DOE/EA-1460: Finding of No Significant Impact

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) conducted an Environmental Assessment (EA) of the In Search of Truth (I’SOT) Canby District Heating Project, Modoc County, California, to evaluate potential environmental impacts of project construction and operations for three years. DOE would provide partial funding, through its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), to I’SOT for the development and field verification of a small-scale, geothermal district heating system. Local district heating projects have the potential for widespread application, but achieving cost effectiveness in small development projects presents a number of challenges. To address these challenges, DOE is supporting the small-scale field verification of innovative geothermal direct-use system concepts to (1) determine and validate the economics, performance, and operational characteristics of local geothermal projects in different regions. and (2) evaluate the ability of such systems to provide distributed heating in order to facilitate their increased application in the xestsm United States.