Drilling techniques developed by the oil and gas industry could unlock abundant geothermal energy around the world.
Even though France has just broken the nuclear fusion reaction record, unlimited clean power from this method still feels years away. In the meantime, extracting geothermal energy from deep underground is much more immediately plausible on a large scale, and a small town in Bavaria has become a proving ground for the technology.
Residents in Geretsried are about to be the first to benefit from the Canadian firm Eavor’s first commercial geothermal plant as it is scheduled to start producing energy in the next three to four months. The town was the site of a previously failed attempt to tap into geothermal using now-outdated technology.
The toughest part of the process - drilling holes up to 8,000 metres deep - has already been done at the site, and Eavor will shortly be extracting heat from rocks far below Earth’s surface. According to the International Energy Agency, advances in deep drilling technology have the potential to unlock geothermal energy’s potential almost everywhere.
“We want to have geothermal anywhere, everywhere,” Eavor CEO John Redfern told the Associated Press. “What better way to prove that than to put our first well where they tried and failed with traditional geothermal systems.”