US DOE announces USD 200 million funding for Energy Earthshots

Enhanced Geothermal Shot – A part of the Energy Earthshots initiative (source: US Department of Energy)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced funding of USD 200 million for Energy Earthshot Research Centers (EERC). This includes the Enhanced Geothermal Shot initiative which aims to reduce the cost of EGS projects to USD 45 per MWh by 2035.

Proposals are now being accepted for the EERCs. The deadline for pre-proposals will be on 7 March 2023, while that for the proposals will be on 31 May 2023. Under the Enhanced Geothermal Shot, proposals under the following themes are being solicited:

• Theme 1 : Experimental and computational efforts to understand mesoscale to regional subsurface constitutive mechanics and fluid injection response in EGS environments.
• Theme 2 : Innovative approaches for EGS data collection and analysis.
• Theme 3 : Understanding materials behavior and geochemical/geomechanical processes in EGS wellbore environments.

More details on the announcement are available in the official EERC document.

Partnerships with other institutions, including academia, other national laboratories, not-for-profit organizations, or industry, are strongly encouraged. To strengthen the commitment to promoting a diversity of investigators and institutions supported by the DOE Office of Science, applications are explicitly encouraged that involve Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Source: U.S. Department of Energy