USA: DOE Grants $3 Million to Develop New Approaches to Characterize and Image Subsurface Geothermal Systems

DOE Investing $11.5 Million to Advance Geologic Carbon Storage and Geothermal Exploration (News Release)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the selection of eight new research and development projects to receive a total of $11.5 million in federal funding under DOE’s Subsurface Technology and Engineering Research, Development, and Demonstration Crosscut initiative.

The new projects are focused on furthering geothermal energy and carbon storage technologies, and will be funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) and the Office of Fossil Energy’s (FE) Carbon Storage program.

The projects selected under the second objective will develop new approaches to characterize and image subsurface systems. 

 These projects are:

• Development of a Novel, Near Real Time Approach to Geothermal Seismic Exploration and Monitoring via Ambient Seismic Noise Interferometry: Baylor University (Waco, TX), the University of Nevada–Reno, and Hi-Q Geophysical Inc.. DOE: $879,802.
• Geothermal Fault Zone Dilatancy and Fluid Imaging through Integrated Geophysical, Geological, Geochemical and Probabilistic Analysis: The University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT), Quantec Geoscience Inc., and Geotech Ltd.. DOE: $620,000.
• A Novel Approach to Map Geothermal Permeability Using Passive Seismic Emission Tomography and Joint Inversion of Active Seismic and EM Data: U.S. Geothermal Inc. (Boise, ID), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Optim Inc.. DOE: $1,497,016.

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