New Law Could Put Geothermal On Equal Footing With Oil And Gas

Nearly two decades ago, President George W.Bush’s administration passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that ‘‘…provides categorical exclusions from National Environmental Policy Act reviews for permitting for drilling in public lands where drilling has occurred within the last five years,  or where an approved environmental evaluation was completed within the last five years”.Interestingly, this special privilege only applies to oil and gas fields but not to geothermal energy, despite the latter being…