This week, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico made it official: the four states are launching the Mountain West Geothermal Consortium, a bipartisan interstate initiative to accelerate the development of geothermal energy across the region.
The announcement came at a Western Governors' Association "Energy Superabundance" workshop in Salt Lake City, with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis leading the rollout. The goal is practical, not aspirational: help states work through the permitting, financing and regulatory barriers that are keeping a proven energy resource from reaching its potential.
And the potential is enormous. The four consortium states currently produce roughly 100 megawatts of geothermal electricity combined. The Department of Energy estimates the U.S. holds 300 gigawatts of geothermal potential — with 75 percent of that resource concentrated in the West. That's not a rounding error. That's roughly equal to the entire U.S. nuclear fleet, sitting beneath our feet in states that already have the workforce, the drilling expertise and the land to develop it.
Why This Matters for the West
Geothermal energy checks every box that should matter to Western policymakers. It delivers reliable, around-the-clock baseload power. It uses the same drilling technologies that made America an oil and gas superpower, which means the skills and supply chains already exist in rural Western communities. And private capital is flooding in: Fervo Energy, which is building the world's largest enhanced geothermal project at Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah, just raised nearly $2 billion in an initial public offering. McKinsey estimates $900 million in private capital has flowed into next-generation geothermal over the past five years, with major tech companies like Google and Meta signing long-term power purchase agreements because they need power they can count on 24 hours a day.
As Zanskar CEO Carl Hoiland put it, Utah is "the heart of the geothermal renaissance." We'd argue the whole Mountain West is.
The Right Approach
What makes the consortium encouraging is its focus on removing barriers rather than picking winners. Michael O'Connor, who will staff the effort, told the Deseret News that the initiative will help developers communicate with utilities about what new resources are coming online, ensure state energy officials understand the latest technological innovations, and work with private sector investors to de-risk new projects. The consortium has also set a 2026 goal to build "high-impact, low-burden interventions" to advance geothermal investment, procurement and regulation across the region.
That's exactly the kind of practical, market-oriented coordination that can unlock billions of dollars in private investment without a single mandate.
It's also bipartisan in the truest sense. Gov. Cox, a Republican who also chairs the Western Governors' Association, said geothermal has "the bipartisan support of an energy source that we haven't had in a long time." Gov. Polis, a Democrat, said the states are leveraging shared resources and expertise to "leap forward on capitalizing on geothermal." When a Republican governor and a Democratic governor are standing together to cut red tape and attract private capital, that's a signal the market fundamentals are real.
Building on Momentum
At The Western Way, we've been tracking the geothermal opportunity closely. Earlier this year, we highlighted a ClearPath report documenting how outdated federal permitting is holding the industry back — including the fact that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 created streamlined permitting for oil and gas exploration but didn't extend it to geothermal, despite using essentially the same drilling technologies. We also covered the International Energy Agency's finding that next-generation geothermal could deliver electricity at around $50 per megawatt-hour by 2035, making it one of the cheapest sources of reliable power available.
The Mountain West Geothermal Consortium is the next logical step: states working together to make sure the regulatory and financial infrastructure keeps pace with the technology and the capital. Gov. Cox's Operation Gigawatt recognizes that Utah needs to double its energy production over the next decade. Geothermal — alongside solar, wind, natural gas, nuclear and battery storage — is a critical piece of that puzzle.
The Bottom Line
The market has made its verdict on geothermal clear. Private capital is moving. The technology is proven. The workforce is ready. The question has always been whether government can get out of its own way fast enough to let the industry deliver. The Mountain West Geothermal Consortium is a promising answer — four states choosing coordination over bureaucracy, and markets over mandates.
The energy business has never been a zero-sum game. This week, four Western governors proved they understand that.