Geothermal energy offers various technological concepts to supply heating and cooling (HC) networks at various temperature and capacity levels.

The main benefits of using geothermal energy in heating and cooling networks are obvious: Reduction of energy imports, high energy conversion factors, low environmental impact and surface land consumption and stable and predictable costs.

Geothermal energy does not just provide base load, it supports sector coupling and the use of volatile renewables through underground thermal energy storage.

Despite of significant market gains in the past decade, geothermal energy supplied heating and cooling networks still cover a marginal niche inside the European heating and cooling sector. One reason for this is the still prevailing low visibility and awareness towards geothermal energy supplied heating and cooling networks among decision makers and investors inside the heating and cooling market. 

To tackle this obstacle, the “100 good reasons for using geothermal energy in heating and cooling net-works” initiative (‘100 good reason initiative’) intends to raise the visibility of successfully operating geothermal HC networks in Europe in order to inform and inspire future market actors.

The initiative created this  web map application of operating and planned projects linked to informative fact sheets on each site to exhibit the full technological spectrum of geothermal HC networks starting from low temperature local networks (e.g., “5th generation heating and cooling networks”) towards conventional large capacity district heating networks.

The build-up of the tool is organized in the framework of the EU COST Action CA18219 Geothermal-DHC in 2022 and 2023 (www.geothermal-dhc.eu). However, the long term aim is to create a durable web tool covering innovative and successful applications of geothermal heating and cooling networks across Europe, where future projects and sites can be added and characterized by operators and owners.