The CROWDTHERMAL Project: Creating Public Acceptance of Geothermal Energy and Opportunities for Community Financing

Abstract

One of the major challenges regarding energy transition is to create active support towards renewable energy installations on a local level. The CROWDTHERMAL project presents practical approaches for involving local stakeholders in different measures in order to develop acceptable solutions. Based on technical evidence and data from concrete case studies, the project shows ways how community funding can increase social acceptance towards geothermal energy installations. The presented solutions are based on alternative financial schemes studies and risk mitigation analysis in geothermal projects.

Differences in Direct Geothermal Energy Utilization for Heating and Cooling in Central and Northern European Countries

“…The importance of financial support or subsidies has been emphasized by several authors, e.g., [26][27][28][29]. Additionally, bidirectional influences have been investigated, e.g., from economic and financial development towards the increased use of geothermal energy and from the use of geothermal energy towards economic and financial development [30].…”

A Decision Support Tool for Social Engagement, Alternative Financing and Risk Mitigation of Geothermal Energy Projects

“…For this work, questions corresponding to decision nodes have been defined following a case-study analysis of multiple projects, a thorough review of the literature, and expert consultation, which has been part of the CROWDTHERMAL project [62]. This project aims at empowering the public to participate in the development of geothermal projects through social engagement tools and alternative financing schemes like crowdfunding [18]. For the development of the DT tool, a consortium workshop took place prioritising objectives that could be solved through the tool.…”

“…As mentioned earlier, a key success factor for the adoption of such a tool is the selection not only of the type but also of the number of questions to be included; hence, there is a trade-off between completeness and complexity. This tool is part of the Horizon 2020 CROWDTHERMAL project [18] and, more in specific, the CROWDTHERMAL Core Services, where key outputs of the project were converted into web tools for geothermal energy developers, policy makers, and the public [19].…”

Arguments for a Community Based Approach to the Geothermal Energy Development

“…For this reason, the social acceptance studies are typically conducted in the communities in the vicinity of the geothermal installations [149]. Moreover, a local permission for the geothermal projects takes part of the LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) procedures [118] and communities crowdfunding initiatives emerge [25,40]. Therefore, next to technical implications of the geothermal endogenous features [1,177], this resource displays tide relations to the endogenous development.…”