Two climate organizations, Project InnerSpace and Future Cleantech Architects (FCA), have assessed geothermal energy’s potential as an energy source in the European Union. The study highlights thirty industrial clusters across twelve European countries, including Belgium. 

Belgium has both the geological resources and industrial concentration to benefit from geothermal heat, but has developed the technology far less than several neighboring countries.

Save fuel costs and avoid emissions

The subsurface below the EU-27 countries has an estimated 18,000 gigawatts-thermal of geothermal heat at temperatures of 100°C or above. Yet EU factories still burn imported gas to generate heat for industrial processes, and about 90% of the natural gas they consume is imported.

Using geothermal industrial heat in these locations could save 840 million euros per year in fuel costs, strengthen the continent’s energy security, and avoid 4.29 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually – equivalent to CO₂ emissions from more than nine million barrels of oil consumed.

Opportunities

The 30 opportunities are located in 12 member states: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain.

The researchers call this a ‘starting point,’ as they believe every European member state could use geothermal energy for industrial purposes. In total, the European subsurface is estimated to hold 18,000 gigawatts of geothermal energy.

Clean energy

Geothermal energy is a reliable, local, always-available, clean energy source that can help reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. It could be utilized in various industrial processes.

Often overlooked in heat decarbonization discussions, geothermal could provide Europe with reliable, domestic, always-on heat while reducing exposure to imported fuels and volatile energy prices.

Drew Nelson, VP of Strategy at Project InnerSpace: “Europe has enormous potential for geothermal industrial heat. Utilizing it can strengthen Europe’s energy security and industrial competitiveness at a time of high energy prices.”

Belgium

An additional Belgian scientific report, the Belgian Geographic Survey report, finds Belgium’s geo-energy potential particularly interesting. The study estimates approximately 320,000 TWh of geothermal heat stored in limestone formations beneath the Mons and Campine regions. But again, this is heat physically present, not necessarily recoverable at an economic cost.

Belgium, however, has several advantages. The country has many energy-intensive chemical, pharmaceutical, food-processing, and other industrial activities with significant heating requirements. Companies could share the cost of wells and heating networks.

The question remains: why does Belgium, with so much energy-intensive industry, still depend heavily on natural gas for industrial heating when some of that heat could come from underground?

Geothermal energy could make Belgian manufacturing less vulnerable to gas-market shocks while reducing emissions from industrial processes that do not require extremely high temperatures.

Nevertheless, Belgium already uses geothermal energy in several applications, although limited ones. For example, water at about 85°C is extracted from over 2.2 km underground to heat the pharmaceutical campus of Janssen Pharmaceutica in Beerse. Wells around Mons produce water at approximately 73°C, supplying heating networks and other local applications in the Mons region.

Benefits for consumers?

But beyond industrial applications, geothermal energy could eventually benefit Belgian consumers. Replacing gas with geothermal heat could reduce companies’ exposure to volatile fuel prices. So Belgian-produced goods could become cheaper.

Households could benefit from a locally sourced heating supply that is less exposed to natural-gas price fluctuations. Geothermal energy could heat Belgian homes through district heating networks, not just factories, although cheaper household heating is by no means guaranteed.

Geothermal energy could supply industrial heating directly, so it wouldn’t need to be entirely electrified. That could reduce additional demand on the electricity grid.

What about other countries?

Around Paris (France), geothermal energy has supplied district heating for decades and now serves a population comparable to a major European city.

In the Netherlands, geothermal development began by serving large greenhouse operators with continuous heat demand. That provided predictable customers and helped make investments viable.

Regulatory framework

The main obstacles to exploiting geothermal energy are not a shortage of underground heat, but the cost and uncertainty of retrieving it. Drilling a geothermal well can be expensive, and geological investigations cannot fully guarantee how much hot water will flow through the reservoir. Besides, transporting hot water over long distances is costly.

Several barriers must be removed to encourage geothermal energy use. That is why the authors call on the EU for public guarantees for initial drilling risks, easier permitting, better underground data, and a streamlined regulatory framework.