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LPRC participation at the CROWDTHERMAL Final Conference, Berlin, October 2022

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On 19 and 20 October 2022 the CROWDTHERMAL project held its final events in Berlin – Germany, with the participation of consortium partners in person and online. The purpose of the event was to review the progress of the work packages, future tasks, as well as administration and financial issues to be completed before the official closure: December 2022.

On the first day, 19th November 2022, the consortium held an internal meeting at IZES facilities, in which LPRC (represented by Márcio Tameirão) introduced the current state of the CROWDTHERMAL Core Services – followed by discussions and comments on how to improve them – the Core Services were developed by LPRC. The next day was dedicated to the Final Conference of the CROWDTHERMAL project, as a joint event with COST DHC: ‘’First Geothermal District Heating and Cooling Day event’’. In this opportunity, LPRC introduced the Core Services to the wider audience that attended the event, with an overview of the 7 tools that are currently available on the project website to help project developers, communities and local authorities to implement geothermal projects in Europe.

The CROWDTHERMAL consortium during the Berlin meeting

The next two months, up to the project final day, will be dedicated to addressing comments and implementing the necessary changes in CROWDTHERMAL tools to further improve the user’s experience and added value in their projects.

La Palma Research Centre

LPRC representing CROWDTHERMAL at GeoTHEM expo

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On June 1-3 2022 the Messe Offenburg-Ortenau GmbH held the GeoTHERM expo & congress, in Offenburg – Germany. The event gathered relevant experts in the Geothermal sector in Germany and Europe, including academic, research, industry, and stakeholders from other sectors. These experts and companies had the opportunity to deliver formal presentations, set up and showcase their products and developments in their booths, as well as to engage with stakeholders and network during coffee breaks and the social dinner.

The agenda of the formal presentations was organized in two parallel sections: Deep and Shallow Geothermal Energy. In this opportunity, CROWDTHERMAL was selected to be presented in the first day of event (2 June 2022) as part of the Deep Geothermal Energy section – presented by Marcio Tameirao (La Palma Research Centre). The purpose of the presentation was to introduce the upcoming CROWDTHERMAL Core Services that are planned to be launched in June 2022, and how they will be implemented and made available on the project website.

The audience topic raised the audience’s attention, and the Q&A session included questions related to the meta-database of geothermal projects in Europe and alternative finance.

GeoTHERM conference

In the upcoming days the CROWDTHERMAL Core Services will be launched on the website, stay tuned!

LPRC presents its projects during the EGU General Assembly 2022

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Similarly to previous EGU editions, La Palma Research Centre took part in this year’s EGU General Assembly. LPRC presented 4 of its EU projects: UNEXUP, ROBOMINERS, ENGIE and CROWDTHERMAL.

This time, the EGU General Assembly was hosted in an hybrid format. All LPRC projects were presented online in 5-minute style presentations followed by questions made by the online and in person participants. Find our views and more information on each of our presentation below:

UNEXUP (Session ERE4.4 – Automation and robotics for raw material exploration and production in Europe)

  • Abstract & Information
  • Number of attendes: 12 online + 10 in person
  • Questions and discussion: How deep can the UX robot dive? For how long can it work?

ROBOMINERS (Session ERE4.4 – Automation and robotics for raw material exploration and production in Europe)

  • Abstract & Information
  • Number of attendes: 12 online + 10 in person
  • Questions and discussion: What type of minerals can be mined with ROBOMINERS? What is the state of the technology? When will the first field results come out?

ENGIE (Session EOS3.1 – Promoting and supporting equality, diversity and inclusion in the geosciences)

  • Abstract & Information
  • Number of attendes: 36 online + 18 in person
  • Questions and discussion: No questions during the session, but a few participants promised to send an email for follow-up discussions.

CROWDTHERMAL (Session ERE2.5 – Exploration, utilization and monitoring of conventional and unconventional geothermal resources)

For now, it is still possible to have a look at the uploaded project material – just click on the project links above and get more information on these projects!

