Crossing the Barriers: An Analysis of Permitting Barriers to Geothermal Development and Potential Improvement Scenarios

Conference · Wed Oct 04 04:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:1423757

Levine, Aaron L ^[1]; Young, Katherine R ^[1]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Developers have identified many non-technical barriers to geothermal power development, including permitting. Activities required for permitting, such as the associated environmental reviews, can take a considerable amount of time and delay project development. This paper discusses the impacts to geothermal development timelines due to the permitting challenges, including the regulatory framework, environmental review process, and ancillary permits. We identified barriers that have the potential to prevent geothermal development or delay timelines and defined improvement scenarios that could assist in expediting geothermal development and permitting timelines and lead to the deployment of additional geothermal resources by 2030 and 2050: (1) the creation of a centralized federal geothermal permitting office and utilization of state permit coordination offices as well as (2) an expansion of existing categorical exclusions applicable to geothermal development on Bureau of Land Management public lands to include the oil and gas categorical exclusions passed as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. We utilized the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) and the Geothermal Electricity Technology Evaluation Model (GETEM) to forecast baseline geothermal deployment based on previous analysis of geothermal project development and permitting timelines. The model results forecast that reductions in geothermal project timelines can have a significant impact on geothermal deployment. For example, using the ReEDS model, we estimated that reducing timelines by two years, perhaps due to the creation of a centralized federal geothermal permitting office and utilization of state permit coordination offices, could result in deployment of an additional 204 MW by 2030 and 768 MW by 2050 - a 13% improvement when compared to the business as usual scenario. The model results forecast that a timeline improvement of four years - for example with an expansion of existing categorical exclusions coupled with the creation of a centralized federal geothermal permitting office and utilization of state permit coordination offices - could result in deployment of an additional 2,529 MW of geothermal capacity by 2030 and 6,917 MW of geothermal capacity by 2050 - an improvement of 116% when compared to the business as usual scenario. These results suggest that reducing development timelines could be a large driver in the deployment of geothermal resources.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Geothermal Technologies Office (EE-4G)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1423757
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-6A20-68852
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
GeoRePORT
NEPA
development timelines
environmental
geothermal
permitting