Much of New Mexico’s tribal, pueblo land ripe for geothermal power, energy leader tells lawmakers

The majority of New Mexico’s tribe, nation and pueblo land could be ripe for exploring geothermal energy, an energy expert told a panel of state lawmakers Monday.

Rebecca “Puck” Stair, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department’s Energy Conservation and Management Division director, spoke before the interim Indian Affairs Committee in Shiprock about the potential for the state’s Indigenous populations to harness the heat beneath the ground as a form of energy.

The state’s largest electric provider, PNM, has already tapped into a southern New Mexico geothermal plant that uses the heat beneath the earth’s crust to create steam, turn turbines and generate electricity.

Stair’s presentation to the committee focused on the advantages of geothermal energy — such as its renewable nature and its relatively low water demand — and said tribal leaders could consider investing in the technology not just to generate electricity, but potentially to sell excess energy or to strengthen New Mexico’s outdated power grid.

“If you’re using geothermal, the heat beneath our feet to generate electricity, that’s wonderful,” Stair told lawmakers. “It could offer electricity revenues to tribes…it’s clean energy, and that’s in alignment with a lot of tribal values.”

State leaders have increasingly eyed geothermal energy alongside renewables such as wind and solar as deadlines approach to comply with the landmark Energy Transition Act’s renewable energy goals. The ETA, which Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed in 2019, requires that utilities use 50% renewable energy by 2030, 80% by 2040 and 100% by 2045.

A 2025 report from Project InnerSpace, New Mexico Tech and the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources found that “a significant amount of Tribal land sits on top of some of the best subsurface heat.” In addition to generating jobs and revenue on Native lands, the technology could also help Indigenous communities achieve “enhanced energy sovereignty,” the report said.

One state lawmaker at Monday’s hearing spoke along similar lines.

Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero (D-Albuquerque) said she would like to see leaders in New Mexico’s 23 tribes, nations and pueblos work together and collectively benefit from the technology.

“I am proposing — and have proposed — that they come together and pool their resources and create their own geothermal development group,” Roybal Caballero, a member of the Piro Manso Tiwa Indian Tribe, Pueblo of San Juan de Guadalupe, said. “It’s natural heat coming from our natural earth, and it belongs to us.”