ARPA-E picks eight superhot geothermal projects for up to $30 million

The Department of Energy's ARPA-E selected eight projects on November 12, 2026 for up to a combined $30 million under SUPERHOT, its program for geothermal resources hotter than 375°C at pressures above 22 megapascals. Four are national laboratories (Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, Pacific Northwest and Los Alamos); the others are the University of Oklahoma, the University of Southern California, XGS Energy and Blade Energy Partners. These are selections for award negotiation, and the release says DOE "may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time."

Most of the money goes to keeping a well alive in rock that hot. Six of the eight project descriptions concern well materials and design: Blade's integrated well system using new steel and iron-chromium-aluminum alloys, at $6.3 million the largest selection; composite casing from Oak Ridge and USC; XGS's materials and well designs; and test rigs at Pacific Northwest and Los Alamos for how well materials degrade. The other two, Oklahoma's fracture modeling ($3.1 million) and Livermore's $5.5 million project on heat extraction and fracture growth, are about getting the heat out. By our arithmetic the eight amounts add to exactly $30 million.

The prize, per the program page, is output per well: current enhanced and advanced geothermal systems work only up to about 220°C, which holds EGS to about 10 megawatts-electric per production well, and superhot wells could deliver "potentially up to 30-50 MWe." ARPA-E names a possibility of 10–20 GW of baseload power below $30 per megawatt-hour by 2040. The program is older than its framing: ARPA-E announced the $30 million on January 16, 2025 under then-director Evelyn N. Wang, and the November 12 release says the selections advance President Trump's "Unleashing American Energy" executive order.

The temperature bar is set high on purpose. SUPERHOT's 375°C floor sits above the 265–365°C bottomhole range of Quaise Energy's Newberry Volcano field test, one of DOE's September geothermal selections. XGS Energy says its project will adapt its thermally conductive cement and well design to superhot conditions, following its September selection for a New Mexico appraisal well. Blade already has a link to superhot rock: Mazama Energy, which said in September 2026 it was drilling toward 400°C at Newberry, named AltaRock Energy and Blade Energy Partners as its founders in company boilerplate KTVZ carried in December 2024.