Breaking barriers for geothermal energy

As Europe pushes to meet its renewable energy targets, geothermal energy, with its potential to provide a reliable and climate-friendly source of heat, must be scaled up. The new EU-funded FindHeat consortium, led by led by Sebastian Geiger of TU Delft, will develop an innovative toolkit to support more efficient and sustainable exploitation of geothermal energy. It will reduce technical and economic risks and boost public support. TPM researchers Gerdien de Vries and Fabiën Dekker will contribute to this project by bringing in expertise on social sciences.

Technical and economic risks currently hold back investments in geothermal energy and undermine public trust in this renewable energy. The FindHeat consortium will develop an agile toolkit to reduce these barriers. The focus of the toolkit will be a new exploration workflow for geothermal energy that combines innovative software solutions, low-cost geophysical and geological exploration techniques, tailored training, and public engagement.

Validation at eight geothermal sites

The new toolkit will be validated across eight geologically diverse geothermal plays to demonstrate its economic and technical benefits when exploring and appraising geothermal resources. The FindHeat consortium directly involves end users from industry that will not only support the development of the toolkit but also apply and exploit it in their daily operations to ensure its technical and economic feasibility.

Trust

FindHeat includes comprehensive social science research to co-create new communication strategies that improve public engagement and help to earn public trust. By combining improved public support with reduced technical and economic risk, the FindHeat consortium will lead to a more efficient and sustainable exploitation of geothermal energy and therefore help to meet the European targets for geothermal energy.

TPM contributes to this research by investigating how local cultures affect perceptions of geothermal energy and how this knowledge can be used to improve public communication. This investigation will lead to a publicly available manual for stakeholders (such as energy companies) who engage with local communities.

Psychologist Gerdien de Vries: ”With this cross-cultural research in eight countries, we aim to better understand the relation between local sentiments and the public communication about geothermal energy”.