WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats in Congress seem to have found a unifying issue, and it’s a hot one lurking beneath the earth’s surface: geothermal energy.

Without objection and without partisan digs from either side, the House on Tuesday passed by voice vote a package of six bills — three from Republicans and three from Democrats — intended to make it easier to permit geothermal projects on public lands.

“When Americans are often told Congress cannot work together across the aisle, this bill is proof that we still can,” said Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Colo., who sponsored the base bill carrying language from all six measures.

Hurd and colleagues from both parties stood on the floor Tuesday to extol the benefits of geothermal exploration, for state and federal economies, for grid reliability and for energy affordability.

Nevada Democrat Susie Lee noted the House Natural Resources Committee had approved the individual measures by a bipartisan voice vote in March, “because members from all corners of the ideological spectrum know that geothermal can make a real difference.”

Lee sponsored one of the bills in the package, and she thanked her Republican and Democratic colleagues for their collaboration.

“I rise today in support of a rare issue that is uniting Americans from the right, the left and the center, geothermal energy, particularly during a time when it too often can feel like Congress can’t agree on anything,” she said.

Hurd’s bill was amended to combine the six bills before it reached the House floor. They consist of measures from:

• Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, to require the Interior Department to approve or deny geothermal applications within 60 days of completing necessary environmental reviews;

• Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., to require the department to develop standards, procedures and guidelines for geothermal permitting;

• Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, to allow geothermal facilities on the same lease to pay different royalties based on each facility’s time in service;

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to allow the DOI to charge fees to recover the costs of reviewing geothermal applications;

• Lee’s bill, which would extend a categorical exclusion from National Environmental Policy Act requirements for geothermal drilling that is conducted in areas where NEPA permitting drilling took place in the last five years; and

• Hurd’s bill, which would require the Interior secretary to establish a geothermal ombudsman at the Bureau of Land Management.

Geothermal potential as power source

Geothermal energy comes from heat produced beneath the earth’s surface. Naturally occurring geothermal systems require heat from subterranean rocks, water and space between the rock to allow the movement of liquid. Enhanced geothermal systems use human-made reservoirs to capture this naturally occurring process by circulating fluid among the hot rocks before bringing it back up into a power facility that harnesses the heat to create electricity.

Geothermal power accounted for about 0.4 percent of the U.S. energy mix in 2025, generated from plants in seven states, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Lee and others saw potential for geothermal power to contribute even more to help meet the nation’s growing electricity needs.

“The future will require more electricity, more reliability, more domestic energy production,” Hurd said. “Geothermal can help meet that challenge.”

Speaking more broadly about a separate bill that would reauthorize drilling application fees to support permitting process change, Kennedy endorsed the concept of relying on multiple sources of energy to power the country.

“The answer isn’t about everything on a single source,’’ he said. “The answer is an all-of-the above energy strategy.”

Even with the bipartisan lovefest Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats took different approaches in their support of the bill. Democrats characterized geothermal as a clean form of energy that does not generate greenhouse gas emissions, and Republicans highlighted it as a baseload energy source.

“Geothermal energy can provide reliable baseload power throughout the West, as well as other parts of the country, and enhance American energy independence,” Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said.

He also cited the need for changes to the federal permitting system, especially to expedite the development of Bureau of Land Management projects.

“The first geothermal project on BLM lands was approved in 1978,” Westerman said.”Since then, technological advancements and increased data collection have given thermal or geothermal projects significant momentum, and BLM lands have attracted strong interest from geothermal producers.

“Unfortunately, the cumbersome leasing and permitting practices on federal lands have prolonged project timelines and increased costs for geothermal developers,” he said.

Democrats such as Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico agreed, but with a nod to climate issues.

“The bills in this package will let us make use of recent breakthroughs in geothermal technology that unlock gigawatts of clean domestic energy, helping to get American families off of the fossil fuel roller-coaster,” Stansbury said.

The House also passed by voice vote a separate bill from Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, to require the Interior Department to increase the frequency of geothermal lease sales from at least once every two years to at least once a year. It also would require the DOI to hold replacement sales for any sales that are canceled or delayed in a given year.

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(Kelly Livingston contributed to this report.)

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