Geothermal 

Geothermal energy is widely available throughout Europe – Strasbourg itself is located in the heart of the Upper Rhine Graben, a known geothermal basin straddling France and Germany. Its potential to produce renewable baseload power and to decarbonize residential and industrial heating and cooling is undeniable. Yet its share of the energy mix and its role within renewable energies is slowly growing. The uncertainties associated with an underground resource need to be addressed and reduced with the application of creative technical, financial, and communication skills and solutions. The Conference will address the role of geoscientists and engineers in defining, sharing and applying these skills to accelerate the implementation of a geothermal value chain in Europe and beyond.

Energy Storage

Large-scale energy storage systems will play a fundamental role in integrating renewable energy into the energy infrastructure. They allow to maintain grid security by compensating the enormous increase of fluctuating renewable energies. Most of the renewable energy sources, notably solar and wind produce variable power. Electrical energy has to be stored during times when electricity is plentiful and later returned to the grid when the demand is high. The conversion of energy systems is an indispensable prerequisite for this, and the massively increasing technological supply of distributed renewable resources, efficiency systems and energy storage systems ideally position us for this. The development and systemic integration of storage systems will lead to an increased usage of the earth’s subsurface, which has to be handled safely and environmentally friendly. 

CO2 Storage

The development of sustainable and secure technologies to reduce the greenhouse effect is the storage of CO2 in adequate geological formations. This strategy has been demonstrated in many projects. Besides the development of accurate measuring, monitoring and verification technologies, an integrated risk assessment is needed, to ensure the safety of potential storage sites and to address the legitimate concerns of the local communities about this technology. This conference invites contributions to the various aspects of carbon capture and storage (CCS). Topics will include the exploration of possible storage sites, the increase of the database about the subsurface during the operating phases, the engineering of the subsurface, as well as modelling and monitoring of the subsurface especially through experiences gathered from case studies.

Cross-Uses & Synergies

Cross-Use and multi-use reservoirs provide efficient future solutions for the energy transition problem. They enable the sustainable use of the sparse underground resources by combining different technologies, for energy extraction from reservoirs and subsequence or parallel storage. Storage space can be used for waste gases like CO2 or for energy storage like air, hydrogen or other energy carriers. Underground storage can be used in parallel to extraction, after extraction in natural pore-spaces or in artificially generated caverns. Innovative technologies can prepare way for in in-situ hydrogen generation from methane. The key factors of a successful application in the subsurface are storage capacity, intake/outtake performance, geomechanical and geochemical stability of the subsurface reservoirs. In the frame of this meeting, we invite to contribute to the various aspects around these topics including subsurface processes during usage, technical subsurface design, performance prediction, monitoring and existing case studies.As practitioners, we must recognize that at this phase most energy transition projects are new, innovative and unique. Beyond the technical challenges, they face major hurdles: economic viability, regulatory uncertainty, and public scrutiny. Beyond that, It must be proven that innovations are more sustainable than the existing ones. In the past, many new technologies were introduced to an ill or poorly informed public. In the case of technical failures or unexpected events, the technical community lacked the needed access and resources to educate the public and restrict the fallout. As a result technologies like gas extraction, deep geothermal energy extraction and CO2 storage are met with substantial resistance by the public, NGOs and governmental entities. This is not solely a public relation and management effort. For the technical community involved it is necessary to discuss these challenges in stakeholder management specifically in relation to the developed technical solutions and in the community context. We therefore ask you to submit abstracts covering aspects of pathways of your innovation to its implementation, how we can manage our stakeholders including the government and NGOs and how to approach the difficult education of the public, advert to new difficult to understand technologies. Finally, we have to answer the questions on how to set standards for projects, we can defend and which will be acceptable to the regulatory bodies.