Lawmakers pass landmark new legislation to tap into underground energy source: 'All-of-the

Lawmakers pass landmark new legislation to tap into underground energy source: ‘All-of-the

May 21, 2025

In a landmark move, Virginia will add geothermal energy to its renewable energy portfolio, WVTF reported. The change is aimed at encouraging geothermal energy production in the state.

“We want companies to explore [geothermal] as an energy source,” said Jeremy McPike, the Virginia state senator who introduced the legislation, per WVTF. “This is something that hasn’t been in the code. I think by adding it, it’s a signal.”

The Virginia Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020, requires the state’s electrical power utilities to run completely on renewable energy sources by 2050. The new legislation, signed into law by Governor Glenn Youngkin, will add geothermal energy to the portfolio of permissible renewable energy sources.

“I’m really thankful [Governor Youngkin] has embraced the all-of-the-above approach to energy,” said Thomas Turner, the Virginia state director of Conservatives for Clean Energy, per WVTF.

The move to encourage geothermal energy production comes as Virginia faces rapidly increasing electricity needs, largely due to the high number of energy-gobbling data centers in the state. According to a study by the Electric Power Research Institute, Virginia was first in the nation with a staggering 25.59% of electricity produced being consumed by its data centers.

The EPRI study also estimated that the electricity consumed by a single new proposed data center could power 750,000 homes.

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All of this means that massive data centers — increasingly used to power energy-hungry AI models — pose a serious threat to Virginia’s renewable energy goals.

As Environment Virginia observed, this skyrocketing energy use is already having real-world consequences. The closure date on one coal-fired power plant has been pushed back, and Dominion Energy has plans to bring online new dirty-fuel-powered capacity to meet the rising demand.

In this context, it makes sense for Virginia to encourage the use of as wide a range of renewable-energy sources as possible, including geothermal. Modern geothermal plants do not release any heat-trapping pollution, and they consume less water on average than other methods of generating electricity, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Geothermal energy production taps into the power of underground heat, using the energy from hot fluids to drive turbines that generate electricity, per the DOE. Unfortunately, this means that geothermal power production has been limited to areas where sources of hot water or other fluids are reachable by drilling.

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Ironically, high-tech drilling and extraction methods developed by the oil and gas industry have increased the number of areas in which geothermal energy production is possible. Because of this, workers trained to drill for polluting, non-renewable energy sources can use those same skills in the geothermal energy industry.

Curbing planet-warming pollution even as energy demands grow will require an all-in approach to renewable-energy production. Innovations in areas like geothermal energy give hope that we will be able to meet this challenge.