Croatia and its neighbors sit on top of a patch of unusual geology where the vast heat at the center of the world has an especially easy time coming close to the surface.
The result is a high concentration of potential emissions-free geothermal energy, one that can form the base of a carbon-free electricity grid, unlike wind and solar power, which don’t typically generate power around-the-clock.
There is a huge potential to generate a lot of electricity out of this. There is a huge potential for district heating. And there is a huge potential for agriculture.
Geothermal energy’s backers are gaining momentum around the world, as the technology improves, and societies seek every avenue to reduce the emission of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Among other virtues, advocates say, geothermal energy has a relatively small footprint, generating far more electricity per square foot than either wind or solar power, both of which require a lot of land to create power in any quantity. And geothermal power doesn’t have the same waste or safety risks as nuclear energy, a rival emissions-free source for electricity.
In Croatia, there has been a flowering of projects after the government changed regulations in 2016 to allow the country’s thousands of disused oil and gas wells to be reused for geothermal projects. The northern part of the country is part of the geothermal-rich Pannonian basin, a region where continental plates collided about 16 million years ago, then folded back on themselves repeatedly, creating fractured rock that allows heat to rise from the earth’s molten core close to the surface.
Geothermal energy typically works by drilling a well a mile or two into the ground and pumping up water that has been heated by the energy of the earth’s core. The heat is used to make steam that spins turbines, generating electricity.
Then the cooled water is pumped back down into the ground. In many areas of Croatia’s Pannonian region, the water is boiling a little more than a mile down and gets hotter the deeper a well is drilled.