EMPORIA4KT

LPRC in Madrid, for CROWDTHERMAL meetings

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From 6 to 8 April 2022 the CROWDTHERMAL partners were together in Madrid, Spain, as well as virtually. The three days of intense work had the purpose of discussing and updating the work accomplished within each of the Work Packages; to collect input from the Advisory Board regarding future steps; and to conduct the 1st CROWDTHERMAL International Conference. In this opportunity, the Work Package leaders presented their work, followed by questions and an open discussion about specific topics to be prioritized in the upcoming weeks and months.

LPRC (represented by Márcio Tameirão) showcased the current work of integration and deployment of the CROWDTHERMAL Core Services as webtools on the website, to be used by community investors, geothermal project developers, and local authorities. These tools intend to educate the target audiences about several topics around CROWDTHERMAL, such as geothermal energy, alternative finance, social aspects, and financial risk mitigation.

  • 6 April: The first day of the program consisted of an internal consortium meeting, in which LPRC presented the current state of the Core Services as webtools to collect feedback and suggestions for improvement. In addition, there were discussions about the sustainability of the projects results beyond the EC-funded period – also led by LPRC and CrowdfundingHub.

    Internal consortium meeting

  • 7 April: In the next day the 1st CROWDTHERMAL International Conference was held, which counted with more than 140 online participants. In the last block of the event, Márcio (LPRC) presented the preview of how the webtools can add value to the target audiences, e.g., community investors, geothermal project developers, and the local authorities.

    1st CROWDTHERMAL International Conference

  • 8 April: The last and final day of meetings was a great opportunity to discuss these updates with the Advisory Board of the project – experts in geothermal energy who provided valuable input and improvement points to be implemented in the next weeks.

    Meeting with the Advisory Board

The presentations and discussions in Madrid – and for the participants online – resulted in important feedback and discussions to improve not only the CROWDTHERMAL Core Services, related to Work Package 4 led by LPRC, but all aspects of the project in the upcoming months.

CROWDTHERMAL will end towards this year, so a lot of developments are coming in the next months. Keep updated with the project on its website and social media channels.

LPRC participation at CROWDTHERMAL meetings in the Netherlands

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Between the  6th and 8th of October 2021 the CROWDTHERMAL consortium met physically in Utrecht, the Netherlands, for the first time since the kick-off meeting of the project.

The three-day meeting was divided in different sections:

  • CROWDTHERMAL technical session with community funding
  • CROWDTHERMAL 9th Consortium meeting
  • CROWDTHERMAL 2th General Assembly
  • Advisory board workshop: international conference on new financial mechanisms for geothermal energy (risk mitigation, social, financial)

In this opportunity, Balazs Bodo and Márcio Tameirão represented LPRC to share with the participants the work completed in the 2nd year of the project, as well as the work plan for the 3rd and final year of CROWDTHERMAL. Balazs Bodo led the talk on the sustainability plan of the project (Work Package 7), to structure the continuation of CROWDTHERMAL services beyond the EC-funded period. Márcio Tameirão provided presentations on the deployment of the project´s core services (Work Package 4), as well as the development of the deliverable related to the FAQ tool that will be available on CROWDTHERMAL website. In addition, Márcio also introduced the work that LPRC is doing on CROWDTHERMAL social media channels, as part of the dissemination work package (WP6) led by EFG.

After fruitful discussions among the consortium and the Advisory Board thorough the three days of the event, the CROWDTHERMAL team have resources to further align the strategy for the upcoming tasks towards the final year of the project.

Follow CROWDTHERMAL on the website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

LPRC projects at EGU 2021

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This year, following the company’s tradition to present its projects at the EGU General Assembly – 2017, 2019 and 2020 -, LPRC will present and discuss five projects on this year’s edition. Due to the travel and health restrictions in place the event will be held online.

The EGU 2021 event (#vEGU21) will host presentations in a unique style: each abstract will be given a 2-minute timeslot  to make a quick presentation based on a 1-slide presentation. After that, participants can enter chat rooms to discuss the abstract and the presentations with the authors.

