DOE selects five EGS field tests and 16 geothermal drilling projects

The US Department of Energy said on September 21, 2026 that it selected 21 projects for award negotiations to advance geothermal development: five field-scale enhanced geothermal system (EGS) tests and 16 exploration drilling projects. The release puts the money at "more than $99 million." The Geothermal Technologies Office's article of the same day says the projects "will receive a total of up to $99 million for the first budget period of work," with additional funding "subject to Congressional appropriations" and to milestones and performance criteria. Both pages say selection "is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding."

DOE's project list names the five field tests: Fervo Energy, which would drill, complete and stimulate EGS wells in Elmore County, Idaho, and deploy what the list calls "the first-ever high-temperature three-component geophone array at or above 200°C"; Zanskar Geothermal and Minerals at the Lightning Dock field in Hidalgo County, New Mexico; AlterG Resources in Pershing and Churchill Counties, Nevada, with a deep horizontal EGS well pair; the University of Utah at Dixie Valley West in Nevada; and Quaise Energy on the southern flank of Newberry Volcano in Oregon, at bottomhole temperatures of 265–365°C, which the list puts "above the range where most conventional EGS tools and materials have been validated."

The 16 drilling projects include GeoAlaska's confirmation well on Mt. Augustine in Alaska; Hexagon Energy's exploration well in Washington's Wind River Valley, targeting above 150°C; and an exploratory well by Raser Power Systems to assess increased generation from the Thermo No. 1 geothermal power plant in Utah's Escalante Desert. Counting the work locations in the list, and not the applicants' home cities that open each entry, fifteen of the sixteen entries name the state where the work would happen, eight states in all: California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Alaska. Zanskar's gives no work state, only "a Basin and Range site that has never been drilled to reservoir depth." Fervo, Zanskar and the University of Utah each hold a selection on both lists: Fervo's second is an appraisal campaign in Humboldt County, Nevada, targeting 200–220°C; Zanskar's is at that Basin and Range site; the university's is at Utah's Cove Fort field. None of the three DOE pages lists a per-project amount.

Among the names on the list already in The Duck Curve's coverage: Fervo, which reported first power at Cape Station in Utah on September 24, 2026; Hexagon, which announced a geothermal-rights lease on approximately 145,000 acres of Weyerhaeuser timberland in Washington and Oregon on September 10, 2026, in a release that named no project site; and Newberry Volcano, where Mazama Energy said on September 17, 2026 that its second well was drilling.