The Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office’s (HGEO’s) Office of Geothermal leads and supports research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to accelerate the discovery and development of gigawatt-scale geothermal energy and position geothermal as a competitive domestic source for reliable baseload electricity generation.
The Office of Geothermal supports HGEO’s goals through the following objectives:
- Expand and improve resource characterization and advance the most economic opportunities for development.
- Drive innovations that accelerate new geothermal development and optimization.
- Modernize and extend the life of existing geothermal production.
- Pursue methods to use and maximize the value of geothermal for storage and enhancing grid reliability.
Divisions
The Office of Geothermal includes three divisions aligned with industry: 1) Research and Development, 2) Pilots and Demonstrations, and 3) Commercial Scale-Up.
- Exploration and Characterization: Develop and deploy advanced geophysical tools and inversion methods, integrated characterization workflows, and AI-driven sensing tools or analysis methods to lower exploration costs and increase success rates of exploration wells.
- Subsurface Accessibility: Increase drilling speed and reduce materials costs. Partner with oil and gas service companies to adapt technologies and workflows for high-temperature, hard-rock environments.
- Power Conversion Efficiency: Research and development to improve Organic Rankine Cycle power conversion efficiency as well as pump efficiency and reliability and reduce head losses across the full circulation system.
- Post-Power: Assess opportunities for rare earth elements and critical materials extraction from geothermal brines.
- Demonstrations and Pilot: Manage Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) projects, as well as cost-share pilots for pre-commercial-scale enhanced geothermal systems deployments in new geologies and structural environments.
- Reservoir Engineering and Thermal Energy Storage: Improve fracturing techniques for enhanced geothermal systems and thermal cycling protocols for thermal energy storage.
- Permitting: Identify and enact new methods to accelerate and streamline the permitting process.
- Data Innovation and Modeling: Manage all modeling associated with geothermal power and storage uptake, leverage projects’ subsurface data to further improve modeling capabilities, and manage the Geothermal Data Repository.
- Grid Valuation, Markets, and Offtake: Analyze and assess the value of geothermal electricity generation to the grid, including ancillary services.
- External Engagement, Local Awareness, and Workforce: Increase public awareness of geothermal energy as baseload source of energy; develop workforce initiatives to engage skilled workers.
Latest News
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April 14, 2026
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March 30, 2026
Resources
Contact Us
For more information, contact DOE.Geothermal@ee.doe.gov or visit Office of Geothermal Contacts
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Last Updated: March 31, 2026