Below you can find the projects and materials that LPRC will present during the EGU 2021 online event:

Feel free to have a look at the projects and materials provided and join the discussion at the given times – science is for everyone!

Environmental evaluation of a Geothermal Power Plant in the Southern German Molasse Basin by a Life Cycle Analysis

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On the 26th March 2021, ENERCHANGE and ThinkGeoEnergy hosted a new episode of their recurring Focus on Geothermal – Energy for the Weekend event this time focused on Life Cycle Assessment of Geothermal Energy to raise public acceptance based on a German Case Study.

Geothermal Energy and social acceptance

The webinar highlighted the competitive disadvantage of geothermal energy compared to other energy sources due to public opinion. Despite of its green potential and output advantages (baseload capacity, long lifetime of operation and wide accessibility), geothermal is often perceived a harmful energy source by general public.

According to the present case study and similar past conclusion of experts, the roots of poor social acceptance performances of geothermal energy lie in poor communication of geothermal green capacities compared to other energy sources both fossil and green. The German team hosting the event suggested that a clear demonstration of the green output of geothermal energy could outweigh negative initial views on the technology. In addition, the team believes that a strict environmental monitoring of geothermal power plants is necessary to showcase transparency, accountability and good faith of geothermal developers. To that end, the team proposed that geothermal projects shall establish a thorough Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of their operations from exploration to decommission to monitor CO2 emissions and take measures if levels are abnormally high.

Life Cycle Assessment for geothermal projects

A Life cycle assessment is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product’s life, spanning from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, and use.

Possible considerations of a Life Cycle Assessment for Geothermal plants.

Based on this new operational framework for a Life Cycle Assessment in geothermal, 3 steps have to be taken into account when assessing geothermal power plants:

  • Drilling geothermal wells require energy (often electricity) whose origin (fossil v. renewable) has to be taken into account. Furthermore, building a plant requires, raw materials, transport and auxiliary energy. All of which have a carbon footprint. The total energy demand for input will be accounted for in the calculation of the environmental impact of a project.
  • The same principle applies for the output of a station. Whilst the electricity produced by a geothermal power plant might be 100% clean, it bears the limitations of transport of raw materials for construction and the building of the plant itself.
  • Finally, it is necessary to ensure that refrigerant used in geothermal turbines shall not leak which would have a detrimental impact on the environment. One way to ensure transparency and maintenance of high safety standards throughout the lifetime of a geothermal plant is to enforce environmental monitoring. Said monitoring shall be available to the public to showcase the good performance of geothermal energy which would then improve social acceptance of the technology once the public sees for itself that geothermal has great versatility coupled with high environmental standards.

LPRC participates at the GEOENVI-CROWDTHERMAL joint webinar – part 2

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The recommendations coming from GEOENVI (see part 1) directly echoe the CROWDTHERMAL project’s vision for social acceptance on geothermal projects. CROWDTHERMAL identified 4 factors of public acceptance:

  1. Self-efficacy: Energy transition means the change of infrastructures and daily life environments. It is important to experience one’s own impact and influence within this transformation process.
  2. Identity: The more people can identify emotionnally with a measure, the greater their willingness to accept it. This means that infrastructure measures must also be recognised emotionally as elements of one’s own living environment. This is more likely to happen with more local stakeholders involed (regulators, SME and local communities).
  3. Orientation and insight: If people understand the necessity of a political decision and support the goals and means envisaged by this decision, they are more likely to accept it. Therefore, transparent information is needed about what they will face. Crucial elements are transparency about pros and cons and potential alternatives.
  4. Positive risk-benefit balance: Acceptance is more likely the more the planned consequences of a decision benefits oneself or related groups. This includes the perception of low or at least acceptables risks. In this context, the risk assessments of experts and those of laypersons are often not congruents.

Finally, with regard to financing of geothermal projects, CROWDTHERMAL confirmed that community funding can play an important role to initiate and support geothermal projects by raising additional funds. Especially in the early project development phases, alternative finance methods can enable more geothermal projects to be brought to life. Community funding can also achieve public engagement and increase acceptance. In the light of the massive investments needed, especially for deep geothermal power projects, community funding is yet not considered to be functional entirely on its own, but rather in combination with other (conventional) forms of finance.

