Residents in the German town of Geretsried have long wanted to run their buildings with clean heat and electricity from geothermal energy rather than fossil fuels

Residents in the German town of Geretsried have long wanted to run their buildings with clean heat and electricity from geothermal energy instead of fossil fuels.

Their hopes were dashed about 15 years ago when a drilling company couldn’t find enough hot water close to the surface to be profitable using traditional geothermal technology. That basically left them with natural gas.

“We gave up. We had big hopes,” recalled First Mayor of Geretsried Michael Müller, who was raised in the town.

Today the next generation of geothermal companies is trying to succeed where previous efforts failed. They don’t rely on hot water close to the surface, but instead use techniques developed in the oil and gas industry to drill deep and extract heat from dry, hot rock. One of them, Eavor, is starting up its first commercial power plant in Geretsried — turning the tiny town of about 26,000 people, south of Munich, into a proving ground for the future of geothermal energy.

  • DoubleohdonutEnglish
    51·
    3 days ago

    They don’t rely on hot water close to the surface, but instead use techniques developed in the oil and gas industry to drill deep and extract heat from dry, hot rock.

    Sigh. Correct me if I’m wrong but it sure sounds like fracking 🙃

    • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      3 days ago

      The concept isn’t entierly unlike fracking though there are some key differences.

      • No hydrocarbons to leak into the local water supply, their presence would actually make an area less suitable.
      • No drilling mud being pumped in.
      • No net removal of material, water goes in, the same water comes out.

      Now pumping high pressure water into the ground could have some localized seismic effects though they should be pretty minimal as the best kind of rock for this kind of deep well geothermal is dense hard rock than carries more heat energy.