To accelerate domestic geothermal energy development, the US Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a new Geothermal Center of Excellence in Golden, Colorado. Led by its Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office (HGEO), the DOE established the center to strengthen collaboration between industry and the national laboratories and help geothermal technologies move faster from research to commercial deployment.
The Geothermal Center of Excellence is a joint effort involving HGEO, the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), and the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), which will host the facility in Golden.
“Geothermal has the potential to be the next meaningful new source of electricity generation in the United States. Private-public partnerships between industry and our national laboratories are critical to accomplishing this mission. That is why we have created this center of excellence,” shared Kyle Haustveit, under secretary of energy for the DOE, in a statement to JPT. “The team is focused on advancing cost-competitive, gigawatt-scale power generation. Many of the technologies developed throughout the shale revolution over the past quarter century will be deployed to unlock the tremendous resource potential in the United States and around the world.”
The center's September launch comes amid growing interest in emerging geothermal technologies, including enhanced geothermal systems (EGS).
John Lassek, deputy assistant secretary for subsurface energy in DOE's HGEO, told JPT that more than a dozen companies, including geothermal developers, oil and gas producers, service companies, and technology developers are represented on the center's industry advisory board and are working alongside HGEO, NETL, and NLR to guide the program’s priorities.
"The center helps us make sure our geothermal research and development (R&D) investments are focused on the technical problems industry needs solved to scale. We can bring industry and the national labs together around those problems, help move solutions into the field, and deliver more energy to the US taxpayer,” said Lassek.
Lassek noted that the DOE gained valuable insight into the technical challenges facing the geothermal sector through the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) project, which was fully funded by DOE with additional support from state agencies. The new center, however, will focus less on establishing additional test sites like FORGE and more on fostering collaboration and helping commercialize technologies aimed at overcoming the remaining barriers to geothermal development, particularly EGS.
EGS projects, such as those developed by Fervo Energy, which werves on the center’s advisory board, rely on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies to create subsurface pathways that enable heat to be extracted from hot rock formations.
"There are still hard technical problems to solve around fluid loss, thermal decline, and reservoir characterization. Those are exactly the kinds of challenges where targeted R&D can make a difference," said Lassek.
He added that several surface-related challenges also remain. These include improving the efficiency of converting geothermal heat into electricity and addressing transmission and market-access hurdles.
"Generating the electricity is only part of the challenge. You still have to connect the project to the grid and find a customer for the power. Better recognition of the reliability and value geothermal provides will be important as the industry scales," he said.
Another challenge has less to do with technology than with regulation. Lassek described permitting as a lengthy process for geothermal projects and said the DOE is hopeful that legislation under consideration in Washington, DC, could help streamline development.
Among those attending the 3 September launch event was 2026 SPE President Jennifer Miskimins, who also serves as professor and head of the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines, located only a few miles from the new center in Golden.
“Efforts like these are beneficial to the SPE membership as they help to bring together people who are trying to solve similar technical programs in geothermal energy,” said Miskimins. “Geothermal has grown to become a large component of SPE’s portfolio with an active technical section, workshops, growing written technical content, and more. Collaborations like this help to promote the partnerships needed to spread geothermal into new and untapped areas.”
The DOE highlights that the US is the world's leading producer of geothermal energy. However, geothermal currently accounts for only about 4 GW of installed generating capacity, representing less than 1% of total US electricity production. According to recent DOE analysis, that figure could eventually increase to as much as 300 GW if geothermal technologies are deployed at scale.
“Today, geothermal is still buried in the ‘other’ category on most US energy charts. Our goal is to get it to the point where it earns its own line,” said Lassek. “That means moving to gigawatt-scale deployment, and that is what we are working toward.”
In addition to its opening of the Geothermal Center of Excellence, the DOE also plans to award up to $171.5 million in funding this year to support field-scale testing of EGS technologies and for hydrothermal resource confirmation and characterization.
