Geothermal energy status and policy review

The Geothermal ERA NET has brought together and analysed the status and the policies concerning geothermal energy in its participating countries, including Slovenia, that has joined in as an associated partner in a later stage. 

The report is split between Part A Analysis and Part B Questionnaires. Part A is the current report and is publicly available. Part B contains the questionnaires of all countries. Please contact the relevant country contact(s) (see Appendix 1) if you want to use these. 

The Geothermal ERA NET focuses on direct use and higher enthalpy uses of geothermal energy. The consortium does not consider shallow geothermal energy for geothermal heat pumps, which is a different market with its own characteristics and challenges.

Geothermal energy utilisation accounts for 66% of energy utilisation in Iceland, and one could say that the potential that this energy source holds for this country is largely deployed. Italy also has a significant geothermal production. It ranks as fifth country in
the world for geothermal electricity production. After Turkey, Iceland and Italy, Hungary is ranked at 4th place regarding installed geothermal direct use in Europe. For all other participating countries, geothermal energy is an energy source with potential.

With the exception of Iceland, all countries have an ambitious agenda for an increase of the market for geothermal energy. In all countries except for the Netherlands and Slovenia, this includes a significant growth in electricity production with geothermal
energy. Up to 2020, the Netherlands will focus on direct use. 

In all participating countries, there are policy instruments in place to forward geothermal energy utilisation. This includes R&D efforts, but in some countries, there are also instruments to address the geological risk in the form of soft loans or guarantee funds.
Also, most participating countries have a feed-in-tariff in place, for renewable energy production. Often, this tariff is only applicable to electricity generation, but in France and the Netherlands, there is also support for renewable (district) heat.

This review also discusses other relevant issues, such as the availability of geological data, legislation and statistics.

The Geothermal ERA NET sees much scope for collaboration on joint activities, such as joint research activities and joint activities to remove barriers for further market growth.