This week concluded the Washington Conference and Technology Workshop entitled The Changing Outlook for U.S. Energy: Will Shale Gas Transform America’s Energy Future?. The conference identified high-performance computing as a powerful tool to improve the production and environmental impact of shale gas. HPC’s value reaches beyond the oil and gas industry, and energy companies of all sizes will benefit from clear information on how to engage the HPC resources resident at our national labs.

In May 2011, national leaders established the National Roadmap on Advancing Energy Technologies through High-Performance Computing. Since then, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Howard Baker Forum have launched the HPC for Energy Initiative to enact the Roadmap’s recommendations. In this video interview, Dona Crawford, leader of Livermore’s cutting-edge HPC programs, details various elements of the HPC for Energy Initiative.

On March 5, U.S. Senator John Hoeven hosted a meeting at North Dakota State University, bringing together stakeholders from the public and private sectors to discuss how to advance energy innovation.

For anybody that follows energy, North Dakota is known for its vast resources in oil, gas, and wind. What may not be quite as obvious is the role that supercomputing plays in offering these resources to the marketplace.

Welcome to HPC for Energy.

To get you started, here’s a quick overview of some of the site’s features and how to use them:

Featured Articles: This section highlights some of the most-interesting news stories, interviews and other HPC articles. It will also point you to earlier stories you may have missed. This section can be found under the Resources tab.

University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources is a high-test research and development institution supercharged by industrial sponsors and the State of Wyoming. On occasion, the School (led by the mighty Mark Northam) puts together speakers from around the state and across the country to discuss key topics in energy science, technology and policy. A great example was last fall’s Hydraulic Fracking Forum, which gathered experts from academia, industry, regulatory agencies, state legislatures and national labs.

LIVERMORE, Calif., Oct 25 – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) today issued a call to energy businesses of all sizes for proposals to collaborate with LLNL teams of experts in advancing energy technology through the use of high-performance computing (HPC).

High-performance computing can provide an edge to American entrepreneurs and companies and hasten the implementation of crucial new technologies by substantially reducing development time and cost. The United States is a world leader in high-performance computing and advanced simulation applications. By testing a new concept or product in virtual space, HPC modeling and simulation dramatically reduces the number of physical prototypes necessary to bring a product to market. By shortening the development window, HPC gives American companies an edge in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

On May 16-17, 2011 in Washington, D.C., the Howard Baker Forum, the Bipartisan Policy Center and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory led the National Summit on Advancing Clean Energy Technologies: Entrepreneurship and Innovation through High-Performance Computing.