Major Test Case For New Geothermal Technology Launches

Residents in the German town of Geretsried have long wanted to run their buildings with clean heat and electricity from geothermal energy instead of fossil fuels.

Their hopes were dashed about 15 years ago when a drilling company couldn’t find enough hot water close to the surface to be profitable using traditional geothermal technology. That basically left them with natural gas.

“We gave up. We had big hopes,” recalled First Mayor of Geretsried Michael Müller, who was raised in the town.

Today the next generation of geothermal companies is trying to succeed where previous efforts failed. They don’t rely on hot water close to the surface, but instead use techniques developed in the oil and gas industry to drill deep and extract heat from dry, hot rock. One of them, Eavor, is starting up its first commercial power plant in Geretsried — turning the tiny town of about 26,000 people, south of Munich, into a proving ground for the future of geothermal energy.

Can technology like this be scaled and really make a difference for the future of the planet? The International Energy Agency thinks so. In a recent report, it said technology breakthroughs are unlocking huge potential for geothermal energy.

Now that companies are drilling deeper than 3 kilometers (close to 2 miles), nearly every country has the potential to make heat and electricity this way, the IEA said.

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