Alaska Legislature: House Energy, 4/28/26, 1pm

I am calling the House Energy Committee meeting to order. Today is April 28th, and the time is 1:04. Thank you for joining us. Members present in the room here is Representative Costello and myself, Co-Chair Holland. Online, I believe, is Co-Chair Mears, and I'm expecting a few folks to join us in a few minutes, but I'd like to go ahead and get started with those that are present and begin our discussion and presentations.

Please silence your cell phones. As a reminder, staff and members of the audience may not approach the table. If you need to pass a note to members, please get the attention of Rep. Mears' committee aide, Griffin Plush, up here. I'd like to thank Recording Secretary Cheryl Cole up here and Doug Bridges in the back from the Juneau LIO and my own committee aide Tim True, who's also helping out with some of the logistics today. Today's agenda: we have two presentations looking at two energy resources that are promising for Alaska— geothermal energy and geologic hydrogen.

I'll note that opportunities in Alaska around both resources were touched on by this committee Earlier in House Joint Resolution 27 that we passed out of committee, which.

Encourages us to look at the energy opportunities for our state as well as the economic opportunities that they create. The opportunity specifically in geothermal and geologic hydrogen due to the abundance of each is really immense and creates a lot of opportunities for what we think of as our energy future. But it may require creativity, innovation, and some new regulatory or policy regimes in order to be able to develop those opportunities. Opportunities, and due to Alaska's size, remoteness, and distance from markets, it may take some significant investment. But as we've seen with other large energy project investments, they can pay off in the long term.

So we'll begin first with the geothermal program. We'll be starting our meeting with an update on the Department of Natural Resources geothermal program from Dr. Aaron Campbell, Chief Geologist and Director of the Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. She is joined by Martin Wanton— or excuse me, Marwan and— Ortez, Energy Resources Section Chief at the Division. And my apologies for stumbling on the names. The staff had worked very hard to make sure I was ready, and then I wasn't at the last minute.

So here we go. Director Campbell and Mr. Ortez, please, if you could take yourself off of mute, put yourself on the record, and begin your presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, my name is Erin Campbell, Chief Geologist and Director of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Hello, I'm Marwan Mortiz, also with the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, and I'm the Energy Resources Section Chief. So I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, thank you for joining us. It looks like we've got help with the slides today. If you could just help us keep track of when you're ready for the next slide and the slide number for those that may be listening in.

It'll be helpful later for keeping track of your discussion. So please proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And if we could advance to slide number 2. I appreciate the opportunity to update the committee on the new geothermal program at DGGS. So I'll be starting with the administrative information, and then I'll turn the presentation over to Marwan Wartiz for the technical side of things. And as you know— as you may know, there was a geothermal program previously at DGGS, which was active from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.

And so the program is being restarted. And why is it being restarted right now? Well, right now there is heavy federal investment in geothermal and industry interest in geothermal, and engineering and technology has come a lot farther than it was in the 1980s. And geothermal has been demonstrated internationally, and the US is sort of catching up with what is being done in other countries. It's a good time to make a run at superhot or supercritical geothermal, which is being explored at Augustine Island, shown in this photo.

So this program was restarted by Governor Dunleavy and the Alaska legislature for fiscal year 2025 through fiscal year 2027. It was authorized for $1 million per year for 3 years with 3 staff members, and we are about halfway through the program at this time. Our first year was spent standing up the program and hiring the project lead. So in about March of 2025, Dr. John Eichelberger was hired as the head of the geothermal program, and his position PCN number was reassigned from the Alaska Volcano Observatory, and the other 2 positions are new PCN numbers. And we are in the process of filling those two positions.

We've had a huge response to our recruitments, and we are in the interviewing process right now. So it's a great time to give you an update on the progress of the program and give you a peek at what lies ahead for the program. So the program goals are defined as advance the understanding of Alaska's geothermal energy potential by collecting and publishing baseline geological and geophysical data, and reduce risk and attract exploration and development investment. So I want to emphasize that the real goal was and is to bring geothermal operators to Alaska, and we are working on doing that. We are not approaching this as an academic question or a research problem, but working for the best return on investment for state dollars and to have a tangible effect on providing energy to Alaska's residents.

So in terms of success and return on investment, we understand that $3 million is significant funding from the state, and we are using it as efficiently and effectively as possible. And Marwan Ortiz will take you through the program in detail and show you how the state investment is paying off. We've spent a lot of time developing relationships, educating international and national partners about Alaska's opportunity, And we have two very large federal grants that are looking extremely promising, and we don't have the final word on those, so we can't tell you exactly how, you know, what, what that is, but we hope to be able to announce that soon. But we, if those are able to go through with the state participation in those grants, we're hoping to yield about 4 to 1 for each state dollar on that investment. So we have industry interest, we have investor interest, And we have federal interest in Alaska's geothermal.

And we have a plan for how we will use the funding from year 3 to establish a program that will last and can keep Alaska in the frame for geothermal development. So thank you to the Alaska legislature and the governor for their foresight and taking a— taking a chance on geothermal in the state. We think that investment is and will pay off. And now I will let Mr. Ortiz give you the details on the program, unless you have any questions for me at this time. Great.

Thank you for the introduction. Any questions at this point? No? Okay. I think we're good.

Let's continue then. Thank you. All right. We should advance, if possible, to slide 3. It says— just to confirm, it should say Fundamentals of Geothermal Energy?

Yep. We're good. Thank you. Excellent. All right.

So thanks to Director Campbell for that introduction. So before we kind of dive into Alaska-specific geothermal and the DGGS program, I thought it would be great to take a moment and cover some of the fundamentals of geothermal energy and highlight some of the recent, you know, advances that are pushing this from a niche source of energy to, kind of like the chair's opening comments there, to a more promising sector that's poised, you know, I think to really grow significantly. So, as you see here, a conventional geothermal system known as a hydrothermal system, kind of shown at left there, requires 3 key ingredients. Heat, fluid, and permeability. So, you know, in a simple way to think about it, it's in that underground environment, it's got to be hot, there's got to be water to carry that heat, and there's got to be natural pathways like fractures and porous rocks for that water to move.

So importantly, if any 3 of those components are absent, you're just not going to have a natural hydrothermal system. So there are a lot of places that are hot, but without that natural flow pathway, the heat can't efficiently be brought to the surface. Similarly, if you have hot rock but it doesn't interact with groundwater, then there isn't a way to carry it to the surface. I bring all that up because that's become a longstanding challenge in geothermal exploration, and this is what's led to some of these newer approaches that I show kind of in the middle of this figure, and that includes enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS. So, that's borrowing from oil and gas stimulation techniques that folks on this committee are surely familiar with.

Where they're injecting fluids into the subsurface to open up fractures and kind of creating that needed permeability for water to circulate through the hot rock and pick up heat. So, that's kind of an open-loop system where water's injected in one well, produced from another after it's been heated from the surrounding rock. And another next-gen technology is the closed-loop geothermal, which kind of, as the name implies, involves circulation of fluid through a series of connected underground pipes.

And again, if they're physically connected— so this doesn't rely on manufactured fractures and doesn't require large volumes of water, but it does act more like a— you can think about it like a buried radiator circulating fluid underground, absorbing heat, and bringing it back to the surface. And the final one to draw attention to here is the aptly named Superhot that Director Campbell mentioned, and that's referring to resources that are typically hotter than maybe 375°C. At these really high temperatures, when you inject water, it becomes something they call supercritical. So, it has properties of both liquids and gases, and that allows it to carry a lot more energy, sometimes estimated to be more than tenfold relative to conventional lower-temperature sources. So, just to sum that up, taken together, these kind of next-generation approaches are developing increasingly sophisticated engineering techniques and expanding geothermal energy into a broader range of locations than was previously possible.

So, if we could advance to next slide, please.

Should see the temperatures, uses, and applications. This is slide 4.

So, one more general overview slide here. My objective is to kind of emphasize that geothermal energy can be used across a wide range of temperatures, and importantly, those different temperature ranges support different types of applications. So, in the red there, kind of the high end, usually above about 150°C, that's where geothermal is getting used to make large-scale electricity generation. Usually, those are associated with volcanic regions. As you might imagine, that's where a lot of heat is shallow in the crust.

So, Alaska doesn't currently produce power from any of these types of system, but several locations we do recognize have potential. Some of you may have heard of like Makushin, which is the volcano out near Unalaska and Dutch Harbor. Nearby Akatan, also in the Aleutians, as well as closer to home down in south central there, Augustine and Mount Spurr and Cook Inlet are recognized as potential targets for superhot. And importantly, these temperatures are the types of resources that can support, again, utility-grade power production. As you move down into that kind of orange color, those include a lot more direct use applications, roughly, say, 70 to 150 degrees C. You can also do district heating, support industrial processes, but also some smaller-scale power generation, perhaps using what they call binary systems.

And Alaska, as many of you might be aware, has real-world examples of this one, such as Chena Hot Springs, which I think still holds the record for the coldest geothermal resource that's actually producing electricity. Pilgrim Hot Springs out there on Seward Peninsula is also developing similar binary power plant. And then finally, there at some lower temperatures, you're looking at direct use applications, things like greenhouses, agriculture. Manly Hot Springs, Goddard Hot Springs down in Southeast kind of are in this category. So, even if they can't quite generate electricity, they still do provide practical local economic and energy benefits.

And again, finally, at that lowest temperature, essentially near ambient ground temperatures, we have geothermal heat pumps. And I want to clarify, I'm including those here for completeness because this technology and application, although it's important, isn't really part of our DGGS geothermal program. It's not really a geoscience-specific application. But anyway, these systems use stable, you know, air-ground-water temperatures to provide highly efficient heating and cooling. It's a technology you can deploy from a lot of places around Alaska.

