What is Geothermal-DHC about?

Geothermal-DHC addresses the inclusion of geothermal energy in decarbonized heating and cooling grids across Europe. The network follows a technologically bottom-up approach involving the whole spectrum of geothermal and envisaging the whole process chain from planning to operation and monitoring. Our network addresses both, refitted existing heating and cooling networks as well as new grids. Geothermal may act as a heating source, sink or storage and may be combined with other renewables (e.g. solar thermal) and waste heat in multivalent heating and cooling grids.

From a technological point of view, Geothermal-DHC addresses:

• Shallow geothermal energy
• Engineered thermo-active building structures
• Medium depth geothermal energy (e.g. refitted abandoned hydrocarbon wells)
• Deep geothermal energy in terms of hydrogeothermal and petrothermal systems
• Unconventional geothermal application (e.g. geothermal-CCUS)
• Underground thermal energy storage
• Conventional high temperature heating grids (2G to 3G DH)
• Low temperature heating and/or cooling grids (4G to 5G DH)
• Geothermal combined heat and power production

Geothermal-DHC does not address single building supply, pure electricity production and balneological use of geothermal energy and natural hot water.