| Abstract |
The DEEPEGS Horizon 2020 Innovation action project “Deployment of deep enhanced geothermal systems for sustainable energy business†was selected for funding in 2015, and its official launch was in December that year. The project’s total budget of 44 million Euro received an EU grant of about 20 million Euro for its four years duration, making this one of the larger publicly funded H2020 projects. The consortium of 10 partner organisations is from the geothermal industry, technical and oil- and gas sectors, and research organisations coming from five European countries. The main objective was to test and demonstrate Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) technology in three different geothermal systems and geological settings with the goal of facilitating the transferability of the expected results to other deep geothermal sites throughout Europe and worldwide. During the project life-cycle risk management and mitigation became a central activity in the DEEPEGS operations. Firstly, due to licensing problems for the French energy company project partner that encountered unexpected regulatory and public concern barriers at the regional government level in France. This caused significant delays in the project schedule and by the third project year a drastic modification of the planning was needed to avoid research funding termination by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA). Secondly, although also a direct consequence, the French geothermal industrial partner had signed on for a research project without previous experience about this funding mechanism, and as well, being a new player in the Geothermal energy sector without the experience needed to execute such a project in the framework of a research funding programme. The other consortium partners did their utmost to guide and advice the French energy partner about what the consequences might be if they would not comply to the EU grant agreement. After nearly a year of meetings and discussions, a period of no real activity in the French demonstration work, it was decided to opt for a mitigation strategy where the two demonstration sites facing licensing problems were abandoned as part of the DEEPEGS project and an alternative geothermal site in France, fully licensed for the partner concerned, to be brought in to replace the two not being timely licenced. The contract amendment was done in 2019 with some retroactive dating of work into 2018 for the alternative site that had in large part already been drilled for 2 deep wells to be connected with multi-drain drilling and enhanced geothermal system (EGS) protocols, like e.g. soft stimulation to avoid risk of seismicity. This alternative site in France is the first geothermal project to be carried out by the French industrial partner concerned, and the experience has taught them some very hard lessons. The project consortium also learned a lot from this situation regarding transparency and trust issues, and also that often human decision making is not clearly rational, when large amounts of money are involved. Policy actions or sometimes inaction, or slow administrative processes that clearly do not facilitate evenly the successful geothermal implementation across Europe and the European Economic Area (EEA), and market considerations are not equal across the common market zone. The lessons learned from the DEEPEGS project are addressed in this paper and cover perspectives from the project management and from the policy environment. The aim is to share the experience gained and discuss how the barriers might be addressed to truly enable geothermal developments to be deployed more widely and ensure that the knowledge and technical developments can more successfully be facilitated and transferred from publicly funded projects like DEEPEGS. |