Community funding can play an important role to initiate and support geothermal projects.

The most suitable alternative finance method very much depends on the individual project characteristics and context. At the early project development stages, especially crowdfunding (shares/equity or reward-based) can be attractive options to achieve community co-ownership and to enhance project support. The high resource-related risk in the early phases leads to high return expectation of investors. Community funding is generally less risky in the construction and operation phases, but the potential returns at these stages are also less attractive.

Understanding and developing a project in a holistic way, taking into consideration technical, financial, and social dimensions as well as their interdependency is an important risk mitigation measure for project developers. It reduces the risk of interface problems and increases the chances for a Social License to Operate as well as for technical and economic success.

Further readings:

GEOENVI Recommendations for the harmonisation of geothermal environmental regulations in the EU: https://www.geoenvi.eu/publications/recommendations-for-european-harmonisation-of-geothermal-environmental-regulations-in-the-eu/

CROWDTHERMAL guidelines for Public acceptance: https://www.crowdthermalproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/CROWDTHERMAL-D1.4.pdf

CROWTHERMAL community for renewable energy best practices in Europe: https://www.crowdthermalproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/CROWDTHERMAL-D2.1-new-version.pdf

LPRC participates at the GEOENVI-CROWDTHERMAL joint webinar – part 1

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On Tuesday 16 March, GEOENVI and the CROWDTHERMAL project, where LPRC leads one work package, hosted a joint online event titled: “Targeting acceptability and co-ownership for deep geothermal projects”. In this event, an expert panel discussed recommendations and ways forward for public engagement for deep geothermal, based on good practices on crowdfunding from the CROWDTHERMAL project and gave some academic perspectives on the subject.

Mission statement of both projects:

The objective of the GEOENVI project is to answer environmental concerns in terms of both impacts and risks, by first setting an adapted methodology for assessing environment impacts to the project developers, and by assessing the environmental impacts and risks of geothermal projects operational or in development in Europe.

The webinar (part 1):

Both EU projects tackle the question of public engagement with different hypothesis, so this webinar was an opportunity to gain a better overall understanding of public engagement based on two different scopes and methodologies.

The first part of the webinar was focused on the research output of the GEOENVI project. GEOENVI argues that further development of geothermal projects will boil down to creating an energy community and better communication on the side of developers. The combination of these two aspects is believed to have the potential to raise social acceptance of geothermal projects.

Building an energy community is the action of involving local stakeholders (regulators, local industries, SMEs and individual citizens) in the production of sustainable heat and/or electricity. The aim is to ensure that energy production can provide opportunities to local businesses (see similar conclusion from the Trends in geothermal webinar) as well as energy for local households. The figure below showcases some of the inititation that may be undertaken by project developpers and regulatory authorities to insert energy project in a community to the benefits of a variety of economic activities.

1Initiatives to promote the sustainable development of geothermal areas.

With regards to dissemination and communcation of project activities, GEOENVI discovered that there is a gap between how project developpers think they communicate and how the public feels it is informed. On the following figure,  it is appararent that the public generally feels poorly informed. This misunderstanding in communication draws a wedge between a project and its surrounding community. In Alsace, this wedge resulted in tension between local communities and geothermal development in spite of the geothermal potential of the area and the positive economical impact of competititive green energy on its surrounding market. The problematic is particularly interresting when we consider that misinformation leading to mlistrust of a technology is also visible in other sector (wind turbines, electric cars and more recently vaccines).

Participation in public inquiries held in Alsace 2015/2016.

Based on these two problematics, GEOENVI will provide policy recommendation for the European Union in hope that it could turn the tie of geothermal development in the continent, thus meeting climate goals whilst ensuring social gains at local level.

