First Periodic Report

The project Geothermal Communities - demonstrating the cascading use of geothermal energy for district heating with small scale RES integration and retrofitting measures is a CONCERTO Phase III action, accepted and negotiated in 2009 and has started in January 2010.

The project is lead by Geonardo Environmental Technologies Ltd, a Budapest based engineering and consultancy SME with relevant experiences in EC project management and in geothermal emery applications. The project consortium consists of 16 partners altogether – including the Coordinator -, representing the relevant municipalities and technological companies/organisations, research partners and associated cities.

The project’s overall and main objective is to promote the usage of geothermal energy and resources as a reliable renewable energy resource through demonstration actions in 3 cities involved in the project as Concerto Areas. Geothermal energy is the least known and least expanded RES in Europe, though its relevance and importance should deserve much more attention. By using of the practically unlimited internal heat of earth, geothermal energy has one of the highest potential of all RES. When compared with other RES – like solar or wind – it’s main advantage is the practically constant energy and heat output it can provide. Besides the well known geothermal regions like Iceland or region of Tuscany (Larderello) in Italy, Central-Eastern European countries have exceptional geothermal resources. These resources are either unexploited due to the lack of technological know-how or their utilisation is carried out in an unsustainable way; geothermal district heating projects lack the energy efficiency component and the used thermal water is generally not re-injected but instead released to surface waters.

The project Geothermal Communities is to demonstrate best available technologies in the use of geothermal energy combined with innovative energy-efficiency measures and integration of other renewable energy sources in three different pilot sites (Morahalom in Hungary, Galanta in Slovakia and Montieri in Italy). Furthermore the project will integrate a large number of cities as project partners (from Serbia, Romania, Poland and Italy) that either already have ongoing geothermal systems that needs the adoption of new technologies (e.g. Oras Sacueni, Romania) or they would like to implement new systems from scratch with the help of the project partners (e.g. Subotica, Serbia).