From Legal Insurrection

The Geothermal Energy Opportunity (GEO) Act has recently been introduced in congress to help clear the regulatory burdens hindering the development of this potentially important resource.

by Leslie Eastman

The Geothermal Energy Opportunity (GEO) Act has recently been introduced in congress to help clear the regulatory burdens hindering the development of this potentially important resource.

Posted by Leslie Eastman Monday, June 30, 2025 at 03:00pm 3 Comments

The U.S. stands at a pivotal crossroads in its energy future. As artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates its transformation of industries and daily life, the nation’s appetite for electricity is surging to unprecedented levels.

AI data centers are already consuming about 4% of U.S. electricity, with projections indicating this could rise to 12–15% by 2030. The explosive growth of AI, from large language models to autonomous vehicles, is placing strains on the power grid.

Based on some recent discussions I have had with friends and my geologist husband, I assert that geothermal energy deserves urgent and serious consideration alongside fossil fuels and nuclear power as the perfect “trifecta” for America’s energy strategy. Unlike intermittent renewables, geothermal offers stable, 24/7 baseload power… reliability that is essential for supporting the always-on demands of AI-driven data centers, our critical infrastructure, and the electricity needs of U.S. consumers.

Also, and most importantly, it leverages existing American expertise in drilling and subsurface engineering, providing a pathway for oil and gas workers use their talents to expand our nation’s energy options.

There have been some critical breakthroughs in recent years that make utilizing geothermal energy more effective and efficient. There have been significant advances in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), which enable geothermal energy production in areas previously deemed unsuitable due to a lack of natural permeability or water resources.  A DOE-funded project conducted by the University of Utah demonstrates the enormous potential for developing this particular energy source.

A major University of Utah-led geothermal research project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), achieved a critical breakthrough in April after hydraulically stimulating and circulating water through heated rock formations a mile and a half beneath its drill site in the Utah desert and bringing hot water to the surface. The test results are seen as an important step forward in the search for new ways to use Earth’s subsurface heat to produce hot water for generating emissions-free electricity. The successful well stimulations and a nine-hour circulation test were the fruits of years of planning and data analysis at the Utah FORGE facility near Milford, 175 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

As highlighted in the recent Issues & Insights article, new geothermal projects are coming online with greater efficiency and lower costs, thanks to innovations such as closed-loop systems and enhanced geothermal systems.

These common drilling techniques should enable geothermal developers to reach “hot spots” located deeper below the surface than thought possible just a few years ago. They could also expand the map for geothermal development far beyond the Western states.

Small wonder that investor interest in geothermal energy has surged in recent years, with more than $1 billion raised since 2022. Tech companies on the hunt for suppliers of baseload electricity to power their data centers see the potential of geothermal energy. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta – all heavyweights in the booming AI/data center sector – have all inked contracts with geothermal developers.

…Geothermal’s potential to join fossil fuels and nuclear energy in powering America’s economy in the years to come far exceeds anything weather-dependent wind and solar could ever match. With the House version of the budget reconciliation bill accelerating the phase-out of the subsidies that prop them up, these once-coddled industries are scrambling to stay relevant.

As the article notes, bureaucratic bungling has been the biggest hurdle for geothermal energy to overcome. Therefore, Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT) has introduced the Geothermal Energy Opportunity Act (GEO Act, H.R. 301), which aims to expedite the federal permitting process for geothermal energy projects.

She is also pairing it with another piece of legislation to help peel back the layers of regulatory tape.

…[T]he permitting process for geothermal energy production itself needs to be shortened, Garfield said, calling out the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a 1970 law that requires the federal government to conduct an environmental review before moving forward with infrastructure projects.

{Deputy Director of the Utah Office of Energy Development Jake] Garfield said offering geothermal projects certain exemptions under NEPA would help the industry — like what’s being proposed by Maloy through her Geothermal Energy Opportunity Act, which requires the U.S. Department of Interior to process a geothermal drilling permit within 60 days.

Maloy is also sponsoring the Streamlining Thermal Energy through Advanced Mechanisms Act, which gives the geothermal industry the same flexibility as the oil and gas industry, cutting some of the regulations when pursuing a project on public land that’s already been studied or disturbed by industry.

With governments and private investors increasingly recognizing the potential of geothermal energy, I believe the sector is poised for significant growth in the coming years. As an added bonus, geothermal plants are not known to kill whales or bald eagles.

Image by perplexity.ai.

From ClimateREALISM

By Linnea Lueken

NewScientist, a publication dedicated to popularizing science, recently published a post titled “Extreme winter weather isn’t down to a wavier jet stream,” reporting on a new study that shows, the jet stream is not getting wavier in winter months due to climate change. This is true, and it has been evident for some time, but runs counter to assertions commonly made by climate alarmists.

