Workshop “Geothermal fluids in saline systems”

Abstract

Earth’s crust offers a vast resource of heat that can be used and converted into energy both for electricity and heating/cooling purposes. The utilization of this geothermal energy can make an important contribution to meet the targets of the envisaged energy turnaround. So-called “conventional” geothermal plants exploiting hot hydrothermal reservoirs have long been a fully commercial contributor to the energy provision in favorable geological settings such as Iceland or Tuscany/Italy. The concept of Enhanced Geothermal Systems, however, is a much younger approach to make the heat stored in Earth’s crust available for a stable supply of heat and power, independent of specific geological conditions. Such systems offer an enormous potential for a sustainable energy concept since they provide base-load energy and therefore constitute an important cornerstone in a future energy mix as counterpart to the increasing share of fluctuating energy sources being furthermore poor on CO2 emissions and practically inexhaustible. This Geothermal Energy article collection is intended to document a workshop held at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) on the 24th and 25th of November 2016. The workshop was planned as a discussion platform for the Helmholtz Program “Renewable Energies; RE” Topic 4 “Geothermal Energy Systems” with the partners German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), KIT and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) jointly working together over the Helmholtz Program-Oriented Research (POF-3) funding period 2015–2019.