Dan Jørgensen, the EU Commissioner-designate for Energy and Housing, committed to a European strategy for geothermal energy at his confirmation hearing in the European Parliament on 4 November.
He stressed that “Unfortunately that is an untapped resource” and that it can “definitely play a bigger role” in the heating of buildings. He agreed with the European Parliament’s resolution, which was adopted on 18 January this year with near unanimous support, that access to subsurface data, planning, financing, and new business models that address higher upfront costs but maximise very low operational costs over long lifetimes, would be covered.
Philippe Dumas, secretary general for the European Geothermal Energy Council, commented: “Geothermal finally became a key pillar of Europe’s energy transition” whilst Sanjeev Kumar, head of Policy, added, “Today marks the dawn of the geothermal decade”.
Geothermal energy at a relatively low scale currently is a provider of baseload electricity, heating and cooling, and is held to be the cheapest and least land-intensive means of energy storage, as well as the most sustainable means of lithium and mineral extraction.
At present, geothermal energy provides less than 2% of the EU’s final electricity, heating and cooling energy supplies. EGEC’s modelling confirms that with a robust policy framework, geothermal energy can meet at least 75% of the EU’s heating and cooling demand by 2040, 15% of electricity supplies and 10% of lithium and other minerals in a cost-effective way.
