The water deep under the ground of Denmark’s second-largest city, Aarhus, tastes salty, smells a bit like paint and in a few years might heat a fifth of the city’s homes.
Danish company Innargi has built a geothermal plant that pumps this naturally hot water up to the surface, where it can be used to heat homes in the surrounding city. The company says when the facility is fully up and running at the end of the decade it could be the biggest of its kind in the European Union.
Innargi started carrying out seismic surveys across Aarhus two years ago, to find pockets of land suitable to drill a geothermal well.
They identified a spot in Skejby, a small village on the outskirts of the city, and a relatively small plant constructed there will start delivering a supply of hot water to homes this autumn.
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The hot water can’t be pumped from the ground directly into the heating network, as the high levels of salt would destroy the pipes. So the plant uses the geothermal water to heat up fresh water that eventually ends up in a radiator in someone’s home in the city.
Locals living across the road from the facility had to put up with noise when the company was drilling the well, project manager Lars Heineke says. The pumps are quiet enough when they are up and running, he says. It is estimated the geothermal project could supply a fifth of the district’s heating network in Aarhus.
The Innargi facility is the kind of thing Europe will need to do a lot more of, if the Continent wants to slow down climate change by lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
Dan Jorgensen was Denmark’s minister for climate when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, forcing the rest of Europe, and particularly Germany, to confront its dependence on cheap Russian oil and gas.
Speaking about that period, Jorgensen says one of his big fears was Russian leader Vladimir Putin cutting off the supply, which was keeping the heat and lights on. “If he had done so, we wouldn’t have been able to manage,” he says.
The Danish government had to draw up emergency plans that would have temporarily shut certain industries and factories to conserve energy supplies.
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“We would [have] send men in uniform to close down production companies in Denmark ... to make sure there was enough gas for our hospitals and our homes,” he recalls. “This shows you just how vulnerable you are if you’re dependent on energy from outside actors, especially if that actor is an enemy,” he says.
Jorgensen is now the European commissioner for energy, where he recently brought forward plans to ban EU imports of Russian gas by the end of 2027. The proposal would prohibit EU states from having contracts in place with Russian suppliers beyond that cliff edge.
The plan is facing resistance from Slovakia and Hungary, who still heavily rely on Russia to supply gas. The two countries were already aggrieved when Ukraine stopped allowing Russian gas to transit through its territory at the start of this year.
Slovakia’s populist government is refusing to sign off on a new batch of economic sanctions targeting Russia, unless it gets some concessions on energy supplies. Jorgensen says he is working with Slovakia to provide assurances.
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The European Commission seems determined to overrule the objections and cut off Russia’s ability to use its gas supply as leverage to squeeze Europe, and as a source of funding for its military campaign in Ukraine.
Elsewhere, the EU executive is under a lot of pressure to scale back its ambitious “green deal” climate agenda, which defined Ursula von der Leyen’s first five-year term as commission president.
France, Poland and others are sceptical about a 2040 target for the EU to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent, with the ultimate aim of becoming climate-neutral by the middle of the century.
The knives are out for an EU law banning diesel and petrol engines in new cars from 2035. Legislation to stop deforestation, due to be implemented this year, has been delayed. Regulations to make large companies report on their environmental sustainability has also been pushed out.
This shift to scale back, scrap or delay new climate rules has been led by centre-right governments and conservative German MEPs in the European Parliament, in the name of making Europe more economically competitive.
Agriculture ministers from 18 EU states, including Ireland, this week asked the commission to take a second look at the delayed deforestation law, which they said would impose “disproportionate bureaucratic obligations on countries” where levels of deforestation were negligible. The legislation needed to be simplified, the ministers said.
Two countries ahead of the curve on climate, Spain and Denmark, are concerned that the EU is going backwards, at a time when every year counts.
