The potential of geothermal energy in the West is vast and offers significant advantages in the effort to expand renewable energy resources. Advances in technology and increased interest in developing domestic sources of low-cost, reliable, clean energy have brought greater attention to the energy potential of the heat beneath our feet.

As Chair of the Western Governors’ Association in 2023, Colorado Governor Jared Polis launched The Heat Beneath Our Feet initiative to examine opportunities for and barriers to the accelerated development and deployment of geothermal energy technologies.

Through a rigorous stakeholder process that included four workshops, six tours, a public survey, and a webinar series, the Heat Beneath Our Feet initiative generated recommendations for increasing the development and deployment of geothermal energy in the West.

In this episode of Out West, Governor Polis shares some of his experiences from the initiative and discusses the policy recommendations outlined in the initiative report. You’ll also hear from Amanda Kolker, the laboratory program manager for geothermal at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Dr. Joseph Moore and Dr. John Mclennan, the Managing Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator at the Utah FORGE Laboratory; Nick Goodman, the CEO of Cyrq Energy, and Paul Thomsen, the Vice President of Business Development at Ormat Technologies Inc.