Approximately 80% of our nation's energy comes from deep belowground in Earth's subsurface, an environment Berkeley Lab scientists have been studying for almost five decades. Partnering with industry and academia, their goal is to enable more effective and informed use of underground resources -- from fossil fuels to geothermal energy to water.
Berkeley Lab's researchers are advancing the science needed to access underground energy sources and store energy underground. They've made big advances in estimating lithium reserves and mapping rare earth elements, and are inventing new ways to measure earthquake risks to infrastructure and track groundwater. Read on to learn how Berkeley Lab is refining our understanding of the subsurface environment.
Berkeley Lab geoscientists are advancing enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) -- engineered reservoirs in Earth's subsurface capable of providing access to round-the-clock energy. EGS technologies stimulate the flow of fluids through hot rocks that can be converted to electricity at the surface. Geothermal electricity-generating capacity has the potential to expand 20-fold in the United States by 2050 -- enough to power up to 65 million homes.
With nearly 50 years of geothermal research behind them, geoscientists at Berkeley Lab study which geologic factors, such as depth and rock type, are most favorable for developing geothermal reservoirs. They led the U.S. Department of Energy-funded EGS Collab project, which focused on developing technologies to model and monitor rock fracturing at depths greater than two kilometers and temperatures exceeding 200°C. Now, they are testing methods to create and sustain EGS at Utah FORGE, a field-scale lab, and through other DOE-supported demonstration projects, including one exploring superhot conditions above 700°F. These can provide significantly more energy compared to geothermal reservoirs with lower temperatures.
The U.S. relies heavily on imports for critical minerals such as lithium, a key battery metal. With demand for some of these critical minerals expected to increase by up to seven times by 2030, Berkeley Lab scientists are finding new ways to tap into domestic resources and develop technologies for efficient mineral recovery. They use state-of-the-art tools to better understand how mineral systems form, evolve, and are transformed into important functional materials. Their research integrates fieldwork, laboratory experiments, and modeling to explore sources such as lithium in geothermal fluids and claystones, rare earth elements in mine tailings, and cobalt and cadmium in geological rock formations.
In a major step toward securing minerals domestically, Berkeley Lab scientists conducted the most comprehensive analysis yet of lithium reserves found in geothermal brines from Southern California's Salton Sea. Their findings indicate the region could contain over 3,400 kilotons of lithium -- enough to produce more than 375 million electric vehicle (EV) batteries, surpassing the total number of vehicles currently on U.S. roads.
AI and machine learning play a key role in characterizing and processing these critical minerals. The team is also mapping rare earth elements -- like neodymium, used in high-performance magnets for energy and medical applications -- from industrial waste such as coal fly ash. By combining drone-based geophysical sensing with AI, they are pinpointing neodymium hotspots at fly ash sites in Pennsylvania and developing processes to efficiently transform them into magnets.