Content

The Geothermal-DHC action focused on the integration of geothermal technologies into district heating and cooling systems in Europe to promote the decarbonisation of the heating and cooling market. Geothermal may act as a heating source, sink or storage and may be combined with other renewables (e.g. solar thermal), waste heat and other technologies like carbon capture and utilisation.

The action covered networking, knowledge exchange & transfer, training and stakeholder interaction activities based on real case studies to explore and promote solutions and roadmaps for increasing the share of renewable energy in public heating and cooling networks to at least 30 % by 2030 and at least 50 % by 2050.

From a technological point of view, Geothermal-DHC addressed:

• shallow geothermal energy;
• engineered thermo-active building structures;
• medium-depth geothermal energy (e.g., refitted abandoned hydrocarbon wells);
• deep geothermal energy in terms of hydrogeothermal and petrothermal systems;
• unconventional geothermal applications (e.g. geothermal-CCUS);
• underground thermal energy storage;
• conventional high-temperature heating grids (2G to 3G DH);
• low-temperature heating and/or cooling grids (4G to 5G DH);
• geothermal combined heat and power production.

By the end of the COST Action, the following outputs were made available:

• a dedicated web portal on the inclusion of geothermal energy into heating and cooling grids in cooperation with the European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC);
• a digital knowledge repository at the web portal on geothermal heating and cooling grids;
• digital fact sheets and technological guidelines on the inclusion of geothermal energy into heating and cooling grids;
• an educational concept to train the next generation of researchers and decision-makers;
• a joint roadmap towards the inclusion of geothermal energy into heating and cooling grids across Europe.

GeoZS was actively involved in the project as a member of the ex-committee, as co-leader of PWG 3 "Promoting Young Careers" and as a representative of the Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM).

As part of the project, we organised two international summer schools:

• July 9 - 16, 2021: Coupling technologies to use low and medium depth hydrogeothermal energy, which took place in Slovenia and Croatia. Participants included the Department of Geology, NTF, and the COST project Geothermal-DHC. The event was also sponsored by Gen energija d.o.o. and Atlantic grupa d.d.
• July 3 - 8, 2023: Advances in developing geothermal resources for heating, cooling, and electricity production, which took place in Slovenia. Participants included the Department of Geology, NTF, the COST project Geothermal-DHC, and the EEA project INFO-GEOTHERMAL.

The booklets of abstracts from both summer schools are available here:

• Coupling technologies to use low and medium depth hydrogeothermal energy, 2021
• Advances in developing geothermal resources for heating, cooling and electricity production, 2023