Geothermal energy can provide a climate-friendly baseload for heat and power that is independent from wind and sun. However, the growth of geothermal energy lags behind EU targets. This is because geothermal energy projects have comparatively high technical and economic risks, which impacts public support negatively and holds back investment. Reliable exploration strategies that have inherently lower economic and technical risks and hence increase public support are key to drastically reducing these barriers. FindHeat develops a novel, conceptual model-based geothermal exploration workflow. A modular toolkit, the FindHeat platform, provides innovative software tools and geophysical exploration techniques at significantly lower costs than the state-of-the-art. The platform will be validated across eight geologically diverse geothermal plays to demonstrate its economic and technical benefits arising from faster turnaround times for exploration and appraisal of geothermal resources, making better use of legacy data and non-invasive geophysical techniques, and constraining uncertainties with respect to the size of the heat source and the range of possible heat production rates. The FindHeat exploration approach enables geologically-based resource assessments and will lead to a paradigm shift towards exploiting geothermal resources with inherently low technical and economic risks, thus improving exploration success and economic feasibility. Comprehensive social science research at the use cases will help to earn the public trust that the FindHeat approach will lead to a more efficient and sustainable exploitation of geothermal energy. FindHeat brings together extensive expertise and innovation from industry and academia, covering geology, geophysics, engineering, social science, economics, communication, and technical training. The industry partners of the consortium are direct end users of the FindHeat platform and will exploit the results in their daily operations.

Europe is confronted with significant changes arising from globalisation and the currently political challenges. This means for example based on the latest developments in Ukraine and exceptionally strong European dependency on gas from Russia, deep geothermal energy particularly based on engineered geothermal systems is becoming even more important to care for Europe`s energy security. If deep geothermal energy from EGSs becomes a significant cornerstone in future energy strategy, there is an urgent need to provide cost-efficient and novel drilling technologies and concepts in order to open up new European geothermal reservoirs for energy exploitation. Therefore the overall goal of ThermoDrill is the development of an innovative drilling system based on the combination of conventional rotary drilling with water jetting that will allow at least 50% faster drilling in hard rock, a cost reduction of more than 30% for the subsurface construction and a minimized risk of induced seismic activity. In order to achieve these goals ThermoDrill will mainly address the following research and development topics: • enhanced water jet drilling technology for borehole construction and replacement of fracking; • HT/HP crystalline rock jetting and drilling fluids; • systematic redesign of the overall drilling process, particularly the casing design and cementing; • evaluation of drilling technologies and concepts in terms of HSE (health, safety and environmental) compliance. A challenging project such as ThermoDrill can only be addressed by joint and concerted actions of outstanding experts. This means that the ThermoDrill consortium partners belong to Europe`s leading experts in the field of deep drilling technologies/designs, drilling fluids, simulation, optimal shaping of tools like rockbits, etc. The consortium is already well connected through a variety of long standing research partnerships and won’t need great efforts to adjust and synchronize quickly.

LiCORNE aims to establish the first-ever Li supply chain in Europe. The goal is to increase the European Li processing and refining capacity for producing battery-grade chemicals from ores, brines, tailings and off-specification battery cathode materials. This supply chain encompasses five large primary resource owners (including one of the world leader in Li production) having resources of ~7.8 Mt lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), in which 2.7 Mt LCE are located in Europe. The European primary resources that are considered in LiCORNE would be enough to supply ~3000 GWh of batteries (i.e., ~10 years to the expected 300 GWh/year production capacity in Europe by 2030). Additionally, the value chain includes a cathode manufacturer who will be able to reuse valuable Li, Co and Ni that will be recycled from waste cathode material, and one producer and distributor of battery-grade Li-chemicals. LiCORNE will investigate 14 different groundbreaking technologies that have been selected for their potential to operate at low CAPEX and OPEX, low carbon footprint, flexibility and industrial scalability. Those technologies are led by 8 top R&D centers in Europe to tackle the main bottlenecks in Li processing and recovery. During 2.5 years, R&D partners will investigate those technologies and bring their TRL from 2 to 4. After this phase, and guided by LCA and LCCA, the most promising technologies will be selected for upscaling to TRL5. During this phase a prototype system will be constructed and demonstrated at TRL5 to produce ~1 kg of battery-grade Li-chemicals (i.e., LiOHH2O, Li2CO3 or Li-metal) from ores, brines, tailings and waste cathode material, with the recycling of Co and Ni from the latter. Results will be communicated and disseminated to a wide range of stakeholders and a first business model for a full and optimized Li supply chain in Europe will be established based on the results of the project and cost of Li produced.

The advantages of using geothermal for power production and H&C are little known. Recently, deep geothermal energy production in some regions is confronted with a negative perception, and a special attention from some decision-makers, in terms of environmental performance, which could seriously hamper its market uptake. Media reports focus more on disadvantages than advantages. As a result, decision makers and potential investors have concerns about possible environmental impacts and risks involved in implementing geothermal projects, and social resistance often results in practical obstacles - such as significant slowdowns - to the deployment of the deep geothermal resources. The first objective of the GEOENVI project is to make sure that deep geothermal energy can play its role in Europe’s future energy supply in a sustainable way. It aims to create a robust strategy to respond environmental concerns (by environmental concerns we mean both environmental impacts and risks): • by assessing the environmental impacts and risks of geothermal projects operational or in development in Europe, and • by providing a robust framework to propose recommendations on environmental regulations to the decision-makers, an adapted methodology for assessing environment impact to the project developers, and finally • by communicating properly on environmental concerns with the general public. Secondly, GEOENVI aims at engaging with both decision-makers and geothermal market actors, to have the recommendations on regulations adopted and to see the LCA methodology implemented by geothermal stakeholders. The engagement with stakeholders includes to share knowledge by adopting an open and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data approach.

DESTRESS is aimed at creating EGS (Enhanced geothermal systems) reservoirs with sufficient permeability, fracture orientation and spacing for economic use of underground heat. The concepts are based on experience in previous projects, on scientific progress and developments in other fields, mainly the oil & gas sector. Recently developed stimulation methods will be adapted to geothermal needs, applied to new geothermal sites and prepared for the market uptake. Understanding of risks in each area (whether technological, in business processes, for particular business cases, or otherwise), risk ownership, and possible risk mitigation will be the scope of specific work packages. The DESTRESS concept takes into account the common and specific issues of different sites, representative for large parts of Europe, and will provide a generally applicable workflow for productivity enhancement measures. The main focus will be on stimulation treatments with minimized environmental hazard (“soft stimulation”), to enhance the reservoir in several geological settings covering granites, sandstones, and other rock types. The business cases will be shown with cost and benefit estimations based on the proven changes of the system performance, and the environmental footprint of treatments and operation of the site will be controlled. In particular, the public debate related to “fracking” will be addressed by applying specific concepts for the mitigation of damaging seismic effects while constructing a productive reservoir and operating a long-term sustainable system. Industrial participation is particularly pronounced in DESTRESS, including large energy suppliers as well as SMEs in the process of developing their sites. The composition of the consortium involving major knowledge institutes as well as key industry will guarantee the increase in technology performance of EGS as well as an accelerated time to market.