Geothermal Gets Recovery Act Funds

Find geothermal jobs.

Geothermal energy will benefit from $338 million in Recovery Act funding from the US DOE.

The funds will be used to explore and develop new geothermal fields and for research into advanced geothermal technologies.

The cost-shared grants will support 123 projects in 39 states;  recipients include private industry, academic institutions, tribal entities, local governments, and DOE’s national laboratories.

These grants are directed towards identifying and developing new geothermal fields and reducing the upfront risk associated with geothermal development through innovative exploration and drilling projects and data development and collection. In addition, the grants will support the deployment and creative financing approaches for ground source heat pump demonstration projects across the country.

Collectively, these projects represent a dramatic expansion of the U.S. geothermal industry and will create or save thousands of jobs in drilling, exploration, construction, and operation of geothermal power facilities and manufacturing of ground source heat pump equipment.

Projects fall in six categories:

• Innovative Exploration & Drilling Projects (up to $98.1 million): 24 projects focus on development of new geothermal fields using innovative sensing, exploration, and well-drilling technologies.
• Coproduced, Geopressured, and Low Temperature Projects (up to $20.7 million): 11 projects focus on development of new low-temperature geothermal fields, a vast but currently untapped set of geothermal resources. This includes geothermal heat found in the hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells around the US, where up to 10 barrels of hot water are produced for every barrel of oil.
• Enhanced Geothermal Systems Demonstrations (up to $51.4 million): 3 projects focus on exploration, drilling and development of enhanced geothermal systems to validate power production from deep hot rock resources. 
• Enhanced Geothermal Systems Components Research and Development/Analysis (up to $81.5 million): 45 projects focus on development of new technologies to find and drill into deep hot rock formations, stimulate enhanced geothermal reservoirs, and convert the heat to power.
• Geothermal Data Development, Collection and Maintenance (up to $24.6 million): 3 projects focus on   populating a comprehensive nationwide geothermal resource database to help identify and assess new fields.
• Ground Source Heat Pump Demonstrations (up to $61.9 million): 37 projects will demonstrate deployment of ground source heat pumps for heating and cooling a variety of buildings for a variety of customer types, including academic institutions, local governments, and commercial buildings.

View the project selections (PDF 163 KB).