PRESIDIO — The Geothermal Working Group convened on September 11, 2024, at 5 p.m. to explore financing options for geothermal development in southern Presidio County. The meeting featured a presentation by Jesse Hereford, head of strategic partnerships and stakeholder engagement for the North American Development Bank (NADB), offering insights into potential funding avenues for geothermal.
Hereford introduced NADB as a binational “green bank” established in 1994 to finance environmental infrastructure projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. He highlighted the bank’s capacity to provide loans for terms of up to 30 years and its experience in financing renewable energy, including wind, solar and battery projects. “Our mandate is to develop and finance environmental infrastructure that improves the well-being of border residents,” Hereford explained. He emphasized NADB’s ability to work with both public entities and the private sector, which could be crucial for Presidio’s geothermal project.
In attracting potential investors, Hereford cautioned against being too generous with incentives like tax abatements. “The city and the county need to make sure they’re covered. You don’t want to give away the farm.” Negotiations should also include benefits for the community, with one potential example being “free energy” for Presidio. This, in turn, could help attract even more investment. “Everything is negotiable,” Hereford said, and leaders need to be savvy about what they ask for. The discussion also touched on NADB’s grant-based technical assistance program that could cover the cost of feasibility studies or market analyses. According to Hereford, “We might be able to help from that perspective as well.” John Kennedy, city planning consultant with the Presidio Municipal Development District (PMDD) and City of Presidio, seized on the opportunity for technical assistance funding from NADB and commented that the bank “could play a large role” in propelling these efforts forward.
Energy security emerged as another key topic, with participants discussing recent power outages in Presidio. Trey Gerfers, who has been actively pushing the geothermal initiative in Presidio County, inquired about NADB’s experience with geothermal projects in other places. Hereford responded that “geothermal is not something we have done yet,” but detailed several successful battery storage projects NADB has financed in Texas and California.
Presidio’s location on the border with Mexico has already been recognized in earlier discussions as a major advantage. Hereford concurred, noting the project’s binational potential. “We’re looking at batteries and transmission lines. We’re looking at storing clean energy and moving that clean energy to where it needs to be within our region.” Hank Habicht, managing co-founder of the Water Finance Exchange, former deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a founder of the American Council on Renewable Energy, chimed into the discussion by stating that “the fundamentals here are great … There’s a lot of border crossings, as we know, [and] they’ve got lots of issues … [But] the attractiveness of having a border crossing that’s not controversial has a lot of upside potential. Even the Republican politicians are very excited about the potential for the Presidio crossing and the potential economic development there.”
Habicht was particularly excited about the opportunities for coupling Presidio’s geothermal electricity generation with new battery technologies. “It’s the right thing to focus on and there’s a lot of interest in the federal government having a high visibility demonstration.” He also emphasized the timeliness of the project. “Over several decades of being involved in water and energy,” he said, “I’ve watched ideas [with] initial excitement and then there’s sort of a lag period. Sometimes people call it a ‘Valley of Death,’ where people are excited, but it takes a long time for it to bear fruit. I think geothermal has been through that sort of Valley of Death … and I think the time is good for [geothermal] right now.”
Looking ahead, the Geothermal Working Group is preparing for the Geothermal Rising Conference in Hawaii at the end of October. Gerfers and Kennedy will attend the conference to represent Presidio County and connect with leaders, developers and investors from all over the world. For more information on the next meeting of the Geothermal Working Group, contact John Kennedy at john@bigbend.bike.