As part of its efforts to lease land for renewable energy production, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctioned leases for 33 geothermal parcels in Nevada on Nov. 14, fetching just over $1 million.
The sale offered 45 parcels totaling 134,866 acres in 12 counties. Bids were received for 33 parcels, covering 96,605 acres.
The leases went to eight bidders, according to results published by BLM. TLS Geothermics Corp. won leases for eight parcels. The French company also won leases for five Nevada parcels in a geothermal auction last year.
Zanskar Geothermal and Minerals won leases for six parcels. Zanskar’s mission is to discover geothermal energy faster using big data, the Utah-based company’s website states.
Ormat Technologies and Photosol US each won five leases. Norte Geothermal won leases for four parcels, and FLHN 1 LLC won three.
Rodatherm Energy Corp. and Baseload Power U.S. won leases for one parcel each.
BLM issues geothermal leases for 10 years. Following the auction, the winning bidders must submit site-specific proposals before energy development can begin.
Nov. 14’s auction, which earned $1.025 million, was smaller in scope than BLM’s Nevada geothermal lease auction last year. The bureau’s competitive auction in August 2022 brought in $3.3 million for 66 Nevada geothermal parcels totaling 192,912 acres.
And those results are a far cry from a BLM auction in June that raised a record-breaking $105 million. That auction was for four parcels in the Amargosa Desert in southern Nevada for solar development. (See BLM Holds Record-breaking Solar Auction in Nevada.)
Still, Nov. 14’s auction will help meet the Biden administration’s goal of permitting 25 GW of solar, wind and geothermal production on public lands by 2025, BLM said in a release.
“Issuing geothermal leases is an important piece of the dynamic energy portfolio in Nevada,” Justin Abernathy, BLM Nevada deputy state director of energy and minerals, said in a statement. “BLM carefully analyzed these parcels, and this successful lease sale is the initial phase to developing new, clean energy sources.”
BLM has tentatively scheduled its next competitive geothermal lease sale for October 2024.
Nevada has 26 geothermal power plants in 17 locations, and the state’s geothermal generation capacity of 827 MW is second only to California, according to the Nevada Division of Minerals.
Ormat has several geothermal power plants operating in Nevada. The Reno-based company submitted the highest per-acre bid in Nov. 14’s auction of $130 for a 2,494-acre parcel in Mineral County.
Ormat’s projects include a geothermal power plant in North Valley, Nev., whose completion was announced in May. The project included construction of a 58-mile transmission line in addition to the 25-MW power plant.
But another project Ormat is planning in Nevada has hit a roadblock: A group of plaintiffs filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in January challenging BLM’s approval of Ormat’s geothermal exploration project near the town of Gerlach.
The town is a gateway to the annual Burning Man festival, and plaintiffs in the case include the Burning Man Project, which runs the annual event, as well as the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe of Nevada and Friends of Nevada Wilderness.
The plaintiffs said BLM didn’t consider in its environmental review the potential impacts to “inimitable” hot springs in the area. The defendants also failed to consider impacts of “the future but inevitable large-scale geothermal production project,” the complaint said.
In addition to BLM, the Department of the Interior and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland are named as defendants. The federal defendants have denied the allegations. Parties in the case continue to file briefs.
