AB 526 orders the California Energy Commission to lead a coordinated, cross-agency strategic plan to accelerate development of new in‑state geothermal resources. The plan must be advisory, cover a wide range of geothermal technologies, and assemble recommendations on siting, transmission, permitting, royalties, workforce, and community impacts.
The bill matters because it stitches together pieces that have slowed geothermal deployment: fragmented siting analyses, unclear permitting timelines, scattered workforce training, and uncoordinated leasing. For policymakers, utilities, developers, and labor, the plan is meant to reduce project risk and surface concrete policy choices the state will face as it tries to unlock firm, clean energy from the ground.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires the Energy Commission to develop a multi‑chapter strategic plan in coordination with state agencies, the ISO, the PUC, tribes, load‑serving entities, and industry stakeholders. The plan must assess resource potential across conventional hydrothermal and next‑generation technologies, identify preferred locations and State Lands leasing goals, and produce recommendations on transmission, permitting, rentals and royalties, and workforce development.
Who It Affects
State agencies (Energy Commission, State Lands Commission, Department of Conservation/Geologic Energy Management Division, Fish and Wildlife), California load‑serving entities and the ISO, geothermal developers, labor and apprenticeship programs, interested Native American tribes, and local permitting authorities. Ratepayers and host communities will be affected indirectly through costs and siting choices.
Why It Matters
The plan aims to make geothermal a predictable, long‑lead resource for California by aligning transmission planning, federal/state leasing coordination, and permitting processes. If implemented, it could lower development risk for deep and emerging geothermal technologies and influence leasing and royalty policy that affects project economics.
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What This Bill Actually Does
AB 526 creates a focused, cross‑agency process to think through what it would take to scale geothermal energy in California beyond today’s operating fields. The Energy Commission leads the effort but must work with a long list of partners — the State Lands Commission, Department of Conservation (including the Geologic Energy Management Division), Department of Fish and Wildlife, the ISO and PUC, tribal offices, and workforce and economic development offices — so technical, environmental, cultural, and market perspectives all feed into one document.
The law requires discrete analytical chapters rather than a single narrative: mapping suitable and least‑conflict locations; a geologic resource assessment; transmission needs and ISO/PUC input on interconnection scoring; a permitting roadmap that defines roles and timeframes and explains how CEQA and NEPA will coordinate; and a rentals/royalties analysis to benchmark competitiveness with federal and other states’ terms. It also asks for workforce and economic analyses, including proposals for apprenticeship curriculum and occupational safety training tied to advanced geothermal work.Procedurally, the bill builds in stakeholder engagement and public comment at multiple points — the plan and the permitting roadmap both require drafts open to public review.
The PUC and ISO are pulled into transmission scoring so geothermal can be acknowledged as a long lead‑time resource in interconnection planning, and the State Lands Commission must translate resource needs into leasing goals for 2035 and 2045 and explore coordination with federal land managers for lease timing.Finally, the statute is explicit that the strategic plan itself is advisory: it is designed to reduce informational and coordination barriers, not to create procurement mandates or technology set‑asides. That keeps the plan squarely in the policy and planning realm while leaving project‑level siting and permitting authorities untouched.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The plan must assess conventional hydrothermal resources and emerging technologies such as closed‑loop/enhanced geothermal, supercritical systems, integrated thermal storage, and geologic thermal energy storage.
The State Lands Commission must set state lands leasing goals tied to California’s 2035 resource needs and to 2045 in‑state geothermal potential, and coordinate with federal agencies on timing and prioritization of federal lease sales.
The Public Utilities Commission must designate new in‑state geothermal as a "long lead‑time resource" in its inputs to the ISO’s system need scoring for interconnection and transmission planning.
The permitting roadmap must define concrete timeframes, clarify local/state/federal agency roles, propose updates to rules for new technologies, and describe how CEQA and NEPA reviews will be sequenced and coordinated.
The bill requires workforce development planning, including a call for the Division of Apprenticeship Standards to develop in‑person classroom and lab curriculum and an emphasis on using a skilled, trained workforce with advanced safety training.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Strategic plan scope and advisory role
This section sets the plan’s scope: siting, resource assessment, transmission, permitting, rentals and royalties, workforce, and impacts to Native American peoples and biological resources. It also instructs coordination across many state agencies and stakeholders. Practically, that creates a central product the state can use to prioritize investments and policy changes, while preserving agencies’ existing permitting authorities.
Site identification and State Lands leasing goals
This section directs interagency work to identify suitable and least‑conflict locations and to translate resource needs into State Lands leasing goals for 2035 and 2045. It requires consideration of transmission availability, resource viability data, cultural and biological protections, and opportunities tied to federal land transfers. For developers and lease planners, it creates a forward signal of where the state expects to focus attention and potential leasing activity.