And just as a quick shout-out there, the Seward SeaLife Center, if any of you have been there, is an example of a DOE-funded project where all of their space heating, including the domestic hot water, and they even melt snow, is all from heat that they're extracting from seawater using these geothermal heat pumps. Pretty cool technology. So, anyway, takeaway from this slide is that I want people to think of geothermal as not just one thing. It's kind of a spectrum of technologies from large-scale power, particularly in the vicinity of volcanic regions, to heat pumps that can work most anywhere. And so geothermal offers a lot of different pathways, I think, to reduce energy costs and increase energy security across the state.

And as we kind of explored there in that previous slide, the advances in geothermal science and engineering really open up a lot more opportunities than may have existed during the earlier phases of exploration that, that Dr. Campbell mentioned that took place back in the '70s and '80s. Okay, next slide. Should we pause for a question there, I think, on that slide? Representative Costello. Please do.

Thank you, and I want to thank the co-chair for having the presentation today. My question just has to do with— you had mentioned that some of the engineering is rather sophisticated, and I was curious Who's at the forefront of developing the techniques related to this type of energy use?

Yes, through the chair, thanks for that question. It is an interesting time because it's— there are established geothermal exploration companies, particularly focused in Nevada and California, but there are a lot of smaller startups that we're seeing grow out of the oil and gas industry where they have a lot of technology from whether it's stimulation techniques like fracking and various other materials science engineering. So there are a lot of small startups that we're seeing, and including the ones that are interested in Alaska right now are kind of grassroots smaller firms. So yeah, it's a bit of a mix, I guess, would be the short answer. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Let's continue. Yes. So, make sure I'm on the right slide here.

So, I should be looking at slide 5 titled Alaska's Geothermal Potential. So, as you can see kind of on that map at the right, we have a lot of evidence for potential across the state. You know, we currently have about 100 thermal springs that have been discovered. About half of those are more than 50°C, and I just marked that because that's well within the range for useful energy applications. And those surface expressions sometimes could be pinpricks and small, but they also could be important as they could indicate, you know, a deeper geothermal system.

At the same time, you know, a lot of Alaska remains underexplored, and that's going to become a theme I'll keep touching on here with— we really have pretty limited modern data. So most of the existing information work, again, done decades ago and just hasn't seen the application of modern geophysical tools or drilling methods across most of the state. So, that can create some uncertainty, but just to flip that, and conversely, it's also a real opportunity for, you know, new exploration and discoveries. And I also want to mention kind of from a policy standpoint, many of you folks are surely aware of House Bill 50 here recently that was an important step kind of in Alaska geothermal. That was the bill that modernized kind of the state's leasing and geothermal management framework.

Kind of aligned Alaska with kind of how geothermal is being done and developed other places. It kind of certainly made it easier, I think, to attract investment. And I should note that that leasing and management is not in our shop. That's led by folks at the Division of Oil and Gas. In fact, I think Sean Clifton here is online.

If we have questions about that program, I'm sure he could help us with. See, geologically, I want to point out Alaska is quite different from the lower 48 because, of course, we're special. And the main geothermal regions we know of in lower 48 are mostly in Nevada and California. And these are places where the Earth's crust is kind of thin and it's being stretched. And that's resulted in a relatively shallow heat flow.

In contrast, Alaska's got a lot more complicated geology, a lot more diversity. And our similarities kind of line up more with the circum-Pacific regions, places like Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand. And I should point out, each one of those countries have major geothermal energy sectors that they've developed. So, anyway, you can see reflected on that map the breadth of opportunities and regions. We've got very high-temperature resources concentrated along that Aleutian volcanic chain and up into the Wrangell volcanoes.

Obviously, again, that volcanism providing the heat source, but we also have widespread lower-temperature systems across the interior. Including Seward Peninsula and even down in southeast Alaska. All of those areas are potentially well-suited for direct use or possibly even small binary power plants. So, again, the central message I want to drive home there is that we have— Alaska has a lot of high-end power generation potential as well as widespread lower-temperature resources. But a lot of that potential is untapped, and that's largely due to limited modern data and exploration.

There are places where there's some logistical challenge and land access and other issues beyond that, but at its core, we are short data and we need more exploration. So, next slide.

It should be slide 6, DGS Geothermal Database and Web App. I want to highlight here a key tool we've developed that's kind of helping move geothermal forward in Alaska. So, at its core, this is just a an online platform that makes the statewide geothermal information that we've collected and that is publicly available, making that easily accessible. So, it kind of allows users, whether that's, you know, you're a community, a developer, or an agency, you can quickly screen locations around Alaska and identify areas with more potential for whatever your target is. So, right now, the system's kind of built on its foundational datasets.

That much of which came from that earlier DGS work I've mentioned a couple times. So things like known hot spring locations and their temperatures as measured, uh, mapped volcanic vents, things like that, which give us a real strong starting point. But it also, I should be clear, highlights where we need updated and expanded data to make that more robust. Another cool, important feature we've integrated is the Alaska Energy Authority infrastructure layers. They have a really comprehensive grouping, and by embedding those in that, users can now look not just at the resource but also how it connects to transmission lines, communities, other existing energy systems, different parts of the state.

And that's really critical because geothermal isn't, again, about where the heat is as much as it's always about whether it can be practically developed and used. So knowledge of some of those other infrastructure bits is a key factor. We've also Designed that platform to be scalable, so as new data is available, such as, you know, getting subsurface temperature measurements from oil and gas wells, the chemical data from the springs is quite important, and as we get new exploration happening, getting those results embedded in the app so we can incorporate that directly. And we've already received a lot of really positive feedback from industry developers,.

And other user groups that they really like the application. And so we're really looking forward to adding to that capability. So it's kind of a foundation we're hoping for improved decision-making. And again, it shows where additional data investment can unlock more of our potential. Great, thanks.

I think we have a couple questions here at this point. Yeah. If you can, we'll start off, Representative Castillo. Thank you again, Mr. Co-chair. I was curious, you know, we're always hearing about the state of our transmission in Alaska, and I was curious, I don't want to put you on the spot or anything, but if you were to give us a grade, what would you say as far as transmission?

Yeah, through the chair to Representative Pat, yeah, that's a little outside our wheelhouse through, you know, we're sort of experts in earth science and geology, much less electrical engineering and grid management sort of things. I guess what I can say is, is we probably do have to appreciate the challenges Alaska faces. We're all just so spread out. We have very difficult ground, very difficult climate. There are a lot of sort of reasons why our system has developed the way it is due to our geography.

It definitely creates challenges and Yeah, but, but beyond that, I don't know if I could quite place a grade on that. I think we'd have to talk to some of the utilities and others that have expertise there.

Thank you. I wanted to ask a couple things about this map and the app. First off, I'm curious, does the layers provide clarity and the ability to drill into the land ownership and the path that somebody might have to follow if they were pursuing a particular geothermal resource you've identified on the map for development? And in particular, I guess, along with that is a question about, are a lot of these on state land, or is there any characterization you have of whose land would we be expected to find a lot of these resources on?

Yes, to the chair, that's a terrific question. I believe yes, the draft version does have a layer for land status, and I'm pretty sure that is going to wind through DNR's land status layer, which I think they actively update. And if it's not currently, it's definitely on the docket to happen soon, 'cause you're absolutely right that that is key, not just for where that resource is, but also if you need to have infrastructure to connect it to where people are or where the industrial use is, obviously that land status matters quite a lot too. And yeah, on the topic of land status, it is singularly important when you look at that map because— just use the example of the Aleutians, which has something approaching 50 active volcanoes. Clearly a source of a lot of heat.

But a great deal of those volcanoes are wrapped up in either a national park or a wildlife refuge of some kind or another, various forms of protected land status that at least under current law doesn't allow for most energy development such as geothermal. So a person using that to kind of screen their opportunities would look at that status and pretty quickly be able to remove big parts of the state for that reason. Great. Thanks for that. The other question I wanted to pose and try and understand more is, to what degree do these different locations— are they indicating sources of hot water that could be used?

And I'm thinking of something like China that is able to source a lot of water versus locations that may have simply proximity to hot magma chambers or near-surface areas that would be appropriate for the drilling, frack— fracking and closed-loop type of systems you were describing. And I guess tied with that is a question of, to what degree do these locations indicate sources that would be appropriate for a heating type of energy application versus enough concentrated energy that they might be looked at as a power plant operation for electrical generation. And so kind of two questions layered in there in terms of the use of this and the characterization that this database is providing.

Yeah, I'll— to the chair, thanks for that. I'd— help me if I don't quite answer all of that as I work through that.

Maybe that's not the best map that's up there right now, but I made a note earlier that, that we clearly have both high temperature and, and lower temperature resources around the state. And generally, from what we know now, um, areas that have known recent volcanic activity are almost certainly going to be more appropriate for larger-scale electricity support. So again, we're talking about like Augustine and Spur as targets that are on state land and are definitely on our radar and are of interest, or Akatan and Makushin being a couple of others.

The ones across the interior, and again, I don't want to talk beyond the data that we have. This is part of our challenges. We sort of have a superficial understanding of some of these systems. Ones in the interior like China seem not to be related to to an underlying magma chamber and are instead very old granites that are generating some heat still themselves. And so nearby circulation of water is pulling some of that heat up.

And that's probably true of a number of those systems that we know of in the Northern Interior. And the Seward Peninsula might be just a little bit different, and it might also have great places where the crust is pulling apart. And there may be some shallower magma there, but we don't have the data to really evaluate that yet. So back to that earlier slide, the temperature that these systems can produce will definitely, you know, feed directly into what it is we can do with them. So I think in rural areas, let's just use Pilgrim as the example, I think there are already doing a great job of making that into a community resource and thinking about adding some electricity as well as some gardening opportunities for those, you know, rural areas, whereas maybe something like an Augustine would be a better target for something that could potentially tie into the rail belt grid and provide utility-scale power.

