What are Energy EarthshotsTM?
Through the Energy Earthshots Initiative, the Department is setting ambitious and achievable targets to transform key technologies in a decade—lowering costs, raising performance, creating new jobs, and clearing the way to our clean energy goals.
Why Energy Earthshots?
President Biden has bold plans to transition our economy to clean energy and overcome the climate crisis – reduce carbon emissions by 50 to 52 percent by the end of the decade, produce 100% clean energy by 2035, and hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
At the Leaders Summit on Climate on Earth Day, President Biden charged the DOE with speeding the development of critical technologies in a suite of innovation areas and Secretary Granholm announced the DOE would be announcing bold innovation goals.
How many Energy Earthshots will there be?
DOE anticipates a total of 6 to 8 Energy Earthshots.
Who will participate in Energy Earthshots?
The Energy Earthshots are an all-hands-on-deck call for innovation, collaboration, and acceleration of our clean energy economy by tackling the toughest remaining barriers to quickly deploy emerging clean energy technologies at scale. To meet these targets, DOE will leverage diverse expertise and talent at American universities, businesses, and national laboratories to accelerate research and development in top linchpin technologies. DOE plans to hold a series of stakeholder engagement events, including Energy Earthshot "Summits".
The Hydrogen Shot Summit was held August 31st to September 1st, 2021.
The Long Duration Storage Shot Summit was held September 23rd, 2021.
The Carbon Negative Shot Summit was held July 20th, 2022.
What Energy Earthshots have been announced so far?
The first Energy Earthshot – Hydrogen ShotTM – was announced on June 7, 2021, and sets an ambitious yet achievable cost target to accelerate innovations and spur demand of clean hydrogen by reducing the cost by 80%.
The second Energy Earthshot – Long Duration Storage ShotTM – was announced on July 14, 2021, and aims to achieve affordable grid storage for clean power - anytime, anywhere - by reducing the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% for systems that deliver 10+ hours of duration within the decade.
The third Energy Earthshot – Carbon Negative ShotTM – was announced on November 5, 2021, and is the all-hands-on-deck call for innovation in technologies and approaches that will remove CO2 from the atmosphere and durably store it at meaningful scales for less than $100/net metric ton of CO2-equivalent (CO2e).
The fourth Energy Earthshot – Enhanced Geothermal ShotTM – was announced on September 8, 2022, and is a department-wide effort to dramatically reduce the cost of enhanced geothermal systems by 90%, to $45 per megawatt hour by 2035.
The fifth Energy Earthshot – Floating Offshore Wind ShotTM – was announced on September 15, 2022 with the goal of driving down costs to $45 per megawatt-hour by 2035 to spur U.S. leadership in floating offshore wind technology, accelerate decarbonization, and deliver benefits for coastal communities.
The sixth Energy Earthshot – Industrial Heat ShotTM – was announced on September 21, 2022 and is a Department-wide initiative to develop cost-competitive industrial heat decarbonization technologies with at least 85% lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
Energy EarthshotsTM is a trademark of the U.S. Department of Energy.