GEOENVI – Assessment and handling of environmental impacts of geothermal utilization in Europe

ÍSOR took part in the project GEOENVI, which was carried out under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research programme in the years 2018-2021. The project was led by EGEC (European Geothermal Energy Council), while other participants came from Belgium, Italy, France, Hungary and Turkey, as well as…

ÍSOR took part in the project GEOENVI, which was carried out under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research programme in the years 2018-2021. The project was led by EGEC (European Geothermal Energy Council), while other participants came from Belgium, Italy, France, Hungary and Turkey, as well as Iceland. The goal was to improve the methodology for assessing and monitoring the environmental impacts of geothermal utilization, to identify the main impacts and risks in order to make it easier for administration and regulatory bodies to assess such impacts, and not least to convey to the public information in a clear way. All of this aims at making the licensing and regulatory process in Europe more efficient so that unclear rules and opaque discussion about environmental impacts do not hinder increased utilization of geothermal energy.

On the basis of specialist knowledge and decades of experience, ÍSOR's part consisted first and foremost of mapping the environmental impacts of geothermal utilization and writing a detailed report on the subject in which the impacts are classified according to their nature, including causes, consequences, the likelihood of their being detected and possible mitigation measures. The report is titled "Report on environmental concerns; Overall state of the art on deep geothermal environmental data", and it can be viewed and downloaded from the GEOENVI website: https://www.geoenvi.eu/publications/report-on-environmental-concerns-overall-state-of-the-art-on-deep-geothermal-environmental-data/. There one can also access a database (Environmental database) that is based in part on the content of the report and enables users to link together causes and consequences of the various environmental impacts of geothermal energy in an easy and clear way.