So correct me if I kind of covered that or whether you had Follow-ups to that? I think that's a good start for now, and I think some of the slides you have coming up will probably get to a little bit more of this, but I'm still trying to figure out how to use this in order to prioritize the type of opportunities that might be developed from these, because to the point that Representative Castillo was making a moment ago, we could have an incredibly attractive resource, but if it is not connected to a grid to be able to actually develop it and to create a pathway for investment. It may be a great resource, but it might be yet another islanded or stranded energy resource that our state has struggled with in many different areas. So I'm just trying to understand how this map and this data can be used to help us and perhaps help those startups be able to identify promising targets that not only have heat but would have volume and perhaps have proximity for logistical support as well as grid connectivity, if that was important for the export. On the other hand, things like Augustine, I know, have potentially some opportunities to exist as purely an islanded energy producer for, you know, export of energy that would be developed from the electricity.

So, just looking at different ways we could use this. So, let's continue on with the slides, because I think you've got some more information that'll tease this out some more. Yeah, no, absolutely. Appreciate that. Okay.

Make sure I'm on track here. I think we should be moving to slide 7 that says geothermal energy outreach activities. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we have that up now. All right.

Thank you. So probably no surprise to this audience, you know, one of the biggest challenges we've already encountered just in the first year or so of activities is something we are referring to often as the fear factor. So many explorers and investors that we're speaking with just aren't familiar with Alaska and, you know, again, find our climate or the scale, the logistics and all just pretty daunting. And so, but a lot of effort's been spent on education and direct engagement, which has been essential, I think, in reframing how they think about, you know, and view Alaska. So we've been working really hard to focus on highlighting the opportunity and the potential.

In fact, I— some of you are probably familiar with the Petroleum News. They publish, I think it's annual now, about a 300-some-page guide to Alaska's oil and gas landscape, and they literally call it Dispelling Alaska's Fear Factor. So I think this is just a common challenge in attracting, you know, external investment for explorers and developing. So anyway, to address this, we've established an Alaska Regional Interest Group. This is under the auspices of a national Geothermal Group, and this has been bringing together various stakeholders, mostly from Alaska, but.

A lot also from the Lower 48 to share information and project updates, in some cases data. And in just a few months, this has been pretty exciting. We've built that group to over 65 members, so it's quite a lot of interest and again momentum, which I think is kind of an ongoing theme of this discussion. So, we've also made a point to directly engage with Alaska Native organizations as well as industry directly. You know, just got to recognize that geothermal development has to be kind of locally informed and aligned with what those community priorities are.

I see, in addition, we've been quite active in the broader professional community. We presented at— oh, I've got more than 10, I think, different local and national conferences, workshops, and invited to be, you know, expert panelists on energy meetings and things like that. And this, of course, helps ensure Alaska is part of that national, international conversation on geothermal development. I just want to note that several of those presentations have led directly to follow-up conversations with investors, natural resource investors that are curious to learn more about Alaska. This particularly happened at a recent meeting in Houston back in January that had a lot of positive follow-up discussions that moved on up to the commissioner's office and such.

So anyway, these are proving, I think, really worth our time to participate and present in those forums to put Alaska on the map, as it were. Just note we've also responded to a number of media requests, which is a good opportunity to increase public awareness and understanding as geothermal moves forward. And there at the bottom, I wanted to draw your attention to a milestone, pretty major one that we're really excited about, and that's a planned international geothermal meeting we're going to hold in Anchorage next May. We're going to be the host, DGGS that is, and we've already attracted quite a lot of interest and participation from colleagues around the world. And our hope really is that Alaska has a lot we can learn from those groups, particularly our neighbors from kind of around the Pacific Ring of Fire that I kind of mentioned earlier.

Many of those countries have already realized a lot more of their geothermal resource potential and integrated it into their energy grid. So, again, the takeaway from this slide I think is to, you know, we're standing up that geothermal program, but it's much more than just a technical challenge. It's also about building that awareness the trust, and the partnerships both within the state and outside of Alaska as well. Great. Thank you for that.

Two quick things, I think. One is, how do people follow up with the Alaska Regional Interest Group if they wanted to learn more about that group and perhaps be able to participate?

To the chair, that's a terrific question. I should have had that link directly. I can share that with the committee afterwards. I don't have it quite at my fingertips. But it should be readily available through the Geothermal Rising Conference, or GRC, and you can find the Alaska Regional Interest Group.

It's often shorthanded as RIG, R-I-G. But that's led by John Eichelberger, our program manager that Dr. Campbell mentioned. Okay, good. Thank you. And yeah, there are— yeah, thank you.

The other thing I wanted to ask about is there's been mention both in Director Campbell's introductory comments and yours about, you know, trying to attract people to Alaska. Alaska to be involved in the geothermal development. And I'm curious about what is happening and what can be done to perhaps increase the amount of Alaskan engagement in these opportunities, Alaskan startups, Alaskan energy companies. I think there are a couple projects going on, and I wonder if there's a way to strengthen the connection to our own development of expertise. Development of these projects versus perhaps a narrative of our energy development being done by people that come to Alaska to do the development.

Any thoughts on that and what we could do to strengthen that?

To the chair, I guess a couple of thoughts. One, several of our collaborations are through the university and both UAA and UAF, and that of course leads to to student participation, sometimes postdoc researchers and things. That's building a little bit of internal capacity of Alaskan folks that are increasing the expertise locally. But you are putting your finger on a challenge, you know, both from the capital side and the expertise side. I think Alaska has a lot of expertise in of course, in geology, but also in the engineering side.

But I think we haven't quite got to the point where some of those are pulling together companies. There's at least one that I'm aware of where you have retired engineers from one of the exploration companies in Alaska that have opened up a geothermal company. They're not yet operating in Alaska, although they're based here. So, I— I think we will see more interest, but I think one of the challenges that some of those folks face in thinking about starting up in Alaska is there's very little data for them to sort of de-risk a prospect. And so they would need a great deal of capital or effort to go out and collect the geologic information or to drill the wells or collect the geophysics.

And that's a bit of a friction for, I think, some of the startups. Okay. So I think that— so that's kind of where we hope DTGS contributes, like we do with minerals and other energy resources, is providing that data that reduces some of those barriers and that friction and makes it a little bit of a lower-risk enterprise. Yeah, good. I appreciate that follow-up on that because I did pick up that de-risking strategy early on, but I also picked up kind of a what seemed like a bit of a bias to de-risk it for people coming to Alaska to do the development.

I'd love to learn more about how do we do that de-risking and support so that it's creating opportunities for energy companies and organizations and entrepreneurs in Alaska to take advantage of that de-risking rather than a pipeline of information that's allowing people to come here, which, you know, that's fine, but there's more I think we can do to be developing these resources ourselves. So let's continue on. I know you've got a few more slides here. All right. I appreciate that.

Okay. I think our next one should be slide 8, capacity collaborations projects. So yeah, I want to highlight here that some of the capacity we've built and the partnerships we're leveraging to try to move geothermal forward. If any of you are not too familiar with DGGS, we bring, I think, a unique set of strengths. Again, we're in applied geoscience, so we have groups in energy and mineral resources, geophysics, and also natural hazards, which can come into play in geothermal a bit.

And we're also, I should note, among the statewide leaders in geospatial data management. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And again, I bring all that up just because these capabilities are really complementary and I think help position the group to support geothermal gathering of new data and distribution of that data, and also, whenever possible, assist the exploration and that early screening, you know, through detailed development characterization and such. So that's kind of DGGS-specific, but a key part of this effort has been trying to build stronger, broader collaborations. So we are working with multiple national laboratories. Some of you may be familiar with, say, Sandia Los Alamos as a couple of examples, which bring a lot of expertise.

A number of university partners I've already mentioned there, UAA and UAF, are quite engaged with us on a number of fronts. Our sort of sister agency at the federal level, the United States Geological Survey, is working closely with us. They have a geothermal program, as well as our partnership with the Alaska Volcano Observatory through them. So, those are strong. We also have a growing group of geothermal exploration companies, still small, but we're collaborating directly with them and trying to offer our expertise where we can to assist them and help them be successful.

And again, just in summary to that, that just those partnerships are critical because geothermal projects, just like, say, oil and gas or something, they really require integrated expertise from subsurface characterization to engineering, ultimately deployment.

So, kind of moving down to that next bullet there, we're also contributing to a broader effort to better understand Alaska's resource base through something called the Alaska Geothermal Resource Data Gaps Analysis Project. Sorry, it's kind of a mouthful, but that's led by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which I guess is now called the National Lab of the Rockies. Wait, that work is really directly aligned with what we were discussing earlier, so identifying areas of high potential that are most in need of modern integrated datasets to kind of help unlock development. And that segues into how some of our work is now already translating into real project momentum that Dr.

Campbell mentioned kind of at the outset there. And that's— we have two major proposals that have been selected for funding, and we can't quite talk about all the details yet, but the— this is through the U.S. Department of Energy's Regional Partnerships for Geothermal Data program. Those each are expected to support, you know, multi-year efforts with federal funding on the order of several million dollars each. And again, this committee is probably aware that almost all these federal grants require a 20% cost share, so part of that is going to.

Come from the FY '27 geothermal program funds, which I gather are currently under consideration in this year's DGGS budget. So kind of as Dr. Campbell said again at the top, the state's program is already showing a return on investment by successfully winning these really highly competitive grants and bringing those federal dollars to Alaska to help collect the much-needed data to advance geothermal. So again, that circling back that takeaway point here that we're not starting from scratch. We have the technical capacity and a lot of strong partnerships that we've already been able to build and a lot of active projects that are already underway. And I think we're really in a position to scale that effort with, you know, additional support and investment.

If there are no questions, we can hop to slide 9. Yeah, let's continue to 9. Thanks. Okay, yeah, thank you. Slide 9, new and forthcoming data.

