Announcement of a Special Issue in Geosciences

The MEET consortium is happy to announce the edition of a Special Issue “Enhanced Geothermal Systems and other Deep Geothermal Applications throughout Europe: The MEET Project” in Geosciences, a journal published by MDPI

This Special Issue aims at compiling the most recent results obtained by the 16 academic and industrial partners, coming from 5 countries, that joined their efforts for the development of geothermal energy accross Europe thanks to fundings obtained through the H2020 European program. The organisation of the MEET project in specialised workpackages is transcribed in this Special Issue, through the technical themes that were developed  during the 42 months of the project: Upscaling of thermal power production and optimized operation of EGS plants, Enhancing petroleum sedimentary basins for geothermal electricity and thermal power production, Variscan geothermal reservoirs (granitic and metamorphic rocks), Demonstration of electricity and thermal power generation, Economic and environmental assessment for EGS integration into energy systems.

The MEET project dealt with the gains in geothermal energy that can be achieved using a variety of techniques, depending on the geological setting of the underground. Among the list of exploitation concepts, Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) are particularly interesting, as their application is little dependent on the underground setting, allowing, in turn, a large geographical deployment and market penetration in Europe. The challenges of EGS are multiple in terms of investment costs, the testing of novel reservoir exploitation approaches with an inherent risk of induced seismicity, and the presence of agressive geothermal brines, damaging infrastructures. The use of co-produced hot brines in mature oil fields is another target of this volume which finally aims at 1- gathering knowledge of EGS heat and power production in various geological settings, 2- helping increase heat production from existing plants and convert oil wells into geothermal well, 3- enhancing heat-to-power conversion at low temperature (60-90°C) by using smart mobile Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) units, and 4- replicating the technology by promoting the penetration of EGS power and/or heat plants.

In order to reach its goal, the MEET project mainly addressed the need to capitalize on the exploitation of the widest range of fluid temperature in EGS plants (from 90°C to 160°C), and apply EGS in different geological settings (sedimentary basins and basements affected or not by post extension). The approach was based on a combination of research and demonstration activities in order to make EGS safe and sustainable. It relied on the study of demonstration sites (see map), either at the exploration (e.g. Death Valley analogue, Havelange, UDDGP, Universitätsenergie Göttingen Gmbh) or exploitation stage (e.g. Soultz-sous-Forêts, Chaunoy, Krauma).

This Special Issue summarizes the output of the MEET project based on laboratory experiments, geological field works on high-quality analogues, advanced reservoir modeling and specific demonstration activities like chemical stimulation or the innovative monitoring of deep geothermal wells, and the production of electrical power via small-scale binary technology tested in various geological contexts in Europe.

Map of the demonstration sites of the H2020 MEET project