Groundbreaking geothermal technology that promises to provide ‘limitless clean power from the Earth’s core’ has received backing from the European Investment Bank to help the developer build its first commercial power plant.
The bank has handed Canadian start-up Eavor a €45m ($48m) loan to support the construction of its ‘closed-loop’ geothermal plant in Germany near Munich.
That project had already received a €91.6m grant – around a third of its expected cost – from the EU Innovation Fund last year.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the construction site last August, while promising to multiply geothermal heating in the country tenfold by 2030.
This will be the first time Eavor has implemented its technology on a commercial scale. It built a pilot plant in Alberta, Canada, that has been running since 2019.
Founded in 2017, Eavor claims it can generate gigawatts of baseload and dispatchable renewable energy anywhere in the world by harnessing the power of the Earth’s core.
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Eavor proposes drilling several kilometres deep – to depths not unfamiliar to the oil and gas industry – and injecting water to power electricity-generating turbines.
The method takes advantage of the average 30°C increase in temperature for each kilometre drilled.
Eavor’s crucial innovation compared to other geothermal projects is then turning that hole into a closed loop. Cold water is poured down one end of this loop and will turn to steam as it travels horizontally along kilometres below ground, before returning up another pipe to the surface.
Eavor says that not only would this loop generate constant energy but it would essentially power itself as the cold water is constantly heated underground before the heat is extracted and it cycles around again, without the need for a pump – a phenomenon known as a thermosiphon.
BloombergNEF founder Michael Liebreich, who chairs Eavor’s advisory board, previously told Recharge that, if it can be delivered affordably, the technology is “pretty damn close to the holy grail as you can get.”
Eavor has secured backing from the likes of BP, Chevron and Japan’s Chubu Electric. A further $130m in funding arrived in October from the Canadian government and Microsoft among other investors.
Eavor’s German plant will “provide low-carbon heating to thousands of households and businesses” and is “an example of the role the geothermal industry will play on the road to net-zero,” said the EU’s climate action commissioner Wopke Hoekstra.
All four loops at the plant are slated to be built by 2027.