Following the announcement by the U.S. Department of Energy today about the receipients of $29 million in funding as part of the FORGE program, it became clear that the Newberry project team (NEWEGEN) lost out on this funding.
In a statement that the team posted today on its blog, it describes its disappointment about “the Newberry site [not having been] selected and our efforts to establish a geothermal field laboratory near Newberry Volcano has come to a close.
We’d like to thank you all for your support. As we embarked on this project, we received tremendous support from the local community, state and local government representatives, and industry partners.
Over the course of a year, a strong working relationship was established between members of the Newberry site proposal team – AltaRock, General Electric, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oregon State University, and Statoil. While the loss of the FORGE opportunity is a setback, the NEWGEN consortium is committed to continuing geothermal research and development at Newberry and will be investigating other funding sources in the near future.”
With the extensive work on EGS research and testing done at Newberry, one can only hope the project and efforts will receive some funding elsewhere to continue their important work.
Source: Newberry Blog