The success of a geothermal project in the Upper Rhine Graben (ORG) is largely determined by two factors, firstly public acceptance and secondly the economic development of a corresponding reservoir. Minimizing the probability of the occurrence of noticeable induced seismicity is particularly important for public acceptance, while the economic viability of reservoir development is largely determined by the costs and productivity of the production and injection wells. In this context, the proposed joint project AGENS aims to demonstrate that multilateral exploration of a typical fault-dominated reservoir in the Upper Rhine Graben can make a significant contribution both to mitigating seismic risk and to improving reservoir productivity and thus to overcoming both main obstacles, costs and public acceptance. The work in this sub-project is aimed at optimizing the borehole targets and gaining a better understanding of the geomechanical system behaviour during geothermal operation for sustainable and safe development of the reservoir. Due to the novel multilateral reservoir development, complex numerical thermo-hydromechanical modeling is carried out, which can map the interaction of pressure, temperature and stress changes in the reservoir and on the faults.

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District heating plays a special role in the supply of heat in urban areas. The more intensive use of deep geothermal energy as a heat source would be significant here. Geothermal energy can cover up to 40% of private and industrial heating requirements in the low-temperature range. In addition to sandstones, NRW also has carbonates at depths with high temperatures. However, they have not been sufficiently explored to initiate local geothermal projects. Detailed exploration is a cost-intensive task and therefore inconceivable in areas such as the whole of NRW. The proposed project is based on the use of existing data to map the deposits as a prerequisite for managing more extensive exploration work. The existing data was primarily compiled by the coal mining industry, which has since been shut down. The results of this research project can estimate geothermal potential in selected areas of NRW, steer further exploration activities and thus facilitate specific projects. The approach to achieving these goals at a reasonable cost is to use existing exploration data and process it using the latest methods of data processing and geological and mine surveying interpretation. Following the closure of the coal industry (2018), this data will only be available for a limited period of time and, without post-processing, would become obsolete in the foreseeable future. As part of the research project, geomecon plans to carry out a techno-economic analysis of the mass limestones of the Ruhr Carboniferous and an extrapolation of the available stress data to greater depths.

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