So, this slide highlights stuff that we're— they're helping us kind of move from those largely legacy datasets to a more modern understanding of Alaska's geothermal resources. So, just to highlight an example here, we've already made some progress at Pilgrim Hot Springs out there on the Seward Peninsula. That's just about 50 miles north of Nome. We completed an airborne EM, or electromagnetic survey. Fancy technique, kind of gives us a clearer picture of the subsurface structure and kind of the fluid pathways.

You can kind of see on that kind of blue patch on the COVID sheet of that publication where the data indicate a low resistivity zone. So that's under that hot spring, that's where the permafrost has been completely melted. So it really helps us highlight and define where that geothermal resource is. And I'll point out too, at Augustine, we've— it's been a very high priority for us. We've collected LiDAR over the entire island, and that should get published very soon.

That'll be important to help understand where to place infrastructure. We've also done a field geology campaign out on the island, which helps us improve our understanding of what they're likely to encounter in the subsurface. And I just want to drive home the point, that's just kind of the beginning, because we're still getting off the ground on producing the, the new data. So listed there, then, is looking forward to this summer, as well as ahead 2027 and beyond. We've got a kind of coordinated set of data acquisition efforts that are planned.

This includes things like airborne magnetic surveys, which help map subsurface geology. Definitely going to collect significantly more LiDAR that help us understand where faults and fractures and other important surface structure Another fancy word there, magnetotelluric. That's just another geophysical tool that's really quite important in the geothermal world for imaging fluids and, by proxy, heat at depth. We're collaborating with University of Alaska in Fairbanks. They're kind of global leaders on hyperspectral surveys.

This is an airborne technique, in this case, that helps identify altered minerals and sometimes even just the vegetation that can be associated with geothermal systems. And of course, our kind of bread and butter here at the Geologic Survey is the basic field geology, kind of the ground truth, and integrate all these other datasets. And I just want to drive home that those modern datasets are really exactly what was collected successfully in exploration and development efforts at places like Iceland or Japan or even in the western United States. So, there is a playbook for how to do this. And then again, listed at the bottom there, you'll see some of the priority areas we're already working on.

Happy to talk about any one of those in more detail, but these kind of represent a mix of high-temperature volcanic systems and the more moderate-temperature prospects, some of which are a little closer to communities and especially to rail belt electricity infrastructure. So again, takeaway: I— we're actively transitioning, I think, from a limited decades-old data into our modern integrated exploration program. And I think that shift's going to enable both better decisions and reduce risk, continuing on that theme. Great. If I can, on this slide, I'm curious how the project planning is being done and some of the longer-term efforts in a way that aligns with potential project developers and commercialization opportunities.

I guess, you know, slightly different way of looking at that is, you know, how you're working across both the academic and private and industry sectors so that the work is perhaps aligned with specific economic development opportunities and locations or particular projects And I can see that there's perhaps a challenge here. On one hand, you're trying to do a broad scan of resources in order to discover what is out there that maybe is not known. But on the other hand, having more pull tied to particular project areas, areas of development interest, or particular projects, and focusing your time and effort into those areas to help speed up the actual realization of a project, I think, probably is a bit of a tension for you to decide what to work on next. I'm wondering how you're balancing that.

To the chair, that's a terrific summary of the challenge, especially now it's our program manager being the main talent working on this, and we're hopefully close to finishing the recruitment and the hiring, some support, and that will hopefully help it. But you are right, that is the challenge to simultaneously be casting a wide net because there are many areas that we have suspect has potential, but we have so little data that you don't want to dismiss it due to lack of data. It may be high quality. So thankfully, the grants we've mentioned sort of obliquely a couple of times, we're very pleased with our interactions with our academic partners there. They're very focused on the applied angle, not the basic research side of things.

So both of those projects will be— are targeted at Alaska's energy challenges, not, you know, some wider research question. So it's been nice to have those partnerships, but we definitely We don't want to stay at 30,000 feet the whole time. We would like to narrow down, and I think Augustine is probably the best example of that right now, where we initiated work right away. It was recognized by, again, John Eichelberger, who's already done a lot of work professionally on that system, that that was a high-priority target for us, and industry is already, of course, exploring there. So we've developed a relationship with them trying to see where our regional work and our in-house expertise can kind of help them move forward.

And then again, there are a few other areas that you can see on that slide where we've also made initial forays, and that list is effectively our attempt to go from the statewide down to half a dozen regions that we think should be our first priorities. So I hope that that answered most of that. Yeah, that's good for, for now. I may come back to a couple other pieces of this, but I see also with a couple more slides I'd like to kind of work through that and, and make sure we have time to get through all that before we have to transition off. But I've got a couple more places to go if we have a moment.

Perfect, thank you. Okay, I think the next slide, slide 10, I should say, future projects and opportunities. So, this is kind of looking ahead as sort of what we were just touching on there. And again, the key message is I think we're well positioned to take advantage of that momentum at the federal and national level. There are several more major Department of Energy funding opportunities that are either currently available or emerging that we're learning of.

Some of them include really large-scale programs focused on next-gen geothermal field testing and/or funding things like tribal energy development. You know, a lot of these really are substantial investments on the federal side, and they're really well aligned with the types of resources and challenges that we see in Alaska. So we're anticipating being involved in one or more of those efforts. We're also working toward a cooperative agreement, which is a sort of a formal structure with the US Geological Survey. Again, this is not finalized at all yet, but if we were able to complete that, that would further strengthen that coordination between the state and the federal efforts to kind of help us accelerate the data collection and analysis.

They've got a lot of, a lot of longstanding expertise. And then one of the, I think, most exciting opportunities I wanted to share, and this is sort of a long-range project, and that would be to try to position Augustine and Cook Inlet as a you might think of it as an international testbed for superhot geothermal systems. So, I hinted at earlier that the available data indicate Augustine has a relatively shallow magma chamber, unlike maybe some of the other volcanoes around the Aleutians and such. So, this kind of a unique geologic setting is potentially offering us a rare opportunity to study and potentially develop utility-scale power from these really high-temperature resources. So, this is probably be a pretty.

Big effort. It would almost certainly involve combinations of state, federal, and industry partnerships or a consortium-type setup that I think could help place Alaska at the forefront of that sort of geothermal R&D. So, we're pretty excited about that, and we've developed quite a number of contacts of groups, everything from investors to federal partners that are quite excited at this prospect. As well as the geothermal industry itself. So, stay tuned on that.

I think that's exciting. And then, in parallel, we're continuing to monitor and sort of pursue some of these additional opportunities through maybe slightly less conventional sources like ARPA-E or the National Science Foundation. Those type of agencies support a lot of innovative engineering, energy technologies, and some early-stage research and data-gathering efforts. So, we'll be continuing to pursue those. So again, bringing that all together, I think it looks like Alaska's entering a window where there's sort of an alignment between energy policy, funding availability, technical readiness in parts of that sector all kind of coming together.

The state's investment, I think this is an important point, in building this geothermal program, it's timely, and I think DGGS ourselves are really well positioned to kind of be that central leadership and clearinghouse to help advance those geothermal opportunities around the state.

Great. Thanks. Let's go ahead and go to your final slide for the wrap-up, and then we'll see if we've got time for a few questions and comments then. Thanks. Appreciate it.

All right. I'll close with just a few takeaways, and I'll just— apologies for the fun— pun, rather. I couldn't help myself. Alaska is hot. At least in places.

So, first, as I kind of noted there on that previous slide, geothermal really is gaining momentum both nationally and globally. I think Alaska, again, is well-positioned in that landscape. We've got an opportunity-rich resource base, but we need to be clear that we are data-limited, and that's really the core challenge, I think, in front of us. At the same time, we're seeing really strong and growing interest from both stakeholders within Alaska and sustain federal and private investment. You know, and I just— another important thing, even though we're coming at this from the geoscience side, the earth science, there's rapid advancing in drilling and geophysical technologies really are changing what's possible in geothermal development.

So, important time. So, again, all that really points toward real opportunities to potentially reduce energy costs. This is the whole point of the program, as Dr. Campbell elucidated there at the start, both on the rail belt being a high priority, but potentially also in some of the rural communities that are close enough to that resource. But, you know, again, circling back to those key points, unlocking that opportunity really depends on one thing, and that's better data. You know, new modern data sets, these are really essential to reduce that exploration risk, and again, attracting that investment.

I think the good news, we're already building that technical capacity and those partnerships to do just that work. I think we've got a pretty clear and a good coordinated data acquisition plan for at least the next couple of years and, and beyond. Again, so bottom line, we have the research potential, we have the tools, I think we have the momentum, and just with continued support and funding, I think we have just a real opportunity to position Alaska as a a leader in geothermal energy. So yeah, that's— thanks again for your time. I think we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Great. This has been very helpful with building a stronger foundation on another aspect of our energy opportunities. I'd like to turn initially over to Representative Mears, co-chair. I think she's online and perhaps has a comment or question for us.

I'm here. I just wanted to draw the parallel that the investment from DNR into research, just like identifying where resources are and where it could be, is not— is important here with geothermal, but also having parallel discussions with critical minerals. So, recognizing that, you know, that science and that exploration is really key and foundational to our resource development here in the state, both for energy and in other resources. And so if we want to keep that going, we need to do this basic science and research.

Great. Thank you for that. Yeah. Through the chair, thanks to Representative Mears there. I absolutely agree.

That's pretty core to our mission statement. And when we are most successful is when we're providing that data that becomes the sort of foundation that industry can then build on. You know, it's not so much our job to— let's stick to oil and gas for the moment. You know, when I do field work in northern Alaska, I'm not necessarily trying to find oil. That's the job of the oil company, but my job is to map the geology and understand how the rock layers project from the Brooks Range all the way under the ground towards Prudhoe Bay and provide that regional context that the companies often don't have or can't really produce with the way they operate and work on their narrow little units.

