A geothermal energy developer in Colorado received $1 million in funding to help harness the power beneath our feet.
Mt. Princeton Geothermal, led by CEO Hank Held and chief scientist Fred Henderson, was awarded $500,000 as part of the Colorado Energy Office's $12 million Geothermal Energy Grant Program to advance the technology in the state.
Held told The Colorado Sun that Western Geothermal — which merged with Mt. Princeton alongside Reykjavik Geothermal in June — doubled that influx of cash, helping the company inch closer to its goal of drilling two exploratory wells in Chaffee County to access a reservoir 4,500-6,000 feet below the surface near the Rio Grande rift.
While Held noted that Mt. Princeton is seeking more financiers to subsidize its operations, suitors could be part of a "massive investment" of $40 million to $43 million should the wells generate at least 10 megawatts of energy. Despite this, several obstacles lay ahead.
Held and Henderson will encounter plenty of red tape now that the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission adopted a new set of standards for deep geothermal practices in August, making it difficult to get their proposals approved. Henderson added that the state's green energy rules and regulations are already some of the strictest in the nation.
Gudmundur Heidarsson, one of Western Geothermal's investors, shared a different sentiment, stating that he "can't think of a government that's more helpful than the Colorado government" after living in three European countries and three U.S. states.
"I mean of course we're doing something that hasn't really been done in the state, so there's a lot of learning," he continued. "There's a lot of change in legislation and processes that needs to take place. But I've found officials to be easy to get hold of, to be helpful, and also, which I actually appreciate, a little bit careful in terms of making sure nobody's coming in and doing something that is hard to reverse."
There's also the backlash from residents of the Lost Creek Ranch subdivision, who live a mile from where Mt. Princeton plans to drill. Locals believe that 900 private wells could be impacted and that the drilling could trigger an earthquake from a fault line that runs beneath homes and the drill site.
Additionally, opponents are worried about potential noise pollution and odors from the proposed plant. Heidarsson doesn't believe the latter will be an issue, as the team plans to use a closed-loop system that limits air pollution by pumping gases back into the ground after its heat is exhausted.
It's one of many advantages of geothermal energy, which can help shoulder the load of electricity demands when intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind fall short. Though the renewable resource is still in its infancy in the United States — it was responsible for just 0.4% of the country's utility-scale electricity generation in 2022 — several companies have begun exploring the feasibility of geothermal energy, including in California and Nevada.
As for Mt. Princeton and its partners, Heidarsson thinks crews can begin drilling as early as spring.
"But geothermal is one of those industries that just takes a bit of time to get everything right," he added. "It's not just turning on a spigot."
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