The Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in Germany was mainly introduced to facilitate
sustainable development of energy supply in the interest of managing global warming,
conserving nature and protecting the environment. In the summer of 2004 the program
was amended with new conditions of funding, increasing the rate for geothermal power
from 0.089€/kWh to 0.15€/kWh for power production of up to 5MWe. This created a much
better economic opportunity for further study and utilization of the geothermal power
resources in Germany.
The potential for geothermal power production in Germany was investigated by GGA on
behalf of the “Office of Technology Assessment at the German Parliament (TAB)” funded
by the German parliament. The study shows that the resources for geothermal power
production in Germany amount to about 1021J, while three types of reservoirs were
considered: hot water aquifers, faults and crystalline rocks (Jung et al., 2002).
Several geothermal projects aiming at the exploration of these three types of
reservoirs have been launched in the Upper Rhine valley. The high density of faults,
the crystalline basement and the hot water aquifers, limestone and buntsandstone, in
the graben area are attractive mainly because of their high temperatures at
relatively shallow depths. Since knowledge and experience in this area is limited,
each project is developing its own concept for achieving this goal.
Exploration work has been started for the hydrothermal projects in Bruchsal, Speyer,
Offenbach, Landau and Bellheim. First wells have been completed and tested in Speyer,
Offenbach and Landau. Further projects like Karlsruhe, Riedstadt, Ettenheim, Kehl are
still in the planning and early preparation phase.

Reference
Jung R., Rohling S., Ochmann N. et al. (2002) - Abschätzung des technischen
Potenzials der geothermischen Stromerzeugung und der geothermischen
Kraft-Wärmekopplung (KWK) in Deutschland, BGR-GGA report, 88 p.

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