In the fight against rising energy prices, deep heat from the earth would be a climate-friendly alternative. However, many communities still shy away from expensive exploration. Does the Free State have to step in?
Munich (dpa/lby) – To use climate-friendly geothermal energy, the Greens in the Bavarian state parliament are calling for 50 state-financed exploratory boreholes for geothermal energy between the Alps and the Danube. “The Free State can start systematically with the exploration today and thus get things moving. We are thus systematically investigating where the treasure chambers are in our underground heat storage tanks,” said Green Party leader Ludwig Hartmann of the German Press Agency in Munich. Success is guaranteed: the more wells there are, the more knowledge and discovered heat sources can be expected. “Each drilling helps to raise the treasure of geothermal energy in an even more targeted way.”
The so-called Bavarian Molasse Basin is considered a particularly well-suited region for using geothermal energy. “There is enormous potential slumbering beneath us. We could cover 40 percent of our Bavarian heat requirements just with the geothermal heat from the Molasse Basin south of the Danube,” emphasized Hartmann. However, this potential is still untapped, although it is time to act: “I now want to systematically and quickly raise the heat treasure under our feet.”
Due to the high costs of exploratory drilling, many communities in the country are reluctant to do so. The Free State must step in here so that more communities can feed their local heating networks via geothermal energy in the future. “As soon as the Free State encounters a heat source during a borehole, it can offer access to the municipality. The Free State assumes the initial risks and thus gives momentum to geothermal energy in Bavaria,” says Hartmann. The municipalities could then pay back the development costs to the Free State. “The procedure will be a booster for the heat transition.”
According to Hartmann, costs of around 15 million euros per well can be expected. The Greens demanded a 100 million euro guarantee program for financing. Hartmann appealed to Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) to put his “full-bodied” announcement on geothermal expansion into practice. In his government statement in July 2021, Söder had declared that geothermal energy should cover a quarter of Bavaria’s heat requirements by 2050. “Unfortunately, we don’t see anything of that yet. The use of geothermal energy in Bavaria is close to zero,” said Hartmann.
According to the Bavarian Energy Atlas, deep geothermal energy accounted for just 0.5 percent of heat supply in Bavaria in 2020.
