Factsheet: Geothermal and the Energy Crisis

The GeoSmart consortium have produced a factsheet offering insights into the current energy crisis.

The factsheet, which you can see in full below, ‘Electricity Market Design in a Time of Crisis: The Case for Geothermal and Renewable Flexibility Resources’ details how some European Member States have been seeking a suspension or adaptation of electricity market rules.

Nations including Spain, Greece, Italy and France have expressed concerns over the functioning of the electricity market, with the energy crisis having been further exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Expectations are that energy prices will remain high for some years yet, leading to solutions being discussed including a scaling up of renewable power and heat generation technologies, improved electricity-saving measures, and pricing to show the value of each energy source.

The factsheet offers a discussion of matters including the use of price caps and windfall profits, the decoupling of the gas and electricity markets, and dividing remuneration of the electricity market between zero carbon and other sources – particularly fossil fuels.

Along with the proposal to place natural gas on the margins of the electricity market, the factsheet also details a series of European Commission proposals. These include a coordinated reduction in demand, a temporary revenue cap on lower cost technologies – with extra revenue going back to help reduce bills for energy consumers, a solidarity tax on fossil fuel companies, and an expansion or the energy process toolbox to allow below cost regulated electricity prices for the first time and expand regulated prices to also cover small and medium-sized enterprises.

There is a belief that fossil gas must be replaced as the price-setting fuel through the upscaling and accelerated deployment of flexible renewable energy such as geothermal.

The factsheet goes on to outline a series of considerations for geothermal energy to fully exploit the benefits of the technology.

You can read the informative factsheet in full, below:

The GeoSmart project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement 818576