GEOENVI calls for European standards on information sharing by setting up minimum qualitative requirements for information sharing on energy projects. This will not only ensure better trust into new green technologies but also enables project developpers to draw conclusions from other projects that have similar minimal communication requirements:

  • Choose and collect the relevant information enabling project developpers and researchers alike to confidentially collect environmental concerns and posititve impact to compare any project with other Renewable Energy Sources (RES);
  • Adapt the communication target: distinguish ‘public’ from ‘experts’ in the communication strategy so that anyone can understand the purpose and methodlogy of an energy project in his/her/their own words;
  • Improve data accessibility and awareness of accessible information: FAIR data principle , independent appeal commintee for confidentiality issues;
  • Share reliable information: All project developpers shall ensure a pro-active data sharing strategy to inform the public in the name, of transparency and trust building.

This article continues on part 2.

Trends in geothermal, 16th February 2021 part 2: technology

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The first part of the Baseload Trend’s geothermal webinar focused on hurdles linked to financing in new technologies and emerging trends. With regards to geothermal, the trends for the future unfold in three aspects: shallow geothermal, deep geothermal and thermal storage.

Shallow geothermal has received more and more attention recently due to the decentralisation of the energy market. Local energy demand and concepts such as energy communities are trending due to the unlikeliness of large scale and centralized power plants to meet heat and electricity requirements of all communities throughout a region, especially those most remote. In the past, geothermal would not have been able to meet these spikes in demand. Fortunately, advances in technologies, heat exchangers and miniaturization enable smaller plants and heat pumps to provide affordable and competitive energy to smaller markets. In addition, micro-grids for small markets are easier and quicker to develop than extensive grid system joining large power plants to remote and smaller energy demand. This local approach will ensure that small communities are not behind the renewable energy curve – especially important to make sure that countries will meet climate target, by ensuring a comprehensive renewable energy grid whilst promoting a fair transition where each individual has access to local affordable clean energy without bearing the costs of long and complex grid to dispatch energy home. Finally, local energy disables the need to depend on foreign oil, gas and electricity thus improving national energy security and making prices less volatile.

Main themes and subtopics of the overall CHPM concept: exploration, development, operation, market. CHPM2030 developed a concept for a new geothermal-related technology.

Shallow geothermal is only one face of the “geothermal trend coin”. Deep geothermal has a complementary role to shallow in any national grid. Whilst, shallow geothermal often implies smaller power plants (or heat pumps) for less energy demanding markets, deep geothermal often implies higher temperatures and thus higher power outputs for more energy demanding markets. Two main trends are foreseen for deep geothermal in a near future: first, scalability of operations thanks to lessons learned from the oil and gas industry (it would be possible to take lessons learned from these technologies to apply them to new geothermal fields); second, economies of scale could greatly benefit from geothermal deep drilling in the future since more drilling would reduce the marginal cost of each plant by incorporating the lessons learned from past experiences. Finally, experts believe that the future of deep geothermal plants is ultradeep rigs (around 10km deep). Such high depth is on the horizon thanks to drilling techniques developed by the oil industry. Almost any point of the globe reaches very high temperatures (around 200°C) at such depths meaning that any place could, theoretically, be producing large quantities of clean energy for decades.

Energy production is not the only benefit of geothermal. This renewable source has the added value to be able to be suited for thermal energy storage. Thermal energy storage (TES) is a technology that stocks thermal energy by heating or cooling a storage medium so that the stored energy can be used at a later time for heating and cooling applications and power generation. Wind and solar may be better at delivering the cheapest net kW/h, but storage is cheaper for geothermal. This is important because different perks of different energy sources emulate the best in each or in a comprehensive energy mix. Geothermal energy and thermal storage will be able to form the baseload power of an energy mix whilst fluctuating power sources such as wind and solar will supply peaks in demand. In the end, there is no silver bullet to fight climate change but, rather, a comprehensive system of clean technologies enabling a secure and fair carbon transition.

For more information on groundbreaking geothermal technologies that LPRC was a part of, consider checking out the CHPM2030 project that combine heat and power production to mining: https://www.chpm2030.eu/!