A GEOTHERMAL REVOLUTION - Improving visibility for geothermal energy

Geothermal energy is a potential powerhouse for future decarbonisation of energy. Although in countries like Iceland and the Nordic Regions, it’s a well-established renewable source of energy, many other countries are yet to view it as an option yet, preferring wind and solar.

Yet, like tidal, geothermal is a source of energy that’s entirely predictable and doesn’t rely on fickle weather patterns. Unlike wind, solar and tidal, geothermal has a very low visual impact and it is even possible to keep the entire operation below ground.

The potential is huge – but across Europe, many countries don’t see geothermal as an obvious investment, looking instead to more well-known renewables like wind.

“The problem with geothermal energy is that people don’t see it and don’t understand it, unlike wind turbines which are visible everywhere,” says Kevin Mallin, Managing Director of Geolorn Ltd, a project management and drilling engineering consultancy, which is a member of the GEO-DRILL and OptiDrill Horizon 2020 projects.

“Geothermal energy’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness – out of sight, out of mind. Everyone understands geothermal in Iceland. But when you come to the UK, nobody does. In parts of Germany, it’s highly rated, in Scandinavia, highly related, but across most of Europe generally, geothermal is a difficult sell.”

And the Geo Drill consortium want geothermal to sell across Europe. Ideally, Mallin says, geothermal could provide a large slice of the energy needs in Europe, particularly heat energy for homes and industrial spaces it is likely that only a small percentage of those needs will be provided by geothermal.

Up until now, two of the key roadblocks to geothermal energy uptake are the high initial investment costs and the long development cycle. Often more than half of those costs go into drilling, especially for deep well developments where the search for higher temperatures are the key commercial drivers.

High drilling costs come because geothermal engineers need to tap resources deep underground. Depths of deep geothermal energy can range from 3000 to 6000m under the Earth’s surface – there are even projects that aim to drill in excess of 8000m, where water becomes a ‘super-critical’ fluid.

“Depending on where it is, the cost of geothermal can be relatively high for the energy output. Compare it to a barrel of oil which is currently around 80 dollars per barrel, a geothermal equivalent could be 200 dollars, it is very difficult to quantify. Additionally geothermal heat needs to be utilised close to source,” says Mallin.

To tackle these prohibitive costs and improve drilling capabilities, the Geo-Drill and OptiDrill projects are developing holistic drilling technologies that could drastically reduce the cost of drilling at large depths and high temperatures (250ºC or more).
Such innovations could open up the world of geothermal as a much more attractive source of energy, especially when it comes to home heating.

Geo-Drill and OptiDrill decided to approach the Horizon Results Booster programme to help them market the idea of geothermal energy to politicians and the general public, hoping for an uptick in interest in this renewable energy source.

“We’re all very good at what we do within our consortium. But that doesn’t mean that we’re very good at selling what we do,” says Mallin.
Within the Horizon Results Booster (HRB), the Geo-Drill and OptiDrill teams gained advice on marketing, produced a commercial video, and developed a more focused communications strategy.

“The HRB programme has broadened our horizons. We want to target not only policymakers, but also cross-sector groups. And particularly now that we’re transitioning away from oil and gas as our energy base, we need them to understand the potential of geothermal.”

The programme builds up from a foundation through various stages, Mallin says, reaching the pinnacle at the end.

“You see these stacking benefits all the time. And to think it’s free – you would pay a lot of money for this normally if you went to the big advertising and marketing companies,” he says.

Another added value of the HRB programme was that Mallin and his team could learn from other beneficiaries and they realised that they weren’t the only ones with communication and dissemination struggles.

“We had a chance to meet all of these people, not necessarily working on geothermal, but seeing what challenges they had. And quite often, the challenges that they face are similar to the challenges you face and getting that understanding of how other people deal with those challenges has been hugely beneficial.”

Ultimately, the Geo-Drill consortium seeks political and public acceptance and take-up of geothermal energy.

“We don’t want knee-jerk reactions, we want a long-term sustainable political future which involves decarbonising our world, and we can’t do it quickly enough,” says Mallin. “I can’t emphasise it enough – we would not be where we are in terms of getting engaged with people without the Horizon Results Booster.”

The GeoDrill project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action under grant agreement no. 815319. The OptiDrill project is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action under grant agreement No. 101006964.