Financial instruments as support for the exploitation of geothermal energy

• Main Author: GEOFAR Team
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2011
• Subjects: deep geothermal; energy sector status; non technical; economics; financial aspects; Iceland
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1256037

Many European countries have asignificant geothermal potential.Some technologies for exploitationof deep geothermal energy aremature. However this potential appearsto be not sufficiently exploited.This could be partly explainedby a lack of information among decisionmakers and investors andby the fact that geothermal energyprojects are facing non–technicalbarriers. The GEOFAR project(Geothermal Finance and Awarenessin European Regions), carriedout within the framework of EU’s“Intelligent Energy Europe” (IEE)programme, aims to analyze thesenon technical difficulties and barrierswhich hinder the initial stagesof geothermal energy projects.GEOFAR aims particularly to focuson the financial barriers and ondeep geothermal energy (for directuse of geothermal resources, heatproduction, electricity production orcogeneration).The overall objective of GEOFAR isto develop and to propose appropriateand innovative financing andfunding schemes. It is thereforenecessary to analyse the existingsystems: what kind of financial instrumentsare offered to supportdeep geothermal energy in Europeand how pertinent they are.Theconsortium of the project1 focusesthis analyse on ten target countries:Spain, Portugal, Germany, France,Greece, Bulgaria, Slovakia andHungary, Iceland and Italy. The report “Financial instrumentsas support for the exploitation ofthe geothermal energy” is gatheringshort descriptions of the mainand most significant instruments.More detailed information abouteach instrument can be found onFact Sheets that are uploaded onthe GEOFAR website accessibleunder www.geofar.eu.Bank facilities dedicated to geothermalenergy projects are appearinguncommon. However,governmental incentives, as tax reduction,guaranteed feed-in tariffsand grants, are quite common inthe target countries. Actually, thereis a broad variety of application andsystems varying extremely fromone country to another. Guaranteedfeed-in tariffs are the only instrumentsoffered in all countries andthis instrument appears extremelyimportant in ensuring the ...