So, our regional information absolutely guides them. And to step back even wider, and this is certainly true in oil and gas and critical minerals, but probably will be for geothermal too, When you have some of the companies that have the capital to explore for these resources, they— the world is their oyster, right? They can invest anywhere from Angola to, you know, to Alaska. And so we're in competition for those exploration monies. And one of the things that we bring is, you know, political stability, a tax structure, things like that.

But I want people to think about the data as well, the availability of high-quality Data is a big attractant to a place like Alaska, and I think we outcompete a lot of other regions. So yeah, I appreciate that comment, and that is how DNR and DGES specifically views a lot of our mission, particularly on the resource side. Great. Thank you for that follow-up. One last thing I just wanted to touch on is trying to understand where we're seeing some traction at this point, and I believe we've got a geothermal project in the rural energy REF Fund project list, and I'm curious if you're involved in supporting that project or there are others that you know are showing signs of moving forward with possible leasing and development that would help us see where there's some of this traction with this new resource.

Well, I guess old in some respects, but the, the opportunity that's growing right now. But are you involved with the REF? Geothermal projects, and are there any others you'd want to highlight for us to just show where we're getting some activity and some investment? Yeah. Unfortunately, I am not directly familiar with that Rural Energy Fund.

I made a note to myself to look into that. We have had discussions with the folks at Pilgrim Hot Springs, but we've not sort of directly engaged in data gathering beyond the geophysics that I mentioned earlier. But we have had discussions with various other native groups that are interested in partnering with us in the future. But maybe to answer your question kind of more obliquely there, I think the largest investment that I think I maybe see on the horizon is coming from the folks that have already leased state lands through the geothermal leasing schedule through Augustine and also at Spur. And again, we're not necessarily privy to their detailed exploration agenda, but they have indicated success in their fundraising and they have been present at a number of energy meetings.

And I, I think they've had quite a bit of success and I anticipate they probably will advance to drilling. They've spent quite a lot of money acquiring some geophysical data and other information. And so I think one of those two areas is likely to see some wells get drilled at some point. And I won't go on record on an exact date, but I think that's almost certainly going to move forward in the near future, and that'll be exciting. Great.

Well, thank you for that, Mr. Huertas. I want to turn back to Director Campbell. Do you have any wrap-up thoughts you'd like to share with us before we shift over to our next topic in hydrogen. But Director Campbell, anything you'd like to say to wrap up? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just thank you again for this opportunity. And one thing that I did hear from a number of questions is that you, you'd maybe like us to think about how we're prioritizing our work and, and the effect it might have on development. And that is something that we will consider and try to, try to determine for you in for future meetings. Yep. That'd be great.

And if you could, you know, would like to follow up with us, I'd particularly like to look at some of our earlier stage entrepreneurial and energy-related programs, whether it's Launch Alaska, whether it's work going on in the different university programs. Really interested in this area because it represents an area of development that I'd like to see.

Us exploring how do we take the challenges of our energy needs and our energy opportunity and connect them up with Alaskans for future development. So we look forward to that opportunity, and I'm very grateful for the time that you've been able to share with us today. Also, I appreciate the support of Ramey being here with the slides and putting together a really insightful presentation. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Great. So we're going to transition now to actually a related topic in terms of one that still relies upon us understanding the underlying characterization of an emerging resource opportunity. In this case, we're going to be shifting to geologic hydrogen, an area that also shares some of the challenges both of characterization but also the importance of drilling technologies for for being able to access the resource and the development that will also overlay with some of the work that was done both with carbon capture to develop a statutory and regulatory framework for development of that underground opportunity, as well as what we heard about with House Bill— I believe it was 50— that helped develop some of the statutory framework for the geothermal development, and now we have yet another example of this development of some of the resources that are underground that would need some of the perhaps same investment of time and energy and money to be able to both characterize and develop that resource.

For helping us do that, we have Dr. Mark Myers. He's former Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources and Commissioner with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, and I'm grateful that he could join us today and share some of his work. Dr. Myers, If you can take yourself off of mute and put yourself on the record, I'm looking forward to your presentation today. Great. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Can you see my slides? Yeah, we have the first slide up with the northern lights. Right. So that's a, that's a big claim I'm making there, that if we could find enough geological hydrogen, it really could be transformational for Alaska's energy future and our economic development, as well as a really an environmentally preferred fuel that could either be used locally or exported.

And so I'd like to put that claim into context here. So I've got 18 slides. I'm gonna go fairly fast, but it's important on a new resource like this. And really, when you look at all resources, to think about energy in terms of a portfolio. Portfolio like you would look at the stock market.

You have some sure things, you have some high-risk known things and you have some unknown things with huge upside potential but a lot of risk. So in balancing an energy portfolio, geological hydrogen is something Alaska really hasn't done much with. It's very much an emerging approach, but it's really, I think, a real opportunity for Alaska. So I'm going to walk you through sort of what it is. How it looks a little different than other forms of hydrogen, talk about some of the global efforts, and then scale back to what Alaska would need to do and what Alaska has done in the relatively— in the very recent future, in the last couple of years.

So that's a lot, but I think it will help frame to you to kind of understand the issue and hopefully will lead to some interesting questions. So can you— if I could have the next slide, please.

So, I'm a member of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, and we report a— we do a report every year on sort of the needs of the Arctic at large, but with a particular focus on Alaska. And so, this is the last report we did that came out in the spring. It's a relatively short, simple report, but one of the things you can see is What is the art— what kind of research, what kind of upfront investment in research is needed, and what are we doing and what are we not doing that really could help inform us for both the prospects of Alaska? And so the next slide. So one of the big issues that we highlighted for the administration and Congress and the state of Alaska as well is that emerging resources and technologies are— that could be well suited for Alaska could give us this diversity of energy sources and could dramatically and actually be done somewhat of a synergistic way, as was mentioned, between understanding carbon sequestration, geological hydrogen, I would argue critical minerals.

But these are some examples of recommendations in our reports. Geological hydrogen, but also methane hydrates. The picture on the right there, you can see, is the current methane hydrate long-term production test that's occurring in Prudhoe Bay. It's a $200 million test. The first stage was completed with only partial success, but there's an opportunity to go back in and really, really define this really important resource.

To put this into perspective, methane hydrates represent a potential natural gas resource that far exceeds all conventional and unconventional shale gas together. And so— and Alaska has an abundant supply of that on the North Slope. As assessed by the USGS, but we don't yet know how to produce it. And so, there's been— there was a national research program. Alaska senators, Senator Murkowski, Senator Stevens, both Senators Murkowski were strong advocates for creating this program within the Department of Energy and the USGS.

And this well is— this production test is the result of 2 decades' worth of research and culminating with this test. This test was going to close down this year, but Senator Murkowski worked through the budget process with Energy and Natural Resources, and the '26 budget included $13.7 million to— I think it was— to continue this critical test. It's an example where Alaska has the leadership. We both have a resource still in North Slope. It's relatively stranded.

But unlike Prudhoe Bay gas, this gas contains no CO2. So Prudhoe Bay gas has— you have to remove 12% CO2. This gas, you have to remove zero CO2. So if we can find a way to produce it, it's going to be in some ways cheaper to produce than conventional gas. And it could be highly useful in terms of the ultimate North Slope infrastructure, but also in other places in the world.

Arctic Slope Energy Services operated this facility. And by operating this, they are now the world's experts on methane hydrates. So, it's an example where not only do we have a resource in Alaska, but we're developing the skills, the global skills, to potentially produce this resource elsewhere in the world. So, Alaskans can be exporting their— not just their capacity for the actual energy, but the capacity to produce energy globally.

Enhanced geothermal was mentioned today. It's a critical resource. We also believe strongly in microreactors and small modular reactors have a really a real potential future in Alaska, as does geological carbon sequestration and critical minerals. The point is not just looking at one of these, but all of these. In many cases, including geological hydrogen, there are strong geological links to critical minerals and also to geothermal.

So, by studying one, you can learn about the other. So, this looking at the synergistic approach From a state land perspective, the state should be able to want to understand the resources in totality that exist under state lands and can exist in a similar location and potentially synergistically be produced. So that's one of the goals of this, is to look at the totality of our subsurface and understand those resources. And geological hydrogen is one of those resources which has not really been studied in Alaska. But the basic geology suggests it could be a very significant resource.

Next slide, please. So, hydrogen. Why hydrogen? The reason is hydrogen is a fuel that can be used for so many different purposes. As you can see from here, it's used in producing oil and refining oil and gas.

It's used in transportation, particularly to create fuel cells or to create synthetic fuels. It's used to create fertilizer. It's used in other industrial and mineralized processes, used to make metals. You can see by the graph, currently making fertilizer is the biggest— ammonia production for fertilizer is the biggest use. Petroleum refining is second.

Creating methanol, which is again, is used for many purposes in refining, but also in oil and gas production. Processes, and then for transportation, 10%. So it's a very versatile fuel. It also has tremendous value to not just generate fuel for transportation or refining, but it can use basic heat. So it's a great fuel substitute when you don't have natural gas available for things like steel refining.

To produce hydrogen today are limited to primarily this method of separating hydrogen from methane. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but in doing that, you use a lot.

Energy and you produce a lot of CO2 and you actually are taking a perfectly good fuel in methane and converting it. The next is you can use electricity to produce it. But what if we could find enough hydrogen under the ground in its natural state as hydrogen gas that you wouldn't have to do any of these things? And what would be the implications of that? So that's what we're going to look at today.

This slide also shows you that the growth for hydrogen is projected to be very robust for all those different purposes that we've looked at. Next slide, please. The challenge is on the right side of this graph. You can see that producing hydrogen through electrolysis using renewable energy costs between $3 to $8 per kilogram of produced hydrogen. Think of a kilogram of hydrogen of being a BTU value equivalent to about a gallon of gasoline.

Now, through using natural gas, we can get that down to around $2, but if you have to remove the CO2 in that gas, then you're up in the $3 range. You can see that in the blue. But the geologic natural hydrogen has been estimated to be able to be produced at less than $1 a kilogram. Some kind of a mean price of $0.60 is DOE's per kilogram. So now, see, you have a fuel it can be produced for costs that are very, very similar to that of potentially of gasoline.

