The overarching goal of this United States-New Zealand workshop on geothermal systems is to bring together researchers and industry representatives from New Zealand with senior and junior researchers and graduate students from US institutions, with the goal of forming long-term funding partnerships and research collaborations. The workshop will consist of the following five key activities: A. It will provide a venue for industry to educate researchers on their needs and the challenges of characterizing, monitoring, and managing hydrothermal reservoirs; B. Researchers will be given the opportunity to present their own research and discuss how it may be useful for the investigation of hydrothermal systems; C. Both researchers and industry representatives will offer their ideas regarding future challenges in the study of hydrothermal systems; D. Representatives of potential funding venues (e.g., industry, NSF, DOE) will be invited to explain their funding priorities and to discuss how workshop participants can become involved; E. Workshop participants will collaborate on the development of a proceedings that will be available for broad distribution to the US and NZ communities These activities will take place within a framework of professional talks, moderated panel discussions, informal group interaction, and a one-day field trip. During the final day of the workshop, breakout groups will outline and draft the series of white papers that will form the basis of the workshop proceedings.
This joint NZ-US workshop will be held at the Mighty River Power Rotorua Campus. It will be an important venue for acquainting US researchers with the work in progress in New Zealand, for making researcher-industry contacts, and for showcasing current US research in hydrothermal systems and EGS to New Zealand academics and industry representatives. The workshop also offers a training opportunity for students at US academic institutions. In addition to the training these students may receive, they will have the opportunity to meet a broad spectrum of hydrothermal and EGS researchers from the US, NZ, academia and industry. These interactions will provide a powerful means of energizing student interest in geothermal research, and may prove formative for these students? careers. It is also envisioned that several collaborative proposals on geothermal energy exploration and utilization will be developed and submitted to funding agencies in the US and New Zealand.
Joint United States-New Zealand Research Workshop on Geothermal Energy Resources April 16-20, 2012 PI: Chad Deering Email: deeringc@uwosh.edu Geology Department, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, 800 Algoma Blvd., Oshkosh, WI., 54901-8649 The first joint United States – New Zealand workshop on hydrothermal systems brought together industry representatives and researchers from New Zealand with senior and junior researchers from US institutions, in an effort to form long-term funding partnerships and research collaborations. The workshop provided a venue for industry representatives to communicate and educate researchers from academic institutions on their needs and the challenges of characterizing, developing, monitoring, and managing hydrothermal reservoirs. United States participants had an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the work in progress in New Zealand, make researcher-industry contacts, and showcase current US research in hydrothermal systems and Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) to New Zealand academics and industry representatives. The workshop included professional talks, moderated panel discussions (breakout sessions), informal group interaction, and a one-day field trip. Over 75 people attended the Workshop: 24 from the United States and 52 from New Zealand (including staff from Mighty River Power Ltd, Contact Energy, GNS Science, IRL, SKM, University of Canterbury, University of Auckland and Victoria University). Thirty-eight oral presentations (including seven keynote addresses) and 24 posters were displayed in total. Participants included a number of students, and the format of the workshop allowed them to engage directly with experienced researchers and industry representatives. Breakout sessions were scheduled frequently in an effort to maximize the discussion among participants with disparate areas of expertise and levels of experience. Presentations and breakout sessions culminated in the final day, when each breakout session group presented a summary of their findings. These results were then synthesized into three main working groups, to highlight research and knowledge gaps in both industry and academia and identify specific areas where US and NZ researchers could collaborate. A crucial outcome achieved by taking this approach was that we were able to take individual topics that are integral to the understanding of geothermal systems and create linkages among the many different disciplines represented by participants. These results of integrating these different aspects into a multi-scale approach are graphically presented in Figure 1. The workshop acted as a valuable networking tool between different disciplines across the U.S. and New Zealand. Collaboration between GNS and US participants is already underway, and many used the geothermal workshop to start projects between small groups of people as well as MSc and PhD projects. A number of potential sources of funding for these research projects were identified, including US-NSF-SEES, the Sloan Foundation’s Carbon Cycling Initiative, the United States Department of Energy, and the New Zealand Ministry of Science and Innovation. One collaborative project between US and NZ workshop participants, involving the examination of the Ngatamariki geothermal field in New Zealand, was recently funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Science and Innovation, and we anticipate several proposals to be submitted to other funding agencies within the next year.
