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Geothermal energy can provide a climate-friendly baseload for heat and power that is independent from wind and sun. However, the growth of geothermal energy lags behind EU targets. This is because geothermal energy projects have comparatively high technical and economic risks, which impacts public support negatively and holds back investment. Reliable exploration strategies that have inherently lower economic and technical risks and hence increase public support are key to drastically reducing these barriers.
The FindHeat project develops a novel, conceptual model-based geothermal exploration workflow. A modular toolkit, the FindHeat platform, will provide innovative software tools and geophysical exploration techniques at significantly lower costs than the state-of-the-art.
The platform will be validated across eight geologically diverse geothermal plays to demonstrate its economic and technical benefits arising from faster turnaround times for exploration and appraisal of geothermal resources, making better use of legacy data and non-invasive geophysical techniques, and constraining uncertainties with respect to the size of the heat source and the range of possible heat production rates.
The FindHeat project develops a novel, conceptual model-based geothermal exploration workflow. A modular toolkit, the FindHeat platform, will provide innovative software tools and geophysical exploration techniques at significantly lower costs than the state-of-the-art. The platform will be validated across eight geologically diverse geothermal plays to demonstrate its economic and technical benefits arising from faster turnaround times for exploration and appraisal of geothermal resources, making better use of legacy data and non-invasive geophysical techniques, and constraining uncertainties with respect to the size of the heat source and the range of possible heat production rates.
The overarching objective of FindHeat is to provide a modular toolkit, the FindHeat platform, which enables a novel geologically-based geothermal resource assessment that minimises the economic and technical risks of geothermal developments, improves the long-term performance of the reservoir, and catalyses a more positive community engagement. The toolkit will be used to perform conceptual model-based exploration, that is to test different scenarios of geological concepts and exploitation strategies to identify “sweet spots”. Sweet spots are locations for drilling wells that have a high likelihood of yielding economically viable flow rates and temperatures while avoiding induced seismicity. Within this overarching objective, the following specific objects will deliver the individual modules of the toolkit and align with the expected outcomes for this call:
FINDHEAT is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101147171.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.