About Transenergy
The project „TRANSENERGY – Transboundary Geothermal Energy Resources of Slovenia, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia” aims to provide implementation tools based on a firm geoscientific basis for enhanced and sustainable use of geothermal resources linked to CEU Program, Area of Intervention 3.1. (developing a high quality environment by managing and protecting natural resources).
The project’s general objective is promoting the
- Gothenburg Goals by providing tools for their sustainable use
- Lisbon Strategy by increasing the competitiveness of the region by introducing new implementations and potential investments into geothermal energy utilization
- Cohesion Policy by strengthening territorial integration among the participating regions/countries
- Kyoto aims (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions)
The project addresses the key problem of using natural resources that are shared by different countries in a sustainable way. Natural resources, such as geothermal energy whose main carrying medium are deep groundwaters along regional flow paths are strongly linked to geological structures that do not stop at state borders. Therefore only a transboundary approach can handle the assessment of geothermal energy and conditions of its sustainable use. The project focuses on decision makers’ and stakeholders’ needs by providing a user friendly web-based decision supporting tool (an interactive web portal) as a main core output of the project. This transfers expert know-how about geothermal resources and sustainable reservoir management gained during project activity to users to get an overview and to make simple estimations on geothermal reserves within the project area for further utilization. This publicly accessible implementation tool will show all relevant information on the potential, vulnerability and sustainability of the geothermal system in the investigated transboundary regions.
- This integrates all results of activities performed in well-defined work packages, such as
- screening utilization needs with a special respect to national, EU and international legislation aspects
- collecting and harmonizing geoscientific data
- performing additional measurements
- organizing all data in harmonized, multi-lingual joint databases
- producing various cross-border geoscientific models and performing scenario modeling for different extraction of geothermal heat/water
In addition to the web-based decision planning tool, the project will deliver a methodology for joint groundwater management and utilization maps summarizing the legal steps and actions towards a harmonized management strategy of transboundary geothermal resources, and a best practice on geothermal use, as core outputs.
Partners are the Geological Surveys of the four participating countries, who are involved in several international projects concerning natural resources. They also have a long tradition of bilateral cooperation with each other in several projects.
