GeoEnergy

Energy is vital to the functioning of our society. We need energy to heat our homes, to produce food, for transport, and much more. But energy consumption poses two major challenges. First, our huge dependency on fossil fuels increases atmospheric CO₂ and accelerates climate change. Second, domestic energy production is decreasing, so we have become more dependent on suppliers outside Europe, which are in some cases unreliable or unsustainable. The EU aims to tackle these challenges through the Green Deal by increasing domestic renewable energy, reducing consumption, and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Whilst the GEEG was originally set up in response to a request from the EU Directorate General for Energy to address a demand for resource evaluation of European coal, the group has now refocused its activities, utilising its expertise on the subsurface to enable renewable energies and to support the green and sustainable transformation of the energy sector.

Novel and sustainable subsurface capacities are still underexplored. These capacities have the potential to substantially resolve Europe’s future energy needs, while also mitigating the worst effects of climate change. For example:

• Shallow and deep geothermal energy can generate low-carbon heating for cities, the agricultural sector, industry, as well as provide power generation.
• Storage of CO₂ to mitigate and offset carbon emissions, enabling net negative emissions in combination with low-carbon energy generation and enabling a more sustainable industrial sector
• Storage of new fuels and energy carriers such as hydrogen, green gas, heat and cold, compressed air, and other forms of mechanical energy.