Steven Chu, U.S. Energy Secretary has declared a grant of around $38 million for a period of three years to speed up the development of potential geothermal energy expertise and to assist the country to diversify its renewable energy sources.
The scheme financed through the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under the Department of Energy has identified 32 novel projects in 14 states.
The identified projects will formulate and experiment new ways to recognize geothermal resources and to formulate ways to classify, drill and to pool the required engineering expertise to increase the sources of geothermal energy to assist the country in reducing its dependence on fossil fuel usage. The approach is anticipated to play a vital role in accomplishing the goal of President Obama to achieve 80% of power generation of the country through renewable energy sources by the year 2035.
The major investment in the development of clean energy is a component of DOE’s all-inclusive effort to bring down the cost of generating geothermal energy thus making it cost-effective than the traditional power production methods. The selected projects will initially perform viability studies before moving into prototype and validation stages, both of which will be performed under rigorous lab- based research and field test conditions.
The chosen projects will sustain the goals of the Department in bringing down the cost and investment risk connected with supporting and qualifying the geothermal resources and will assist it to surmount the challenges normally associated with the creation of geothermal reservoirs and the sustainable properties of the improved geothermal systems.
Source: http://energy.gov/