate your elaborating on both the risks and opportunities. Back in the mid 1980s, China requested help on geothermal in Tibet because hydropower would of course freeze and it was a long distance to transport fossil fuels and the United Nations came in with a project. But one of the issues that they exploited was what to do with the residual water that was pumped up after it had driven the turbines or the heat. And what they did is they ran piping through greenhouses and had a tremendous amount of vegetables that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. And then there was also the residual heat and they used some of that for space heating in the village for homes. So they had piping systems. But of course, the risk is what do you do now?
(01:08:00):
Some of the next generation will still have some of the same opportunities and problems, but of course for the current stuff, including up the initial ones up in Sonoma, there were some questions what to do with all that residual water that was being pumped into the ground or was a difficulty because that was not the normal temperature of water and heat that was being exhausted.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (01:08:27):
Yeah. Thanks for that. The question in this point, I realize we were really talking up here from a power production point of view and geothermal is not just power production. There are so many other uses of the technology. Anytime for both hydrothermal as well as enhanced geothermal systems, you do have to reinject water back into the subsurface. It’s a very, and as I said earlier, I am not a scientist, I’m a policy person. I used to be a kindergarten teacher, but it’s this very nuanced, balanced system that is related to pressure as well as temperature and all of that. And so if you’re not putting the water back in, you’re throwing that off and it’ll stop producing. So you do have to inject back in. And that’s one of the problems they saw at the Geisers back in the 80s and 90s is they were pulling too much out and not putting enough back in, and they saw huge decreases.
(01:09:28):
And now they actually bring gray water up.
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (01:09:30):
My shower I took this morning was being injected back in. Yeah.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (01:09:34):
Yeah. But there’s also a lot of cascaded uses that can be done with geothermal that we don’t necessarily do here in the US, but they do in other parts of the world that we should probably be looking a little bit more closely at. I spent some time working in East Africa and working with a company there who was a power producer, but they wanted to build an entire geothermal village, so to speak, that they produced their power and then they took … The fluid lost some heat during that process, but it was still hot and would use it for milk pasteurization and for aquaculture to grow fish, to dry crops rather than leaving them out in the sun to be eaten by the insects. So I think there’s a lot of different uses, thermal energy networks, as you were saying, taking some of that waste heat, piping it through.
(01:10:34):
I think there’s a lot of opportunity for ground source heat pumps to be used for heating and cooling of buildings. Those do have to be installed or they don’t have to be installed, but it’s much more financially viable to install than at construction rather than coming back in retrofitting later. But there’s a lot of options that are out there that here in the US we should probably focus a little bit more on.
Speaker 7 (01:11:01):
Awesome.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:11:03):
Okay. Sorry about that. I’m sorry everybody, but we are coming to a close. So maybe come up afterwards and talk to the panelists if they’re here. Sorry not to volunteer your time. One closing question for each of you to answer, if you could make one change tomorrow to accelerate geothermal development in California, what would it be?
Miles Horton, Sonoma Clean Power (01:11:28):
I’d probably elect myself governor so I could fix all three in one fell swoop.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:11:33):
No cheating.
Miles Horton, Sonoma Clean Power (01:11:35):
No, I think the biggest thing we could do, I think Tim put it really well. It’s not really a CQA exemption in the sense of like go slash and burn the environment, but if we could have a pathway to regulatory predictability for that exploration well and not have that secret risk, not only would that, again, really move the needle on making California so much more appealing, but it would just send this message to the developers that I think we’re open for business and we want you here because that’s really not the message we’re sending today.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:12:07):
Great. So if you’re part of the coalition that works on CEQA, maybe you guys should have more conversations about that.
Chris Snyder, IUOE Local 3 (01:12:14):
Yeah. I would say everything Miles and folks set up here and we’re just work with labor, work with us. We’re here to be partners and our doors are completely open and we really are in these very desperate times, but totally open to thinking outside the box and trying to get the ball moving on this and yeah, work with all these folks on that.
Ann Garth, Clean Air Task Force (01:12:45):
I would say start planning transmission with geothermal in mind. I have had recently talked to five or six of the leading next generation geothermal developers and I said, “If you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing, what would you fix? What’s your biggest barrier?” And they all said transmission and interconnection. So it’s a seller’s market for geothermal right now. There are a lot of states that want geothermal and there’s a lot of startups that have limited capacity to do projects. The place that they’re going to interconnect is the place they’re going to build, period.
Caity Smith, XGS Energy (01:13:19):
Well, I’m one of those five developers, so Ann just stole my answer, but I would say the other big change that we need to see is increased dedicated geothermal permitting capacity and staff at the state agencies. There’s not the people who have the knowledge to process all of the requests that could be coming in to really grow the industry.
Julia Sebastian, Jobs with Justice San Francisco (01:13:49):
Thank you all. Yeah. Thank you Climate Center for having this. I imagine people are in this room because maybe you’re interested in it or you have some kind of power within your own organization. The point of conferences like this are for us to mobilize and take action. So thank you for laying out specific things. May we be in a different place next year? It’s cool to hear that this technology really launched 2022 and that’s not that long ago, so we’ll see what we can do. Thank you all.