So could be very attractive, a way to produce hydrogen, and it could change the economics of hydrogen. Next slide, please. So let's look at how geologic hydrogen is generated. In some ways, it has attributes similar to oil and gas. In some ways, it has attributes critical to to Critical Minerals.

So hydrogen, if you think about the number one way to produce natural hydrogen under the ground is through groundwater circulating through a hot iron-rich igneous rock. And that basically causes rusting. The iron in the rock is affected. It steals the oxygen for oxidizing it and releases the hydrogen. It's called serpentinization as a process, and it occurs at temperatures that can be very high, actually down near the mantle, all the way to about 60 degrees centigrade, so fairly low temperatures in the Earth's subsurface.

So, it needs water, and it needs those igneous rocks, and it forms. A second way to form it is to use the natural radioactivity that exists, like on the Seward Peninsula, where you have these granites that have radioactive rocks in there, The radioactive particles ionize the water and then release the hydrogen. The third way to produce this is to go to those original iron-rich igneous rocks, again, the rocks that generally produce critical minerals, and in that case, you inject hot water or hot water and a catalyst into those rocks and release the hydrogen. So, that would be stimulated in sort of in the same way we fracture— you would fracture the rock and then you inject the the water and create the hydrogen, and then you collect that hydrogen. Stimulated would cost more, probably a little over a dollar per kilogram, but it's a way you can manufacture it at a site.

Again, if you think about critical minerals, you have those rocks in the subsurface in close proximity. You could use stimulated for a mine source with pretty good confidence. You could use that energy locally. So, next slide, please. So how much is out there?

We really don't know, but this is the first USGS estimate of global hydrogen, and the numbers are impressive. The numbers say basically— if you'll go down to the last slide— that we could have 500 years loss of expected— or hundreds of years of growth at an expanded level to where we are today. So we think it's very plentiful. That is a very new geological thought because previously it was thought the hydrogen gas that was being created by these processes would be combined with other minerals early on and not be preserved or consumed by biological activity. And the fact is we're seeing evidence that much of it's being preserved in the geologic record.

So similar to the generation of oil from sources of carbon, organic carbon, hydrogen is produced from a source of broader set of rocks over a much broader set of conditions. It's also generated more quickly than oil and gas is. So you have huge generation potential. Again, we don't know how much of that would be produced in economic quantities yet, but the geology is strongly suggesting and the data we have to date is suggesting that it's going to be very abundant. Next.

So, in the last— basically since the mid-1980s, about 200 wells have been drilled around the world, most of those in the last 3 or 4 years by companies, various different companies, and almost all of them have found hydrogen. The production— the test data is not publicly available. Most of those data have been drilling and logging without flow testing, but you can see the well on the top left in Saskatchewan was recently flow tested. Tested successfully. It's the first well in the world that I know of that's been tested.

The people are keeping this data very close to themselves, but you can see this is a global phenomenon that's occurring very rapidly. You can see in the United States, the Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Iowa has had multiple wells drilled with the data not released, but we're seeing this geologic hydrogen also being in oil and gas basins, but also being in many areas where there's not oil and gas. So, again, its potential as a resource is tremendous in terms of its potential use in places where it could be used more locally where they lack other sources of locally derived energy. We have one producing field in Mali, Africa, where there have been 24 wells that were drilled and produced.

So, the next slide shows what do we know about the US? Well, the first thing is to look at We really know not a lot because hydrogen gas, when it gets to the surface, basically is very hard to detect. It mixes with the other atmospheric gases very quickly. So it's very hard to see under traditional mechanisms. So most of this is by soil sampling or by the few wells that have been tested for it.

The big rectangles show where the highest concentration is, greater than 20%. But you can see its wide distribution across the USGS. Across the US. Again, this is USGS data at their recently released Lower 48 assessment. Go to the next slide.

You will see then the blue areas are areas that the USGS looks to have high prospectivity for hydrogen. You can see how much the United States is covered. That's pretty exciting when you look at an area and you say, "There's this much resource potential out there." Can't be quantified yet. Again, we don't have enough data to do the full quantitative risk-based assessment, but the basic geological elements have been modeled in a pretty sophisticated fashion and suggest a huge presence of potential for, again, geologic hydrogen within the US. Next slide.

So now I'm going to turn— so, where they've started to look, they've been finding it. There is a significant amount of drilling activity. Interesting enough, on federal lands, there is no licensing program for it. So all these— the wells that have been drilled so far to date have either been on countries that have a licensing program, like Australia, or— and France has a system as well for at least exploration drilling— or on private lands. So the wells in the US have all been drilled on private lands.

The next is— So, how would it work in Alaska? You know, again, we have a lot of stranded resources, as you say, but what if we have a proximity to a major mining belt, say the Ambler Mining District? You might have the resources for energy that could unlock and change the economics of mining very dramatically. Again, these source rocks are very similar. All you have to have is a way to stimulate it, or you have to have overlying sedimentary rock cover and traps and seals, and you drill it.

So it's useful for mining. And you see on the far right side, you can see for microgrids in many of our villages that would be associated either with the mining or associated with the right kind of rocks where you could simulate a scale for the villages. The rail belt has a significant amount of potential, and I'll show a little more on that. And then finally, places like Japan are very willing to export it if we can produce hydrogen. And again, in this case, we're producing the hydrogen as a primary source of energy, not as a secondary source of energy from renewables, et cetera.

So next slide. We're starting to drill in on why it suggests Alaska is a really important source. This shows our specific geology. You can see it's the cartoon that shows the big Pacific plate subducting underneath our Alaska coastline. The Pacific Rim of Fire exists because of this reason, and you can see the— as that Pacific Ocean rocks, and many of these are iron-rich igneous rocks, as they get.

Subducted down, they, they melt. They, and they get, encounter water, they bring water down the system, and they encounter again these ferrous igneous rocks, then they're released, which should be releasing the hydrogen. Places like Augustine, where you see the geothermal actions occurring, is because of this Pacific plate subduction. And you can see that the Pacific plate subduction has some unusual characteristics in Alaska. You see on the right side how far north on the red line all the way up to Denali is a part of this subducting block is very shallow.

So, this driving shallow subduction is driving a melting of these igneous rocks and a release of hydrogen. Again, we have not done any testing in Alaska to know, but the geologic indications are there that we have the right rocks, we have the right geothermal gradients, we have the energy in the system. And where we see this elsewhere, they have found some— they found hydrogen gas. So the first stage is to go really understand the system and do an assessment of it. You can see it's also over a very broad area, including the rail belt, and there are many places along this belt where also you have critical mineral deposits.

You have associated geothermal temperatures. One of the first places you could test would be a geothermal project. Where again your geothermal fluids are at high enough temperature where you should just simply test the waters to see how much hydrogen is being generated off those rocks by your geothermal test production. And we haven't done that. So example again of the synergies in the programs.

So next slide shows the many potential uses. We talked about those before, but this shows the location of our critical minerals, our load mineral deposits in red on the left, And you can see how widely spread they are in Alaska. This geological spread is again related largely to these subduction zones and previous ancient subduction zones like the Pacific Rim of Fire but further north along the south side of the Brooks Range, et cetera. And also where these rocks are being moved on the south, Southeast Alaska. So you see all the red, which again are not hydrogen deposits, but they're load-bearing critical minerals.

And those, again, this could be a close association with these mineral deposits and geological hydrogen. Next slide. Again, just a highlight of these. This is a slide that Steve Masterman, the ex-state geologist, put together, which again shows the ultramafic rockiness that generate hydrogen where we know they've been mapped. Within range of the mineral deposits, and you see the potential overlay.

So, one, again, this is really— suggests that this could really be an energy source that could provide energy for remote locations, particularly where you have high-energy uses like mines, and quite honestly, places like military bases. And the Air Force, the US Air Force is looking at this in a pilot program, not in Alaska, but elsewhere. The Canadian military is also interested in this. So, the strategic value of having locally derived energy is starting to be recognized more and more as a national defense asset, as it is an economic driver. Finally, the last slide says there's a lot of work to do here, and these 9 areas in this— so it kind of says where we are.

The USGS is doing the mapping of Alaska similar to the Lower 48 maps I showed, and that should be out no later than this fall. And I have done some preliminary reviewing of the data, and it looks very positive. But I can't say more about it until it's gone through its full peer review process and it's been released. You can see the regional geological assessment, early steps have been going on. ADA's interested in it, particularly in the Amber Belt, UAF and Sandia National Labs.

I've had discussion with mining companies and native corporations like NANA, to look at doing assessments in Ambler, but also potentially at Red Dog. Sandia has done some limited geochemical analysis of the rocks with very positive results. UAF has begun looking at the hyperspectral signature of these rocks and how it might calibrate to hydrogen. And finally, there is a UAF grant proposal for a geological hydrogen in the Livengood area, where of course we have a major, major gold district. So, the next slide, it's more specific assessments.

Element One Hydrogen has— and Critical Mineral Corp has acquired acreage in the Union Bay area. It's also an area where we see rare earth mineral deposits to look at specifically geological hydrogen, but they're looking at stimulated, not the natural drilled hydrogen. And then Shasta has done study on storage. Again, one of the key things were you can store it by produce limited production from the well, or you can store it in an underground reservoir similar to natural gas. DOE did do a study on the Shasta program, identified 7 potential hydrogen reservoirs that could store in the Cook Inlet area, getting to both our grid but also the export potential.

We need to search for hydrogen seeps. On the ground, which involves going on the ground and doing a soil sampling. That has not been done. We do not have a state or federal licensing regime, so who would own— how you would license it, who would own the rights, what the royalty rates would be— none of that has been developed. But we've had favorable discussions with DNR.

But that would be a job for the state legislature as well, of course, to set terms for licensing.

