Heitkamp Announces Energy Innovation Development Win for UND's Energy & Environment Research Center

Press Release

U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp today announced that the University of North Dakota's (UND) Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) won the General Electric (GE) and Statoil joint competition for unconventional energy innovations, earning an initial $25,000.

The GE and Statoil's Sustainability Collaboration selected UND's EERC out of more than 100 submissions from over 30 countries for its unconventional use of sand to develop a lightweight, locally sourced proppant -- material designed to keep fissures created during hydraulic fracturing open. UND's EERC, along with four other winners, will now be eligible to receive an additional $375,000 prize for developing and commercializing its technology.

Heitkamp has long supported EERC's important energy innovation efforts, having worked closely with EERC when she introduced her bill to provide a viable path forward for coal as an energy source both this year and last year and working with EERC in putting together and hosting a Clean Coal Technology Symposium in Washington, DC. EERC has been a staunch advocate of her legislation.

"Across the board, North Dakota continues to be a leading innovator in this country -- developing new technologies and continuing cutting-edge research that is sparking an energy renaissance," said Heitkamp. "Nowhere is that more apparent than at the University of North Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center, which today received national recognition for its unconventional use of sand to develop a lightweight proppant for fracking. We can expand on the EERC's efforts by working to make sure their innovations aren't just being used to harness North Dakota's oil and gas resources, but to develop and produce our resources on a global level, and I'll keep working with our federal and private partners like the Department of Energy and GE and Statoil today to make sure the EERC has the support and the resources to do that."

When Heitkamp brought DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz to North Dakota last August for one of DOE's national energy strategy meetings, she arranged a meeting between Moniz and Melanie Kenderdine, Director of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis, and top officials from EERC, Director Tom Erickson and Associate Director for Research John Harju. It was important for top officials at DOE to hear directly about the need for continued federal investments in the program's innovative energy and environmental research by reaffirming support for the cooperative agreement. Just nine months later, the details for renewed funding for the program were announced by Moniz's agency.

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