After the small earthquakes in Basel in 2006 and in St.Gallen in 2013, deep geothermal energy has been the subject of intense debate in Switzerland.The question today is how and if geothermal energy can help the country achieve its ambitious energy and climate goals?
At Lancy-Bachet station in central Geneva, passengers await the next Geneva Express, the new cross-border regional exercise. Dim lighting fixtures loom on the horizon and the convoy brakes before stopping. Unbeknownst to the passengers, the heat generated through the exercise and its screeching brakes is captured under the rails and on the tunnel walls. It will be used for heating and cooling near apartments and offices.
The formula, lately a pilot task, operates polyethylene pipes filled with heat transfer liquid that are incorporated into a 100-meter section of the new tunnel, this energy source is connected to a pump capable of generating heat and cold, which is then injected into the district warming formula.
It is one of many cutting-edge geothermal projects emerging in Switzerland in an attempt to achieve ambitious energy and climate targets.In Geneva, the government wants 80% of new buildings to run on renewable energy.And until 2035, 20% of the canton. Heating desires are expected to come from geothermal sources.
Lancy-Bachet’s assignment is a Swiss scoop. Follow in the footsteps of pioneering assignments such as Genilac, a thermal exchange assignment that uses water from Lake Geneva to cool and heat buildings.This is Geneva’s contribution to the allocation of Underground Garage of European Thermal Energy, HeatStore.Bern and Zurich have garage assignments.
Geneva also continues to explore the basement in search of geothermal energy.The federal government recently released 27.5 million francs to finance drilling.Some of this cash is used at Lully’s verification site, where engineers drilled 1,456 meters below the ground surface.it has a temperature of 53 degrees Celsius and its voltage is appropriate, but it has a low flow, experts say.It’s not hot enough or tough enough to produce electricity, but it can be used to heat buildings.
Geneva is an incredible pioneer in thermal energy, according to Gunter Siddiqi, a scholar at the Federal Energy Office.”There is a mix of political will, business acumen and experience in studies and innovation,” he says, while emphasizing that situations in canton there are others and that it is not certain that Geneva’s style can be replicated elsewhere in Switzerland.
Currently, geothermal activities are limited to the extraction and storage of thermal energy, basically through vertical heat exchangers, groundwater wells, geothermal structures and hot tunnels, which are used in mixture with a heat pump to heat and, in some cases, cool.
Across Switzerland, almost 15% of heating systems in homes, offices and other buildings use such geothermal heat pumps.In 2019, the Federal Energy Office registered 102,000 underground probes in coherence with the world.”
In general, shallow geothermal heat production covers 1.3% of the country’s heat needs, but technologies are well established and federal authorities, as a component of the 2050 energy strategy, are convinced of their benefits and potential.
Elmar Grosse Ruse, a weather scientist at WWF Switzerland, is positive about its long-term development.”We are committed to getting rid of fossil fuels to heat up over the next two decades and this will only be imaginable if we use a lot of heat pumps in densely populated areas,” he said.
Gunter Siddiqi also expects the use of these technologies to develop in the coming years.He thinks underground probes can be placed at greater depths.However, he insists on the desire to maintain distances (10 to 12 meters) between them to prevent systems from competing with each other to capture heat underground.
Renewable energy and geothermal production in Switzerland
In Switzerland, geothermal energy has recently been used to generate electricity.The United States is lately the world’s largest manufacturer of geothermal power, with the state of California meeting approximately 5% of its electricity needs.All of Switzerland’s neighbouring countries also produce geothermal energy.Power.
The Federal Energy Office assures us that Switzerland will do so soon and estimates that by 2050, 7% of national electricity intake will be covered through geothermal energy.
To achieve this, a geothermal force plant would have to extract water at more than one hundred degrees Celsius, from 3,000 to 4,000 meters below complex techniques of the Earth’s surface.But scientists have little wisdom about local geological situations in the depths of Switzerland and exploration.The geothermal project phase is expensive.
Several deep drilling projects have suffered setbacks. In 2006 and 2013, groups from Basel and St.Gallen injected a pressurized liquid into a dry, hot rock deep in the sea to create a synthetic geothermal reservoir, but had to give up when stimuli caused minor earthquakes.
New projects in depth
Today, new tests are being introduced in other regions of Switzerland to explore underground depths for energy sources.
One such assignment in Haute-Sorne, in the canton of Jura, made headlines in April, when the cantonal government announced its goal of revoking its authorization, responding to considerations expressed through the local population about the dangers of this technology.This replacement, of course, however, has led to general dismay between supporters of geothermal force and the Swiss government.”Stopping this allocation would be a blow to other geothermal power plant allocations in Switzerland and would send the signal, especially to investors interested elsewhere,” the government said recently.
Gunter Siddiqi admits that Switzerland lags behind other countries in terms of geothermal energy production, however, believes that the country still has no options to continue exploring and investing in such projects to achieve its renewable energy goals.
A review of the deep and medium geothermal projects being carried out in Switzerland.Title of map symbols: yellow (exploratory studies); orange (planning phase); red (under construction); blue (in use); (cancelled) . Géothermie-Schweiz.ch
Source: SwissInfo