Yellow PagesWASHINGTON - Sen. Orrin Hatch recently announced that several Department of Energy grants will be awarded to Utah entities to accelerate domestic geothermal energy. The purpose of the new grant funding is for the development of new geothermal fields and research into advanced geothermal technologies.
"Currently 30 percent of our nation's electricity is produced from non-polluting sources," stated Senator Hatch. "However, about 20 percent of that comes from nuclear, which has some challenges. We have relied on nuclear, because wind and solar do not provide us with a steady supply of base-load power.
"What makes geothermal so positive is that it is just as clean as wind and solar, but it also provides a stable source of base-load power, which contributes to the reliability of our electric grid. It also produces a lot of power for each acre of land, compared to some renewable energy sources."
In 2005, Senator Hatch was able to pass the Renewable Energy Production Tax credit in EPACT 2005, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush.
"This legislation has been providing tax breaks to electricity projects using geothermal, wind, solar, and certain types of marginal hydroelectric power," added Hatch.
The Utah entities receiving grant awards under this announcement include:
The University of Utah, $768,059, to develop new "tracers" that can help map EGS reservoirs.
University of Utah, $944,707, to develop a chemical model to predict the interactions between supercritical carbon dioxide and rock in EGS reservoirs.
CSI Technologies, $766,598, to develop materials that can temporarily seal targeted fracture areas of an EGS system, and then decompose to reopen the area, to assist in reservoir design and development.
University of Utah, $559,485, to develop a fracture network and fluid flow imaging tool for mapping subsurface Enhanced Geothermal Systems.
University of Utah, $603,230, to perform economic impact analysis for EGS.
