Funding opportunity – Regional partnerships for geothermal data collection
The US DOE Geothermal Technologies Office has announced a funding opportunity for regional partnerships to enhance geothermal data collection and dissemination.
The Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO), under the US Department of Energy, with ConnectWerx has announced a funding opportunity for regional partnerships to identify gaps, plan, and execute geothermal data collection and dissemination activities.
The deadline for full application will be on 22 April 2025. Although not required, applications are encouraged to submit concept papers by 24 February 2025 to allow the DOE to provide feedback prior to the full application deadline.
An information session will be hosted by GTO and ConnectWerx on 27 January 2025 to provide more details on the scope, scale, and intent of the opportunity. Click here to register for the information session.
About the funding opportunity
The overall intent of this initiative is to accelerate the responsible deployment of geothermal energy in multiple underdeveloped regions of the U.S. by addressing specific barriers to deployment in each area. These barriers include a lack of adequate public data to guide and incentivize geothermal exploration activities, financial barriers that impede exploratory drilling, and limited technical expertise in certain stakeholder organizations.
This initiative will build upon previous and ongoing work that has focused primarily on the Great Basin region of the United States and will support expanded efforts in regions such as, but not limited to, the southern Basin and Range, the Pacific Northwest (including Alaska), and Hawaii. It will allow for tailored approaches to accommodate the relevant regional factors such as resource type, climate, energy prices, community and local stakeholder values/culture, data gaps, etc. It may also help to achieve economies of scale in procuring and executing capital intensive and highly technical field work.
Participants are expected to collaborate in identifying data gaps as well as prioritizing, planning, and executing geothermal data collection and dissemination activities with the aim of incentivizing and stimulating follow-up geothermal exploration and development activities. The focus should be on pre-competitive data, i.e., datasets that would benefit multiple stakeholders if not the entire geothermal industry. The goal is to make all newly collected data publicly available within a reasonable timeframe. A limited embargo period may be allowed, where necessary, to incentivize industry participation.
ConnectWerx, in partnership with DOE, will coordinate the collection of applications, selection of partnership performers, negotiation of Business to Business (B2B) Agreements, and administer funds. DOE expects to make approximately 6 awards totaling approximately $19 million with this initiative. It is the project lead’s responsibility to develop and manage the scope, schedule and budget within the partnership. There will be a 20% minimum non-federal cost share requirement. It is anticipated that awards will range from $1M to $5M in federal share.
Applicants are encouraged to develop project concepts that are scalable from the low end of this range to the maximum, thus allowing DOE maximum flexibility in making selections that will optimize the overall portfolio. This could be accomplished by describing two separate project scopes for a high and a low budget scenario, or by constructing the project from multiple independent tasks such that DOE can select a subset of the proposed work for funding without compromising the overall project.
Source: US Department of Energy
