CLEAN Act

The CLEAN Act (HR 1687) was reported out of the House Natural Resources Committee on April 21, 2026, by unanimous consent. The bill amends the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970 to require annual geothermal lease sales (current law mandates sales every two years) and mandates replacement sales if a scheduled lease sale is canceled or delayed. Critically, the bill imposes strict 30-day deadlines on the Secretary of the Interior: 30 days to notify applicants if a drilling permit application is complete, and another 30 days to issue a final decision on complete applications. The bill is currently awaiting floor action in the House — it has passed committee with bipartisan support (unanimous consent) and is sponsored by Rep. Fulcher (R-ID), who represents a geothermal-rich district. Legislative velocity is moderate: 8 total actions since introduction in February 2025, with the most concentrated activity in April 2026. The money trail: This bill authorizes zero dollars. It is entirely a regulatory streamlining bill — it does not appropriate funds, create tax credits, or establish grant programs. The impact is purely operational: it reduces the regulatory timeline for geothermal project development on federal lands. Developers face shorter waiting periods for lease sales (annual vs. biennial) and enforceable deadlines for drilling permit decisions. This reduces holding costs, uncertainty, and the risk of lease cancellations. Actual spending on geothermal projects remains dependent on developer capital and separate DOE/IRS incentives (e.g., 45Y clean electricity production tax credit from the Inflation Reduction Act, which remains in effect for geothermal). Structural winners: Well-capitalized geothermal developers and equipment suppliers benefit most. Ormat Technologies (ORA) is the purest-play public geothermal company but was not provided in the market data. GE Vernova (GEV) supplies steam turbines and balance-of-plant equipment for geothermal power plants — faster permitting accelerates order flow. Canadian Solar (CSIQ) through its Recurrent Energy subsidiary can co-locate solar with geothermal projects, though this is an indirect and lower-conviction link. No market data was provided for ORA; the provided data for CSIQ shows a 30-day gain of +13.41% to $14.72, and GEV was not in the provided dataset. The absence of pure-play geothermal tickers in the REAL MARKET DATA limits direct price correlation analysis. No explicitly named losers exist in this bill; it is broadly pro-development. Companies with legacy thermal generation in the West (e.g., PSO/AEP subsidiaries) face incremental renewable competition but the small scale of geothermal leasing makes this negligible. Timeline: The next step is House floor consideration — no date announced. If passed, the Senate would need companion legislation; no Senate companion bill was identified in the provided data. Given bipartisan committee support and unanimous consent markup, floor passage is likely in the 119th Congress but Senate timing is uncertain.