Assistant Energy Secretary Dr. David Danielson explained in an April 10 presentation (PDF), the $2.78 billion EERE portion of the request includes $615 million in funding for research and development into sources of renewable electricity generation such as wind, solar, water power, and geothermal energy.
The request includes $60 Million for the Geothermal Technologies program whose priorities for the 2014 fiscal year are the following:
- EGS Field Laboratory, $30M: Launch effort to enable cutting‐edge research, drilling, and testing that paves the way to rigorous and reproducible approaches to EGS that will reduce industry development risk. The EGS Field Lab will stimulate collaborative partnerships and data sharing among industry, lab, and university users.
- EGS R&D, $42M: R&D on advanced drilling, sub‐surface characterization, and reservoir creation technologies with the goal of making EGS broadly cost competitive without subsidies by 2030.
- Innovative Exploration Technologies R&D, $12M: R&D in innovative exploration technologies to identify undiscovered new hydrothermal U.S. geothermal resources.
- Minerals Extraction: Develop and assess cost‐effective methods to extract valuable and strategically important materials from U.S. geothermal brines, thus creating an additional revenue stream from geothermal power production in the near‐term.
EERE gives more information on the budget request in a Geothermal Technologies At-a-Glance (PDF) document.