Residents in the German town of Geretsried have long wanted to run their buildings with clean heat and electricity from geothermal energy instead of fossil fuels.
Their hopes were dashed about 15 years ago when a drilling company couldn't find enough hot water close to the surface to be profitable using traditional geothermal technology. That basically left them with natural gas.
"We gave up. We had big hopes," recalled First Mayor of Geretsried Michael Müller, who was raised in the town.
Today the next generation of geothermal companies is trying to succeed where previous efforts failed. They don't rely on hot water close to the surface, but instead use techniques developed in the oil and gas industry to drill deep and extract heat from dry, hot rock. One of them, Eavor, is starting up its first commercial power plant in Geretsried turning the tiny town of about 26,000 people, south of Munich, into a proving ground for the future of geothermal energy.
Can technology like this be scaled and really make a difference for the future of the planet? The International Energy Agency thinks so. In a recent report, it said technology breakthroughs are unlocking huge potential for geothermal energy. Now that companies are drilling deeper than 3 kilometers (close to 2 miles), nearly every country has the potential to make heat and electricity this way, the IEA said.
"It has been a niche energy and concentrated in a few countries," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in an interview. But soon, Birol said, "geothermal can contribute to the global energy picture in an accelerated manner."
Eavor CEO John Redfern said the earlier failure in Gerestried opened up the possibility for a high-profile success Geretsried's ordinary geology was appealing. No one would've been impressed if the Canadian company demonstrated its technology in Iceland, a place with abundant, easily accessible hot water, he added.
It helped that the town was excited for geothermal and open to new ideas, he added.
"Our whole point is that we want to have geothermal anywhere, everywhere," Redfern said. "What better way to prove that than to put our first well where they tried and failed with traditional geothermal systems."
Germany is committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels. As part of the commitment, heating systems must switch to renewable sources because heating is one of the main sources of carbon dioxide emissions in Germany. And Germany couldn't depend on importing natural gas from Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
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