The EGEC Annual Report 2023 provides a comprehensive overview of the organisation's activities for the year and highlights the significant achievements in the European geothermal sector. Published annually, EGEC's Annual Report serves as a crucial document that reflects EGEC's policy achievements over the past year and sets out the main lines of action for the foreseeable future.
Unleashing Europe’s Geothermal Potential: The geothermal industry enjoyed growing market development but new installations must still triple by the end of the decade.
EGEC welcomes the European Commission’s proposals for a Critical Raw Materials Act and the Net Zero Industry Act. It is vital to strengthen existing European industrial value-chains for geothermal energy to meet the rapid demand driven by consumers and EU policy.
On 1st February, the European Commission presented The Green Deal Industrial Plan; Measures include simplifying permitting, adapting EU state aid rules, leveraging EU funds, reinforcing supply chain and enhancing skills.
The Geothermal District Heating and Cooling Days 2023, a three-day event hosted in Aarhus, Denmark, culminated on a high note after a series of insightful discussions, presentations, and site visits. With more than 100 attendees, the event proved to be a gathering of industry experts, researchers, and stakeholders passionate about advancing the use of geothermal energy in heating and cooling networks.
Geothermal energy provides permanent, non-weather dependent supplies of baseload renewable electricity, heating, free cooling, seasonal thermal and electricity storage as well as the most sustainable means of extracting lithium and other raw materials. Yet it is only 2% of final electricity and heating production.
EGEC’s Annual Report 2022 looks back at the work of the organization and the performance of the European Geothermal sector over the past year, while it looks forward to the challenges ahead.
Proceedings of the European Geothermal Congress 2022 are available here. The ISBN code is 978-2-9601946-2-3.
3 March 2023 – EGEC would like to announce that the winner of the Ruggero Bertani European Geothermal Innovation Award 2023 is Huisman Geo, with its innovative project Composite Downhole Tubulars.
The ITRE committee of the European Parliament adopted today the recast on Energy performance of Building Directive (EPBD). In the final negotiation (EP vote in Plenary and with Council), phase out the use of fossil fuels in heating and cooling must remain the priority.
In March 2023 EGEC will announce the final winner among the six endorsed nominations for the Ruggero Bertani European Geothermal Innovation Award 2023. The six finalists are (in alphabetical order by company):
Geothermal lithium is extracted from brines used in energy production. It is the most sustainable way to extract lithium compared to hard rock mining or evaporation, which are significantly more harmful to the environment and CO2 intensive. Geothermal lithium provides Europe with greater independence in lithium production and imports.
To fully represent the geothermal technologies for Research & Innovation and reflect the technology trends and the market development, ETIP DG and geothermal panel of the ETIP RHC become ETIP Geothermal.
Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels was exposed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Replacing this dependence through energy savings, geothermal and other renewable heating solutions is of paramount importance. We explored the policy challenges for EU policy and also the perspectives from key large heat consuming sectors.