The research and exploration drilling would be the next step, so that pilot drilling program you talked about. We'd obviously have to run economic feasibility studies. Environmental standards would have to be set, et cetera. So a lot of work needs to be done. You can see in red some of it started, but we're in the very early stages.

And the final slide is the USARC decided it was important enough to look at this resource that About a year and a half ago, we held a workshop in Fairbanks, Alaska. We had brought in about 100 of the world's experts, both in critical minerals but also in geological hydrogen, and these were 4 major conclusions from that workshop. As I've tried to express in this, exploration is rapidly increasing private sector jurisdiction where you can permit and license, and the baseline geological geoscience data available are seeing drilling and activity. Alaska geology is very highly favorable, and you can see the link again between strategic and critical minerals in an interior and coastal communities— coastal communities because of the subduction zone that we showed and the Pacific Rim of Fire. Well-coordinated national research program— there is not right now a major program.

The ARPA-E funded about $20 million of research. We're hoping and cautiously optimistic that the Department of Energy will increase funding, that Congress will increase funding for geological hydrogen to limit— to lower the uncertainty and to make sure the United States is the leader in the world on developing this global resource. And then finally, a global testbed. You mentioned the need for a testbed for— absolutely, DOE would need testbed in the hydrogen, particularly at supercritical or superhot. Augustine is a perfect place for that.

Those sorts of programs are what the Department of Energy does really well in partnership with the USGS. It would be with DGS, potentially with other parts of DNR, but that sort of testbed could have an element even in Augustine to test for geological hydrogen. So, again, the synergies are very much there. But they're not often taken advantage of. So, a well-designed program of evaluating the total subsurface when you do one of these pilot programs would be a critical part of such a test program.

So, with that, I'll conclude my remarks. I went really fast, but I wanted to give a sense of what— that this could be a major piece of a future energy portfolio, needs de-risking, needs to have a regulatory structure. But in the world is developing very fast and in a very positive direction. Great. Thank you for that overview of what's going on and some of the deeper dive into some of the Alaska issues.

Got a few questions here. We'll start first, I think, with Representative Castillo, who I think has a question, and then we'll dive in some more. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Myers. I mean, this presentation is really quite exciting, and I'd heard about geologic hydrogen prior to this presentation, but appreciate all the detail.

Do you think it's too early for the legislature to begin the regulatory framework? And I guess my question really is, what can we be doing now to help in this effort? And then, you know, I understand that it liquefies at much colder temperatures than, let's say, Ellen, you know, natural gas, and they can't share a pipe, of course, but Has anybody brought it through pipe and has been using it commercially? You mentioned that maybe in Canada they have, and I'm just curious about the status there. Yeah, thank you.

Gustavo, through the chair, a lot of good questions, and let's start with the last question. So you can mix about 20% of it with natural gas, up to 20%. Beyond that, because the hydrogen molecule is so small, it actually gets within the steel and can embrittle it. So you have to have specialized coating on the steel. It also, because it's the smallest gas molecule, you got to do a lot to make sure it can't leak out of out of pipelines, et cetera, or even that the underground seals are good enough in the underground storage reservoirs.

So it has some characteristics that make it a little more challenging than natural gas, but it's not terribly dissimilar. So the other piece is by weight hydrogen is extremely light. So it's about half the weight of natural gas, but it takes twice the volume. And then to make it liquid like you would for LNG, you have to have extremely cold temperatures. So that takes a lot of refrigeration, but there are alternatives.

One is to convert it to ammonia by simply adding nitrogen. So nitrogen is NH3. So you could create your fertilizer, and actually the ammonia is being looked at as a fuel itself for ships. But certainly a major source of fertilizer. It is also miscible in oil.

You can actually dissolve it in the oil and ship it in oil lines if you choose to, and then you'd separate it out on the other side. And it's liquid at very high temperatures. So you have a way to convert it as a fuel. A third way is to actually— there are some proprietary processes that the military in particular is really interested in where you put it in a metal lattice. And in that case, it's very stable even at room temperatures.

So there's some new and emerging technologies that are very exciting. And I know that the Air Force is extremely excited about it in terms of being able to use it as a fuel where it can stay stable long-term storage when you integrate it into a hydrate matrix metal system. So it's emerging very quickly in terms of other ways to ship and store and use it in its state. And again, they're mixed. There are places like Hawaii where in their natural gas stream they do mix about 15% of it today.

So that's the shipping question. In terms of too early, I don't think it is. There's a lot of pieces to this, and developing a licensing program It's sort of like we were back in the days of coal bed methane. Does it go with the coal or does it go with the natural gas system? So the state would have to decide if we're going to treat it like an oil and gas licensing program, or we're going to treat it more like a minerals program.

And then you have the stimulated where you're generating directly from the minerals versus those where it's stored in gaseous phase in the natural reservoir. There's a lot of thought that needs to go into the state's choice. So, studying it now, understanding how to do it is important. The second is the drilling safety issues. Again, you would need to go through a rigorous process like we do with our Oil and Gas Commission.

They would probably be— because you're going to be drilling for it, they will need to have responsibility to assure the safety standards in the state. And those safety standards will be adopted from best practices elsewhere. So, a lot of work to do. Again, getting some expertise within DGGS and also working heavily, as was suggested with geothermal, on a potential pilot project in Alaska. I think the attitudes when the USGS data is released, that will provide at least a— the first real peer review assessment of Alaska's potential.

And so seeing that report I think will be very important first step. But I do not— I think it's appropriate for the legislature to be looking at this and challenging our agencies to start developing the framework now so that we're ready. There are companies that have come up here and are interested, both in stimulated and non-stimulated. I showed you one, but GeoKilm, another company, has come up here to look in terms of opportunities. When they see the geology, they get excited.

Also, the university, this project with Sandia Lab, the national labs are about to put out a roadmap, and hopefully the Department of Energy will take it seriously, but that would include pilot projects specifically for geological hydrogen within their roadmap plan. And I've reviewed the plan. Alaska will be mentioned in that plan. So, again, we'll have opportunity to become part of the national stage. But we do have to have the expertise, enough expertise within our government agencies to make sure that we have Alaska— that Alaska is engaged by these national— within these national efforts.

Follow-up? Yep. Yes, thank you. And I had asked this question of the previous presenter. I had asked, where is the best research happening?

Where is the— you know, the minds, the engineering that, you know, that is creating what needs to be known in order to bring this to commercialization? And the answer was startups. And I was surprised by that. I thought it would be more a broader, you know, ecosystem there, including national labs. I mean, you know, who is actually on the cutting edge of this effort?

Uh, President Katsela, to this, to the chair, um, the USGS has a small team. It's about 3 people working on it, um, and only one of those full-time, but they have done a brilliant job in terms of looking at assessing the data within the US government. The other major group has been funding that came through ARPA-E to the national labs, but to universities like MIT to Stanford, which has a group working in that, Colorado School of Mines. UAF has actually been engaging in this after our workshop. They engaged and they have some real capacities with similar— like with hyperspectral, with understanding some of the remote sensing pieces and understanding the geology.

So I would say that expertise is spread to national labs. They have, I think, at least 7 national labs that have worked elements of this. And again, the link between critical minerals and the work being done there, the work and mining technology and other technologies for producing minerals by leaching rather than digging in the mining, that research is directly applicable to geological hydrogen. The sequestration work and understanding traps and seals and chemical reactions is important. That work has been done in multiple national labs.

So the national labs are key. National funding is key, and that's where hopefully our congressional delegation would understand and be supportive. But a lot of other states, and not just oil and gas states. So that expertise is right now spread within the industry. It's the companies that are drilling.

The Paloma, which is funded by Bill Gates, Hyterra, uh, Gold Hydrogen in Australia, uh, 45-8 is the company in, in Europe that's looking at the Pyrenees. Max Power is the company that drilled in Canada. Hydroma is the company that produced in Mali and has expertise. And then companies like Geochem. So these are smaller companies, but they're not tiny, and some of them, and they're funded by very, very good funding sources.

My conversations with the major oil companies is that they are very much looking at it and they're studying it. And they need— they understand— I think they're very interested, but they're not going to be the ones out there drilling the first wells. And I think we need two things. We need a very successful pilot program, a pilot test program where we can test it. We need the release of the data over time that's from these 200 wells.

And we need in Alaska to be preparatory because I think when all is said and done, our geology is pretty spectacular for this and our need for it and our synergies with the critical minerals, particularly because the difficulty of that all our major mines outside the rail belt have with energy. This could be a real solution and a real start for that, as well as some of the, the DOD needs for for energy security. Those are drivers that would— could lead to investment in Alaska as a testbed. At the same time, the basic geologic data that we need, DGGS is very appropriate to do that work. The other piece that we have is we have seismic data.

We have 3D seismic data. A lot of these places are looking don't. That is critical data to understanding the traps, seals, reservoirs, We need some well data. So we actually have chunks of data that would be extremely useful if, again, looked at specifically for geological hydrogen. And the companies that I have talked to that are looking at coming to Alaska don't know those sources.

So, again, having a core group of people— and I pointed them to the survey. Our core facility has world-class core resources. They're getting a hyperspectral scanner. They have equipment. That again would make Alaska a really good place to come.

So, it comes back down to, you know, we have to de-risk it, but we have a lot of the baseline geological data. We don't yet have enough expertise, so some seed money, and we need a few.

Key point people within the government itself that are experts. Thanks. Thank you. This is all very exciting, and I'm so glad that we upgraded our geological— the core samples. They used to be out in a Quonset hut, and you could go there and even see the Prudhoe Bay core and look at it.

It's incredible. So I just think it's a really great thing that we should be looking at in this committee. Thank you. Great. Thanks for your comments.

