The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has earmarked as much as $165 million for the expansion of geothermal energy deployment in the United States.
The Geothermal Energy from Oil and Gas Demonstrated Engineering (GEODE) initiative will provide $10 million to form a consortium of experts to develop a roadmap for addressing technology and knowledge gaps in geothermal energy, based on best practices used within the oil and gas industry. DOE will use that roadmap to fund as much as $155 million more in research to address those gaps.
Although the U.S. geothermal resource is vast, only a small portion of it has been developed due to unique challenges associated with subsurface environments, along with process issues of geothermal projects, such as long permitting timelines.
DOE said the oil and gas and geothermal industries have numerous similarities that provide new opportunities for geothermal expansion, from advances in drilling and well construction to co-productio
