“There are tremendous geothermal resources across the country, but particularly in Colorado, particularly at our National Lab of the Rockies,” said Associate Deputy Secretary of Energy Alex Fitzsimmons who discussed the CoE during testimony on proposed energy legislation before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

“The problem historically with geothermal has been you’ve got great technical resources at the national labs who have been working on geothermal research and development for decades now on solving geothermal drilling challenges to bring the time and cost of geothermal down, and make geothermal more economically competitive,” Fitzsimmons said.

However, government researchers and those from the private sector, “have historically not worked together,” he said adding the CoE has been designed to change that.

The CoE can “create an environment where the experts at the National Lab of the Rockies, can be combined with that of the private sector to move faster and accelerate technological advancement in geothermal faster than we could separately,” Fitzsimmons said.

In addition, an executive with Geothermal Rising, an organization dedicated to advancing geothermal energy, says CoE’s launch is an encouraging signal of continued federal engagement in advancing geothermal energy and strengthening collaboration between industry and the NLR.

Vanessa Robertson, Geothermal Rising’s director of policy and education, told The Driller, “At a time when the geothermal sector is experiencing tremendous momentum, creating a more direct pathway for industry to access the expertise, research capabilities, and resources of the National Laboratory system can help accelerate innovation and move promising technologies toward commercial deployment.”

As the CoE progresses, its work should remain closely connected to the challenges that determine whether technologies can move from research to commercial deployment—from resource discovery and characterization to drilling and subsurface technologies, cost reduction, field validation, data sharing, and pathways to commercialization, Robertson said.

To further help the CoE achieve its mission, the DOE says it is working on establishing an invitation-only “Industry Advisory Board” that will advise the center on its priorities by providing insight into industry-relevant geothermal research needs, and to accelerate industry-lab partnerships.

For more information, access the CoE website.

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