NewScientist writes that “[i]ncreasingly erratic winter weather in the northern hemisphere isn’t a result of the polar jet stream getting more wavy, according to new research . . ..”

Although the vast bulk of the article is devoted to insisting that climate change is causing worsening winter and summer weather, claims regularly debunked at Climate Realism, the publication deserves some credit for reporting the study’s results concerning the jet stream, which was, in fact, the focus of the research itself.

The new reports findings are not actually that “new,” in the sense that Climate Realism has reported on research that came to the same conclusion several times in the past few years, here, here, and here, for instance. There is copious evidence showing that not only are cold snaps not uncommon, but that the jet stream’s (and more specifically, polar vortex) influence on extreme winter weather has been acknowledged since at least 1853. Years of studies looking at the frequency of and intensity of polar vortex events have found no consistent trends. As pointed out by my colleague Anthony Watts in this post on the subject, “a 2021 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found no statistically significant increase in jet stream waviness or meandering in recent decades,” and he explains there has never been a consensus among scientists when it comes to the issue of polar vortex/jet stream behavior.

The post at NewScientist goes on to explain the new study, saying “recent erratic behaviour isn’t out of the ordinary,” and that the jet stream has been both wavier and less wavy than it is today.

Unfortunately, that is where the NewScientist and the authors of the paper it was discussing ceased to follow the evidence. One of the study’s authors reassured NewScientist that climate change is still “affecting extreme weather events in all sorts of really important ways,” and that the jet stream is actually becoming wavier in the summertime, “where it is getting slower, with bigger waves, which leads to things like big heatwaves, drought, and wildfires.”

This would be compelling if existing data backed up the claim, but, in fact, big heatwaves, drought, and wildfires have not become more frequent or severe in recent decades. Heatwaves were much more severe in the earlier decades of the 20^th century, and overall drought has been declining while precipitation increases. Now that it is summer, many outlets are attempting to claim that hot weather is driven by climate change. In doing so they almost always ignore where heat records are being set, as it is often at airports and other heat-absorbing locations, and ignore historical records that show hot summers are not unprecedented.

Similarly, data shows that wildfires were worse in the past with research from NASA and the European Space Agency showing that acreage lost to wildfires has declined markedly over the past few decades.

The NewScientist, and the AGU study it references, should have quit when they were ahead. They should have published their unalarming findings about climate change’s lack of an impact on the winter jet stream without then assuring people that despite their study’s findings, they really are true believers and climate change is making weather worse. The latter point is refuted by real world data.

In What Are Building Societies For? I took aim at my local building society (the Cumberland) for its ongoing campaign to persuade customers to sign up to the Cogo app. The aim was to persuade customers to allow a third party organisation (Cogo) to have access to their accounts in order to assess their spending patterns:

The app highlights ways for you to improve and compensate for your climate change impact by using Open Banking to view your bank transactions and access real-time information about your carbon footprint, enabling you to become a more conscious consumer.

I was annoyed about this, because I didn’t think that small and local building societies should be embarking on a campaign to inveigle its customers into such political behaviour. Even more importantly, I didn’t think they should be doing anything which might increase the risk (however slightly) of their financial information being misused or their accounts being hacked.

It seems that this behaviour on the part of the Cumberland’s board of directors was not a one-off. Today I received the papers for its annual general meeting, and this included a special resolution to amend its Memorandum and Rules, so as to allow the society to apply for B Corporation certification. Members were told that “a B Corp is an organisation which has been verified by B Lab, a global nonprofit network, to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability.”

Furthermore:

To become certified an organisation is required to demonstrate high social and environmental performance; make a legal commitment by changing the corporate governance structure to ensure that it is accountable to all stakeholders; and exhibit transparency by allowing information about its performance to be measured against B Lab’s standards.

I was none too happy about this development either. Why on earth would the society’s board take it upon itself to allow a third party organisation, accountable to nobody, to sit in judgement on its activities? Worse, why would it invite its members to agree to amend its constitution to allow this external interference to take place? So far as I am concerned, I expect the board of directors to behave in an ethical way, to act in the best interests of its employees and members, and I expect it to comply with the laws of the UK, as an organisation operating in England and Scotland. I also expect its activities to be supervised by the Financial Conduct Authority, and by any other governmental or regulatory authorities in the UK with the remit to ensure it complies with the law and all financial regulations governing its activities. But that’s it.

