The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has selected eight projects to share up to $30 million in funding aimed at developing technology to tap superhot geothermal resources buried deep underground.
The awards, announced November 12 under the agency’s SUPERHOT program, target rock formations hotter and under more pressure than any geothermal well operating commercially in the United States today.
What the funding targets
The ARPA-E program funds projects working to harness geothermal resources at temperatures above 375C and pressures above 22 megapascals to expand access to reliable baseload power.
Those conditions sit far beyond what conventional and even today’s enhanced geothermal wells are built to withstand.
ARPA-E Director Conner Prochaska framed the effort as a deliberate break from gradual improvement. “SUPERHOT pursues exponential, not incremental, progress by pushing the boundaries of innovation to fundamentally change how we tap into geothermal energy,” he said.
The scale of the opportunity
The U.S. holds at least 15,000 GW of potential geothermal power beneath its surface, yet existing technologies currently generate less than 4 GW of utility-scale power.
These advancements could help meet growing U.S. energy demand by delivering 10, 20 GW of baseload power at less than $30 per megawatt-hour by 2040.
Building on ARPA-E’s work to advance Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS), SUPERHOT aims to more than triple the output of individual geothermal wells by overcoming challenges in well construction and heat transfer.
Who is building the technology
Selected projects include those led by the University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, TN); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, CA); XGS Energy (Houston, TX); Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, WA); the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA); Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, NM); and Blade Energy Partners, Ltd. (Houston, TX).
Houston-based XGS Energy, one of the private companies in the mix, said the award will fund testing and validation of its drilling technology under superhot conditions.
The company said the project builds on the XGS team’s leadership and experience advancing world-leading superhot projects, including the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, where XGS’s Chief Technology Officer Axel-Pierre Bois developed cement formulations for superhot geothermal well applications.
XGS Chief Technology Officer Axel-Pierre Bois said the work reflects a push toward more dependable power generation. “Superhot resources offer a path to more efficient, reliable baseload power for America,” said Bois.
“This ARPA-E project reflects our commitment to pushing the frontiers of geothermal energy, expanding domestic energy production and delivering around-the-clock power for our grids and critical infrastructure.”
The SUPERHOT award follows XGS’s selection by DOE in September for federal funding to drill a deep vertical appraisal well in New Mexico, where the company is advancing its flagship project , underscoring how active the company has become in the next-generation geothermal space this fall.
Why it matters now
The funding lands amid a broader federal push to expand geothermal as a firm, always-on power source as electricity demand climbs, driven in part by data centers and AI computing.
The approach differs from the enhanced geothermal systems already producing power commercially, such as Fervo Energy’s Cape Station plant in Utah, because superhot resources require materials and well designs that can survive far greater heat and pressure than current systems are engineered for.
DOE’s broader geothermal push has also touched states without existing commercial plants. Colorado, for instance, recently mapped the Denver Basin’s geothermal potential as part of a separate state assessment, a sign that interest in the resource is spreading beyond the handful of states that currently dominate production.
The SUPERHOT projects are still in the research and development phase and are not expected to produce commercial power in the near term.
DOE’s goal is to validate whether wells capable of producing geothermal energy from super-hot reservoirs for 15 years or more can be built, through novel technologies for well construction, testing facilities, and optimized reservoir heat extraction , a step the agency considers necessary before any utility-scale superhot plant could be built.
