Back in 2020, the European Union gave the go-ahead to a project looking into the viability of extracting geothermal energy from oil wells. The idea: diversify low-carbon energy sources beyond wind and solar. Now, they are doubling down on heat from the ground.
Reuters reported this week that the 27 members of the bloc had drafted a document demanding a commitment to the reduction of emissions from cooling and heating systems, and with it, a commitment to explore the potential of geothermal energy as a replacement for hydrocarbons in power generation and heating.
“The use of geothermal energy contributes to the strategic objectives of the European Union by decreasing energy dependence and fossil fuel imports,” the draft reads, according to the report. The document also suggests that utilizing geothermal energy could bring down electricity costs, which, in the past couple of years, have caused a cost-of-living crisis and set in motion a deindustrialization trend in European economies.
On paper, it sounds great—just ask Iceland, which gets a solid portion of its energy from subterranean heat wells. In practice, it is a little bit more complicated, as evidenced by the fact that there has been a lot of talk about geothermal energy in the EU but little action. The draft document cited by Reuters was not the only attempt to put geothermal in the spotlight this year. In July, EU’s energy ministers made another attempt that ended with nothing specific because of what appeared to be an absence of immediate access to sufficient funding.
Now, geothermal energy is back on the table, and maybe this time, it will be granted some of the preferential treatment that wind and solar energy have enjoyed for years. That treatment would address the two biggest problems with geothermal expansion: high upfront costs and a complicated permitting process.
Geothermal resources are abundant everywhere: the Earth’s core radiates heat outwards into the mantle and the crust. Oil and gas drillers are familiar with this heat and know that the deeper you drill, the hotter it gets. That heat is the goal of geothermal drilling. However, because heat makes drilling trickier at greater depths, geothermal drilling is an expensive undertaking; the deeper the well, the more expensive it becomes.
Related to this problem is the fact that while geothermal energy is abundant, access to it is not equally easy. In Iceland, the heat is closer to the surface, which makes it cheaper to tap. In other parts of the world, you need to drill much deeper to get to that heat, which makes the endeavor more expensive. There is another risk, too, as evidenced by Iceland’s electricity crunch from the winter of 2021/22. Following an extra dry summer, the country’s hydropower resources were depleted and geothermal could not be scaled up to absorb the demand that hydro could not meet.
Yet no source of energy is without risk and that particular risk could be quite manageable if geothermal is used selectively, when and where it is most appropriate. A recent deal between Germany’s BASF and Australia-based Vulcan Energy could be one such instance. The two said in November that they would explore the possibility of tapping geothermal at a BASF site in order to supply it with baseload electricity with no emissions. The companies estimated the potential of geothermal resources at the site to be up to 300 MW.
Geothermal certainly has a substantial potential to complement the energy mix of any country as long as the drilling is cost-effective and that cost-effectiveness is prioritized over the amount of emissions that could be removed by using that source of energy for a specific location. Prioritizing emissions above all other considerations, such as affordability, reliability, and, indeed, cost, has not been particularly productive for the EU.