Anyway, who/what on earth is B Lab? After all, the Cumberland Building Society AGM papers enlighten us no further than telling us that it is “a global nonprofit network”. To my mind this is inadequate information to supply to members when inviting them to agree to such a far-reaching step as the amendment of the organisation’s constitution in this way. And so I went in search of the information that should have been supplied by the Cumberland’s board of directors. I tracked down its website, and particularly its “about” page which tells us that it is a US-based charity (or nonprofit organisation):

We began in 2006 with the idea that a different kind of economy was not only possible, but necessary — and that business could lead the way towards a new, stakeholder-driven model. B Lab became known for certifying B Corporations, which are companies that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

But we do much more than that. We’re building the B Corp movement to change our economic system — and to do so, we must change the rules of the game. B Lab creates standards, policies, tools, and programs that shift the behavior, culture, and structural underpinnings of capitalism. We mobilize the B Corp community towards collective action to address society’s most critical challenges.

By harnessing the power of business, B Lab positively impacts companies around the world, helping them balance profit with purpose. Together, we are shifting our global economy from a system that profits few to one that benefits all: advancing a new model that moves from concentrating wealth and power to ensuring equity, from extraction to generation, and from prioritizing individualism to embracing interdependence.

We won’t stop until all business is a force for good.

Which is all well and good, and I suppose I’m vaguely on board with that, but how dare the Cumberland Building Society’s board of directors think that its constitution should be amended so that these values are imposed on its members? By the way, the board knows that the special resolution will be passed, since it achieves approval levels at AGMs that would make Putin and Kim Jong Un envious. Its membership is usually harangued on attendance in-branch in the run-up to the AGM by put-upon staff to let them deal with the AGM paperwork by putting a X in the box that appoints the board’s nominee as proxy to vote on all of the resolutions. I wonder if this behaviour complies with B Lab’s standards? But I digress.

Elsewhere on B Lab’s website we find this:

As the climate crisis intensifies and societal inequality grows, the need to bring about systemic change is clear. That’s why B Lab has strengthened its standards for business impact, equipping companies to drive meaningful, sustainable change….

…B Lab’s new standards require businesses to take meaningful action across key social, environmental, and governance Impact Topic areas….

Again, I don’t think this sort of political stance is remotely something that a small regional UK building society should be involving itself with. Worse still for a self-confessed climate sceptic, is this:

…the new Climate Action Impact Topic requires larger companies to set science-based targets for their Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions… To set credible science-based targets and ensure claims are accurate, companies must have their GHG inventories verified by an accredited third party. Additionally, their targets must be validated by the Science-Based Targets Initiative or verified by an independent third party.

Acting on climate change is not just an environmental imperative—it’s also becoming a business necessity. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, it’s crucial for smaller companies (Small and Medium Enterprises – SMEs) to take action now, rather than delaying efforts in the pursuit of perfecting emissions measurement. Measuring GHG emissions can be particularly resource-intensive for smaller companies. These businesses may also face the risk of greenwashing if they set targets without relying on accurate and verified emissions data. 

Therefore, this Impact Topic emphasizes action and requires smaller companies to have a climate action plan with measurable targets that don’t rely on GHG measurements but still demonstrate their commitment to the Paris Agreement. The key expectation is that companies demonstrate real, tangible actions and track their progress, without necessarily needing perfect GHG data. Likely focus areas for smaller companies include business travel, purchased goods/services, and transportation….

…Additionally, SMEs are required to publicly share their climate action plans and progress, ensuring their efforts are credible and accountable to stakeholders….

B Lab’s 2023 Annual Global Report tells us that it “helps rewrite the rules of the game. In 2023, our community mobilized to advocate for policies aligned with our social, environmental, and governance standards in…” various countries around the world, including the UK. It brags about “Nudging Behavior Change, Turning Climate Awareness into Action”.

We also find overlap with my research in Avarice in Funderland when it comes to finding out who funds B Lab. The biggest donor (in 2023) was Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn. He was followed by, inter alia, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (a search of its website brings up 45 separate articles referencing climate change); Porticus (“our climate is no longer ‘changing’, it’s a full-blown emergency.”); the Rockefeller Foundation, and many, many more.

Its 2024 Global Annual Report includes information like this:

In December 2024, B Lab U.S. & Canada celebrated a major policy win with the passage of New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act—a groundbreaking law that will hold major polluters financially responsible for the cost of climate damage. As part of the New York Businesses for Climate Justice coalition, B Corps across the state helped push for this legislation, which is projected to raise $75 billion over 25 years from the largest oil and gas companies. The funds will support infrastructure upgrades to enhance New York’s climate resilience, including stormwater and sewage systems and grid modernization. The success of this work in New York has also inspired work in 2025 on a similar bill in California.

I may be alone among the members of the Cumberland Building Society in not being happy about this, or others might be unhappy too, if they knew what it was all about. But they don’t, because the information supplied by the board was limited, to say the least. And I’m angry about that. Needless to say, I have voted against the proposed rule change and I have also voted against all the directors, for having the audacity to propose this nonsense to its membership. I want directors who are interested in the day job rather than in saving the planet.

As I asked, rather plaintively, at the end of my earlier article about the shenanigans at the Cumberland Building Society:

Remind me. What are building societies for?