Taken as such, the cost of getting the water to the surface is too high to allow for a economically viable standard real estate project (e.g. a few office buildings, …). But when you have the opportunity, as we have in former mine locations such as Waterschei (Genk) and Beringen, to provide geothermal energy to a large scale project – i.e. respectively 750.000 m² and 145.000 m² of floor area – the figures start to add up.

 

What’s more, in such large scale projects, it should be economically viable to realise energy efficiency just by centralising energy production as in an urban heating system. Furthermore, by implementing this principal with a low calorific system, as opposed to a system where hot water or steam is distributed, the link can be made with geothermal energy, resulting in a sustainable and highly energy-efficient system.

 

The same scale advantage applies to agricultural activities such as growing fruit and vegetables in greenhouses or breeding fish. Again, the key success factor is clustering greenhouses and fish ponds around a geothermal well in dedicated areas of 10’s of hectares at a time.

 

Ultimately, the nec plus ultra is tapping a fraction of the earth’s heat to produce electricity. And it can be done! Pilots in France are gearing up to produce around 5 MW of electricity with a three well configuration at about 5.000 m depth, pumping up water at around 150°C. A major set back with the present technique is that migration of the water underground, from injection well to production well occur through natural fractures in the underground. This places a high risk on the capital investment necessary to realise such projects.  The next stage in developing this technology is to artificially create an underground heat exchanger by means of innovative horizontal directional drilling and casing techniques, so that this risk can substantially be reduced.

 

Our province has the geology and the ambition to set up such projects.