| Title | Application of the Play Type Approach for the Federal Exploration Initiative in Germany – Criteria Catalogue and Case Studies |
|---|---|
| Authors | I. S. Moeck, M. Franz, T. Koelbel, O. Hoehn, D. C.G. Ravidà, F. Hernandez, J. Ahrens, G. Lee Exuzian |
| Year | 2026 |
| Conference | World Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | |
| Abstract | In 2022, the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) has launched a so-called geothermal campaign in Germany, which included the federal exploration campaign, aiming to support a accelerated geothermal development towards 10 TWh heat production per year by 2030. A selection of up to 100 projects funded by the exploration campaign should help to reach this ambitious goal. two distinguished research projects accompany this politically induced and societally required geothermal rollout: The projects WärmeGut to lead the geothermal data campaign, and the project Warm-Up to guide through the geothermal exploration campaign. An exploration criteria catalogue has been developed in Warm-Up to identify hydrothermal project sites with significant heat demand and geothermal potential. As such, the criteria catalogue follows the geothermal play type approach, which analyses the societal-technical potential at surface and the geological-technical potential in the subsurface. This play based criteria catalogue has been applied for first exploration projects, which are now progressing in different play types in Germany. Two of these projects are presented here as case studies: The project Dekapalatin in the Upper Rhine Graben (extensional terrain play, convection dominated heat transport) and the project DemoCELL in the North German Basin (intracratonal basin play, conduction dominated heat transport). The exploration methods and results will help to verify and validate the play approach, specifically the scheme of play levels and derived potential analysis. Moreover, this presentation illustrates how Germany is ongoing to uplift the nationwide geothermal heat production by a factor of five. |