Sponsored by Rep. Teresa Martinez, chair of the House Rural Economic Development Committee, HCR 2057 puts the Legislature on record supporting a geothermal permitting roadmap, more consistent guidance across state agencies, and more predictable permitting for next-generation geothermal development.
HCR 2057 is not a statute, so it does not itself change Arizona law or require an agency to take a particular action. What it does establish is unanimous, bipartisan support among members voting for a clearer direction in the state’s geothermal policy.
“Many people don’t realize that Arizona has significant geothermal resources,” Martinez said. “With the advancement of technology, we now have the ability to tap into resources that were previously cost prohibitive.”
InnerSpace Action followed HCR 2057 from its February introduction through Senate passage, working with Martinez’s office and outside partners. The resolution also arrives as Project InnerSpace prepares an analysis, developed with experts across multiple institutions, examining Arizona’s geothermal potential and the policies that could help enable development.
A near-term opportunity in Phoenix
Project InnerSpace analysis identifies geothermal opportunities in Arizona across electricity generation, industrial heat, space cooling, and district heating.
Phoenix also illustrates why the issue is becoming more immediate. A March 2025 Rhodium Group analysis examined the potential for behind-the-meter enhanced geothermal systems to serve growing hyperscale data-center demand. Phoenix was among the country’s largest projected growth markets, and Rhodium found substantial potential for geothermal to meet new data-center electricity demand while allowing facilities to avoid some of the delays associated with grid interconnection.
The analysis also identified a second potential role for geothermal: direct cooling. Technologies including geothermal heat pumps and absorption chillers could reduce the electricity required for data-center cooling, although Rhodium notes that these applications at hyperscale facilities remain at an early stage.
Together, those applications make Arizona a useful test of a broader question: whether states with growing electricity demand and substantial subsurface resources can create permitting and regulatory systems that allow new geothermal technologies to move from potential to deployment.
What comes next
HCR 2057 supports standardized permitting guidance across Arizona agencies, better alignment of existing geothermal rules, and a more predictable development process.
Those state-level changes would address only part of the development timeline. Federal permitting can also be lengthy for geothermal projects on public land. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that geothermal projects on public land can take seven to ten years from development through construction, with permitting and approvals accounting for a significant portion of that timeline.
HCR 2057 therefore represents a starting point rather than an endpoint. Arizona lawmakers have expressed broad support for making geothermal permitting clearer and more predictable. The next question is how that direction translates into agency practices and ultimately projects.
Arizona has substantial geothermal potential, growing demand for firm electricity, and a Legislature that has now signaled interest in connecting the two. The opportunity now is to turn that shared direction into a permitting pathway developers can actually use.