I just want to note in particular, you know, part of the funding that we're looking at in the budget this year does include a little bit of money for the NSF Engines program through the University of Alaska. That it's a small amount that the state is committing into a very significant, large national NSF opportunity, particularly focused on critical minerals. But what you've identified in your discussion today is how transformative that might be to the information and the development of critical minerals information that will overlap into the hydrogen data and applications. So just a plug for that. I want to turn it over to Co-chair Mears, who I think has a question or comment for us.

Thank you, Co-chair Holland, through the chair to Mr. Myers. Thank you so much again for joining us today. I know that I still have a lot more to learn about hydrogen, and this is, this is helpful. I will have to re-listen to this again and perhaps again, again. But it also reinforces that very much in Alaska, portable energy on a very large scale and a very small scale is important.

And, you know, when we're talking about the hydrogen, it's not necessarily, you know, local use, but something that we can ship around. So, it's exciting to be thoughtful about things that are coming up in the future and we can start laying the groundwork for that. I got to work on House Bill 50 and I'll try and remember what I can as we move forward and look at utilization of this resource. So thanks, thanks again for joining us today. Yeah, and thank you for your time and attention as well.

This is a pretty complex a lot of information at once, but I apologize for that. But it is, it is a pretty exciting opportunity for Alaska, I believe. Great. Thank you, Co-chair Mears and Dr. Myers. Dr. Myers, I want to come back to some of the discussion that you've been touching on the last few minutes.

And as I, you know, scan what's going on, we've had the hydrogen working group going on the last couple years. The House Joint Resolution 27 created a call for a task force to work on hydrogen development and the needs around the commercial and statutory development. There's, of course, some agency work going on, as well as university interests. And I'm wondering if you can be— perhaps offer some insight to what specifically should we be doing next in this interim that would be helping align all of these different efforts. And I'm particularly intrigued with your portfolio characterization of how these different activities all start kind of overlapping and intersecting.

And I'm not ensure who is in a position or if we need to create some structure to bring some framework to these different opportunities to link and leverage what's happening. But as we look at this interim, what would you recommend is the next step for us to actually guide this policy work to ensure that the right policy decisions and priorities are being highlighted and developed and advanced?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Lots of different approaches. The first is to get some core funding within the federal system guaranteed. I mean, to me, one of the biggest things— I showed the methane hydrate well, for example.

That $200 million in tests in Alaska would never have occurred if we hadn't had federal legislation that said the administration should look at it. And I'm not being critical of any administration, but you have to have continuity across administrations on an energy project, 'cause all these energy resources take time. And if you allow me a little bit of a sidebar, if you look at conventional versus unconventional and emerging versus existing resources, and you look at the example of shale, shale gas. So in 2020, shale gas was a tiny portion of what we produced. And, you know, we were trying to build a gas line back there, and there was a huge need in the lower 48.

Since that time, shale, this emerging resource, went from being a small percentage of our natural gas to the dominant form. Right now, 78% of US production is unconventional shale gas production, and we've doubled natural gas production. So 24 times increase in the amount of shale gas produced in 20, 25 years. And the reason I bring that up is that's how fast an emerging resource can become a key existing resource. But it did, it took, it took it a while to start.

I mean, hydraulic fracking went back, which was necessary. The technologies that were necessary for this to happen were starting in the '50s or so, '40s and '50s, our understanding of the resources. If you look again, even at our conventional resources, the advances in 3D seismic propelled the renaissance, the current renaissance in oil and gas. That technology came to the forefront about the same time as the shale revolution. So these things can change really quickly, and anticipating these, the technologies are coming even quicker.

We put all these technologies together, and you have to have a really almost a futurist ability to take a certain amount of risk in the system. And to do that, we're going to really need to have some key federal investment into the USGS, into the national labs, and then into state partnerships as a part of that. And that was done with methane hydrates, as an example. That was done through legislation. So ultimately, I believe we need federal legislation supporting the geological hydrogen piece of it.

And that would help. On a state level, getting some seed funding from the state legislature to get a few positions. So getting the commission of looking at how you would regulate the wells, getting DNR to look at how they would do a licensing program, getting some funding to DGES for a position that would be an expert in geological hydrogen. That's how I would start. And then certainly supporting the university's effort.

The university has a tremendous capacity here. And I've— when I've introduced the national lab folks to some of the university folks, they already had relations with Sandia, but also with Lawrence Berkeley Lab, or with the National Lab of the Rockies, or with Los Alamos. By introducing these people and getting them to work together, they all need some sort of funding. So the state needs to have a certain level of seed funding. It doesn't have to be huge, but expertise and funding and then, you know, commitment.

And I do think the dual or triple-use idea of we're not just looking at the critical minerals geochemistry, we're looking at the hydrogen geochemistry, we're looking at the geothermal gradient, we're understanding the fluids. So when you're doing a pilot or an evaluation, you're actually doing it with integrated datasets that can be used for the other purposes as well. So, Alaska being in the forefront of having the experts that know how to do that or know enough about how to do that, and then taking our existing datasets and maximizing this using our core facility, seeing where Alaska can play a significant role in, say, a national pilot program. That geothermal idea of getting a national pilot, say, an Augustine, would be really important.

Anyway, the other part is in these environments awareness of within the national security world about this is important because we can see the importance of energy as we move forward in terms of remote sites. And Alaska has a lot of remote military sites. So bringing these ideas forward and socializing those are important. That's a lot of pieces, but there's not a lot, a lot in there. But let me take you back to just, you know, a particular piece of this.

I'm trying to tease out a little bit from you who provides the, the leadership on this and brings it all together. My observation is we have lots of pieces but not much of an integration of these opportunities. And as you've highlighted and really perhaps clarified more than I've seen before, this kind of triple use approach, I think, is remarkable. I'm not sure where we're structured to be able to bring that kind of consistent leadership to the work that needs to be done. And perhaps it's there, but maybe you could clarify where it is, or you could perhaps opine or offer on where it should be to be able to ensure that we're.

Not losing ground or falling behind for lack of integrating these ideas into a clear cohesive strategy? Yeah, it is a problem nationally, and so, you know, there are— there's more and more recognition of a more holistic approach to when we look at a resource, but the funding is typically streamlined to one resource. So the stovepiping is commonly with the funding and getting the expertise that's broad enough and working together. So if you have in the state occasionally we have a resource cabinet and so somewhere in that upper level you need a coordinator that really understands these things, an advisor coordinator. Could that be in the governor's office?

Probably wouldn't be a bad place for it. You'd have to find the right person, but somebody that brings the coordination and asks those questions. Are you working together well? And then from a legislative point, you— maybe you do create a small office of, you know, emerging energy integration, something like that. I think it— but right now, because the funding is specific to the individual resources.

It isn't terribly done holistically. I would say a, a really good thing that DGGS has done and the state did was forming the Geospatial Office. By forming that office, they have many different datasets that can be linked for multiple different types of exploration. And that could be the geophysical datasets, it could be the geochemical datasets, it could be the use of the core facility. So thinking about these assets in terms of multi-purposes, making sure that data systems link together, I would guess that's one of the other pieces I would say be really important to have expertise in the state about how to use machine learning and AI to put this data together because a lot of this— these data sets are very complex.

So having AI and machine learning approaches to the exploration process to the evaluation process is going to become mainstream in the next 4 or 5 years. It's already started, but if the state doesn't have an expert that— or a couple of some experts that really understand it, not just the words, but understand how to do it, that we'll lose some of the opportunity. So the investment in technology is really important, particularly with AI and machine learning, I believe. And that will allow you to take these really complex datasets and challenge it and develop the— and these algorithms and approaches are going to be developed. They probably won't necessarily be developed in Alaska, but they will be out there.

But having someone that can understand those and use those in the context of these preliminary evaluations is going to be really important. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks for that. You know, the, the work going on to university and the AI-related areas just makes me once again wonder, how do we connect up with the resources in these innovative new sectors and ensure that Alaska is participating in those opportunities and not missing them or missing out on having seen those develop?

So I appreciate your thoughts on that today. I think we're about wrapped up. Are there any final thoughts, Dr. Meyer, you want to offer? It as kind of a wrap-up to the material today. I think we're in a pretty good place, but just want to give you the opportunity if you have a final thought.

Just, I think you are— and thank you, Mr. Chair— you're asking the right questions and approaching this. I think, again, a relatively small investment in something like this, you know, would be part of your high-risk portfolio, but it absolutely needs to be done with the partnerships that we talked about before. And the university has some really interested folks and they have some interesting proposals on geological hydrogen that were developed after the workshop and they started to see this. Having those relationships with those other universities, with the national labs, but then also open— start to open the doors in terms of the practical piece of can we go up there, can a company explore and drill? Because there are definitely companies interested, but you have to have a licensing program.

So multi-tiered, you know, and you're structured to do it fairly well between the ALGCC, DNR, Mining, Oil and Gas, DGGS, university, and then when you add the federal partnerships together. So, like the seed money, that the small amounts of seed money, as much as the money, they show intent and support. So, thinking about relatively small, I think a relatively small investment in this and some, you know, some urging of the administration to be, to look at this, and I think there are people in administration interested in this, but some catalyst needs to be there, and I think the state could do a lot with not a lot of money. To move this forward. Wonderful.

Well, thanks for your time, your comments, and your expertise today. Seeing no further questions, I appreciate the time that everyone has been able to take in this discussion today and look forward to sharing the information that we've been able to gather today. That's going to conclude our business for today. On Thursday, we'll hear a presentation from John Espendola, the chair of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska. This is a really vital discussion.

It is following up on some of the work that we've been doing over the last year, in particular looking at a couple of the projects they're working on, both in terms of the LNG import, um, discussions that they have been facilitating, as well as the, um, uh, transmission, uh, regulatory process on the open access tariff. So I think this will be an interesting discussion To the extent that these are open dockets, they are still representing a process of how we are looking at energy development in Alaska. So I urge and encourage everyone to join us again at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday. So seeing no further business before the committee, this meeting is adjourned at 3:02 p.m. Thank you.