Transmission assessment and ISO/PUC coordination
Here the bill tasks the commission, PUC, and ISO to quantify transmission upgrades needed to support geothermal buildout and to have the PUC flag geothermal as a long lead‑time resource in ISO system need scoring. That pairing is aimed at getting geothermal projects properly queued in interconnection and transmission planning — a critical step because long lead times and site remoteness have previously slowed geothermal interconnections.
Permitting roadmap and CEQA/NEPA coordination
This provision requires a permitting roadmap that sets target timeframes, identifies agency roles and decisionmaking authorities, and calls out regulatory updates for new technologies. It also requires explicit interfaces with federal permitting and a plan for sequencing CEQA and NEPA reviews. The roadmap is procedural: it does not change permitting authority but is meant to reduce uncertainty about timelines and required steps for exploration and field development.
Rentals and royalties assessment
The commission must evaluate rentals and royalties so the state’s terms support long‑term climate goals while remaining competitive with federal and other states’ rates. This is an economic test: the analysis will inform whether California’s leasing terms are likely to attract developers without sacrificing state fiscal objectives, and it could inform future policy adjustments to rates or royalty structures.
Non‑procurement / no technology set‑aside
The final section makes two limits explicit: the statute does not create a technology set‑aside and does not require any procurement by load‑serving entities. That keeps the strategic plan as guidance, not a binding procurement mandate, and prevents the plan from being interpreted as an automatic grant of procurement preferences.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Geothermal developers and technology providers — The plan’s site mapping, state leasing goals, and transmission assessment reduce informational and pipeline risk, making it easier to target exploration and investment in both conventional and advanced geothermal systems.
- California load‑serving entities and system planners (ISO/PUC) — Recognizing geothermal as a long lead‑time resource and clarifying transmission needs helps utilities integrate firm clean energy into long‑term resource planning and procurement strategies.
- Workforce and apprenticeship programs — The bill mandates curriculum development and emphasizes a skilled, safety‑trained workforce, creating demand signals for training providers and career pathways in geothermal trades.
- Tribal governments and local communities — Required assessment of impacts to Native American and Indigenous peoples and a focus on least‑conflict siting give tribes and host communities a formal early role in planning and mitigation discussion.
Who Bears the Cost
- State agencies (Energy Commission, State Lands Commission, Department of Conservation, Fish and Wildlife) — Agencies will absorb analytic and coordination workloads; some will need to staff technical assessments and stakeholder processes without dedicated funding in the text.
- Utilities and ratepayers — Transmission upgrades and interconnection queue management needed to support remote geothermal fields can be costly; those costs typically flow through planning and, ultimately, to ratepayers absent other policy choices.
- Developers and operators — Meeting new expectations around workforce training, occupational safety, and potentially modified rentals/royalties to meet state competitiveness goals could raise upfront costs or change project economics.
- Local governments and permitting authorities — The permitting roadmap may accelerate project submissions and create pressure to meet new timeframes, straining local review capacities and resources.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
AB 526 confronts a classic trade‑off: accelerate geothermal development to secure firm clean power and economic opportunity, or slow and constrain development to protect cultural resources, biodiversity, and public revenue. The bill tries to thread that needle by producing coordinated analysis and least‑conflict mapping, but whether planning can deliver acceptable, timely outcomes for both fast buildout and robust protections is the central unresolved dilemma.
The bill centralizes analysis without changing project‑level decision authority, which creates an implementation gap: the plan can recommend leasing goals and permitting targets, but it cannot force agencies or Congress to alter federal leasing schedules, nor can it change the substantive standards local and state agencies apply during project review. That limits how quickly recommendations translate into on‑the‑ground projects.
Resource assessment uncertainty is another practical problem. Geothermal prospecting is data‑intensive and expensive; the bill asks the Geologic Energy Management Division to make best‑available estimates, but those estimates may prove optimistic for deep or supercritical resources.
Overreliance on preliminary resource estimates could misdirect leasing and transmission investment. Similarly, aligning CEQA and NEPA reviews is administratively complex and dependent on federal cooperation, which the plan can recommend but not guarantee.
Finally, the rentals and royalties analysis forces a policy balancing act between offering competitive terms to attract developers and capturing public value. If California sets rates too low to compete with federal or out‑of‑state terms, the state forfeits revenue; if rates are too high, projects may not proceed.
Workforce and apprenticeship ambitions also face timing mismatches: training pipelines take years to mature, while developers often want quicker labor availability, creating potential short‑term bottlenecks.
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