Research and Development
Federal funding of geothermal research and development is authorized by statute to support the U.S. geothermal industry in providing diversity and therefore security in domestic energy supply options.
This support also helps the industry maintain its technical edge in world energy markets, thereby enhancing exports of U.S. goods and services and U.S. job growth.
The Geothermal Technologies Program's R&D activities are carried out in partnership with industry to improve technologies for finding, characterizing, accessing, and producing geothermal resources. The work performed is consistent with the federal government's role of investing in high-risk, high-value R&D that is essential to the nation's future and that would not be independently conducted by the private sector.
The strategy is to conduct cost-shared R&D activities and to maximize the leverage of limited resources by supporting appropriate activities being conducted by other entities. Outreach activities such as the GeoPowering the West initiative are designed to remove barriers to the use of geothermal energy in the western United States.
The Geothermal Technologies Program's R&D efforts build on the technical research base that has been developed over the last two decades. This technical base will provide information and understanding necessary to create new and more efficient and reliable technologies and to enable the U.S. geothermal industry to compete for baseload electricity generation.
The Program is organized around two areas: