Enhanced geothermal innovative network for Europe: The-state-of-the-art.

The European Commission support for geothermal energy research has been constant since the end of the 1980s and has significantly increased within its 6th R&D Framework Program. One of the most prominent activities co-financed by EC-funds is the ENGINE Coordination Action (ENhanced Geothermal Innovative Network for Europe), which is aimed at co-ordinating present R&D initiatives for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), ranging from the resource investigation and assessment stage to exploitation monitoring. Thirty five partners are involved in ENGINE, representing 15 European Countries plus Mexico, El Salvador and Philippines. By mid-term, the project has organised 2 conferences and 4 specialised workshops. After one year, materials available on the web site http://engine.brgm.fr already show the work that has been completed revealing a strong motivation of the scientific community for updating the framework of activities, preparing a Best Practice Handbook and defining new ambitious research projects. In relation with the increasing price of energy and the goal of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, there is a noticeable increase in interest from industry in Europe in geothermal energy. ENGINE is now well known as a scientific exchange platform for promoting past and on-going experien-ces by making them visible and reproducible. Through a recently established stakeholder committee, ENGINE could also become a "political" platform. It could, for example, establish a permanent working group that would have the technical and economic background to set up an industrial and public European consortium and define an ambitious strategy for 2030 proposing shared-risk projects at the scale of Europe. The proposal to evaluate the geothermal potential of former oil and gas field could also be one way to limit the risk and start new demonstration projects.