Geothermal interest in southern Colorado

State Land Board issues request for proposals in five counties, three of them in the San Luis Valley

by Allen Best

The State Land Board manages 3 million acres of land across Colorado with the principal goal being to generate revenue for public schools.

The question before the agency is whether geothermal resources could create revenue while furthering Colorado’s decarbonization goals.

Last year the Land Board issued a request for information. Eleven companies responded with interest in potentially 50,000 acres in various parts of Colorado.

Working with these companies and others, the Land Board staff has come up with state parcels in five counties in southern Colorado that may be of interest to geothermal developers. It has now issued a request for proposals.

The Land Board properties are in Las Animals County (Trinidad) on the east and La Plata County (Durango) on the west. Most of the sites are in the San Luis Valley counties of Alamosa, Rio Grande and Saguache.

Most of the State Land Board sites are in the San Luis Valley, including one in Saguache County (top photo(,

Why there? Christopher Smith, assistant director for energy innovation, conjectured that it may have to do with the Rio Grande Rift. That geologic feature coincides with the eponymously named river and has relatively recent volcanic activity. The San Luis Valley has hot springs, a manifestation of heat closer to the surface.

Too, it may also have to do with access to transmission lines. If you are going to produce electricity, crucial is getting the electricity to market. Access to water can also be a consideration. That can be a problem everywhere in Colorado, of course.

In enhanced geothermal, the heat found deep underground can be tapped to create electricity. This has been done for many decades elsewhere in the world, including an area of northern California that has enough heat and pressure to produce geysers. Subterranean heat in Nevada also allows production of electricity there.

Fervo Energy has been drawing interest in Colorado since at least October 2023, when a company representative spoke to the Colorado Rural Electric Association about the company’s drilling in Utah. In May, with more success under its belt, Fervo raised $1.89 billion in its initial public offering.

Other companies are also in the hunt for turning the corner on this technology. In this, they have the full blessings of the Trump administration, unlike other forms of renewable energy.

In June 2024, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis predicted that enhanced geothermal could provide 4% to 8% of Colorado’s electricity by 2040. During the last year, managers of several electrical cooperatives in Colorado have indicated they believe that geothermal will help them reduce emissions associated with their electric portfolios.

These parcels in the five Southern Colorado counties are what the companies told the Land Board were the most desirable areas.

“I think that’s a resource there, and I think that, for one reason or another, it may be easier to access, whether that’s geologically easier or maybe it’s just easier to get it permitted within those jurisdictions,” said the Land Board’s Smith. “We don’t know any of that for sure at this point, and we aren’t necessarily seeking the reasons why.”

The companies that have responded to the Land Board’s previous request for information have not been publicly identified yet, although they will be in time. They range from large companies to small ones to companies the Land Board staff had never heard of before, said Smith.

They had shown interest in various places in Colorado, including Craig as well as in Pueblo County. Again, the reason for the interest in those areas was not disclosed.

That first step was simply to gather facts, and this stage is to get more specificity about what’s possible.

“We’re in kind of our first round of geothermal. I think if this proves to be a successful line of business, then we hope to expand into other areas (of Colorado) that meet the criteria, not just for us, but for the individual counties, for the developers and for stakeholders like Colorado Parks and Wildlife. We don’t know what phase two looks like yet because we don’t know how phase one is going to go.”

Deadline for proposals in response to the RFP will be Sept. 20. Each proposal will then be evaluated based on the applicant’s: