The Current - Building a ‘giant underground radiator’ in Germany

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Deep in the forests of Germany, a Canadian company is drilling deep into the earth to tap into geothermal energy, aiming to pump clean power into the electricity grid. The CBC’s Paula Duhatschek explains how it works — and whether geothermal energy could be harnessed in Canada.

Just weeks after 9-11, letters containing anthrax were sent all over America, and it would go down as the deadliest biological attack in U.S. history. I'm Kathleen Goltar, and this week on Crime Story, I speak with Jeremiah Kroll about a long-forgotten story that's had a lasting impact on American life. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. In the middle of the Bavarian forest,

a Canadian energy company has been doing a lot of drilling deep underground. It's not in the business of fossil fuels though. It is tapping heat stored deep in the earth, the geothermal kind. It will soon supply two German towns with energy. CBC business reporter Paula Dehacek joins us now with a story of this groundbreaking project and why it is that a Canadian company had to leave this country to get it off or in the ground.

Paula's in Calgary. Paula, good morning. Good morning. Just for people who don't know the terminology, remind us what geothermal energy is. Well, Matt, it's all about drilling underground to use the earth's heats. With geothermal energy, you're using hot water

and steam found deep down below the surface to generate electricity or to maybe heat a building. Now geothermal has been around a long, long time, but some companies, including the one that I spoke with, are looking at these new ways of turning that underground heat into energy. And so you went to the Bavarian forest to see this project firsthand.

What exactly is going on there? Yeah, I went to visit the site recently. Basically it looks like any natural gas drilling site that you might see here in Alberta, workers running around in hard hats and coveralls in these big tall rigs emerging out of the landscape. The difference of course is that we are about 40 minutes south of Munich near the community of Gerrit's Reed surrounded by Bavarian forest in this area that used to be a farm. There's even

this old brown and white farmhouse still standing that they now use to host kids on field trips. And the company that's behind all of this is called Ever, which is a play on the word Endeavor and the phrase energy forever and they are drilling deep deep underground to build what is essentially this giant underground radiator. Like a radiator that I would find in my house. Yeah exactly only this one is very big and very deep. Now Ever has drilled two wells that are about five kilometers underground, that's roughly nine CN towers end to end,

and these two wells split off into multiple wells underground that connect to form a loop. Now Steve now is the expert on this project, he is the drilling manager. Is one of the most complex drilling projects in the world, and I really wanted to be a part of that. Now Steve is a Newfoundlander who's spent most of his career in oil and gas. He's worked in nearly 50 different countries, and he says you have to drill deep because

that is where the heat comes from. The bottom hole temperatures are about 150 to 160 degrees centigrade. So what we're doing is we're pumping basically cold water is going in from one side and as it circulates through the system it's gathering heat and when it comes out at the other end it's going to be significantly higher and then that heat is used to run the plant behind us. So basically they're sending water through these wells that picks up heat from the underground rock and then it rises to the surface where it can be used for heating or to generate power.

I mean, he kind of gave the temperatures there, but how much heat and power are we talking about? Well, if all goes according to plan, it should provide enough power for about 4,000 to 5,000 homes and enough home heating for about half the community of Garretts Reed. And Matt, that's especially exciting because another company had tried to drill for geothermal in Garretts Reed before and it didn't work out, but Ever says that its technology can work even in places where traditional geothermal can't. Now typically with geothermal you're looking for a source of hot underground water to generate

steam and power a turbine, but as Steve now explains, the Ever system doesn't need that hot water source, it's a closed loop. We're basically independent of any water source. We're just dependent on the heat from the reservoir being transmitted to our fluid as it circulates around. So it can be done anywhere? It can be done anywhere, yeah. So that's really interesting. The question, I suppose, is if this can be done anywhere,

why is a company from Calgary going to Germany, into the forest, to put this technology into action. Uh huh. Well, there's a couple of reasons. For one thing, the country is trying to become climate neutral by 2045 and it's putting serious money on the table to make that happen. Uh, it has funding for clean sources of heat and power, including geothermal.

And I spoke with Jan During about this, who's the head of the local utility for Gerrit's Read. And I asked him why he thinks Germany is so serious about getting off of fossil fuels. We have no oil, we have no gas, but we have geothermal energy. And so, not the hardest decision to decide what to make, because it's a very, very good solution to get affordable energy, secure energy, domestic energy, and environmental friendly energy. Now, as you heard him say, in Germany, the energy transition isn't just about environmentalism.

There's also this element of practicality. Right now, a lot of people in Germany still heat their homes with natural gas, which they have to import from other countries. And that's expensive, and it also puts Germany in a bit of a precarious position. Of course, you remember when Russia invaded Ukraine, really upended the European supply of natural gas. And so in Germany, interest in geothermal is also about energy security. How much does something like this cost going out and drilling that far down?

Well, Ever says it can't give me a precise number because it's not done yet, but they estimate it's going to be somewhere in the range of $300 million Canadian and upwards of $500 million. Now they do have a number of backers. They've got some money coming from the EU Innovation Fund, which has given them a grant. They also have a loan from the European Investment Bank. And investors in Asia are also eyeing the project. For example, a large utility company in Japan has acquired an equity stake in the project and it's hoping to eventually use this technology back home in that country. Are there any risks with this kind of technology? Well, one concern that gets raised about certain kinds of geothermal is about fracking, which

can be associated with the risk of earthquakes. That doesn't sound good. No, no, certainly not. And ever for its part though, it is emphatic that they don't use fracking. In fact, on the front page of their website, they say in these big bold letters, no earthquake risks. So they are using that as a sort of selling point. Still, one expert I spoke with says he still has some questions about how this underground radiator system will hold up

over time, ever may not cause earthquakes, but if an earthquake were to happen naturally, what would happen then? Does the fluid they use seep out? What might that do to the groundwater? Now the company for its part says it has a containment system and there's no risk in that situation, but still some investors would probably want to see this technology working safely over a long period of time before they decide to pull the trigger on it. How do people feel about having this big geothermal project in their backyard?

Well, I went to Downtown Garrett's Reed on a recent Tuesday afternoon to ask people about it. They have this downtown pedestrian zone that's closed off to traffic, and so even on a weekday, there's lots of people walking around just picking up groceries, grabbing lunch. It did take me some time to find people who spoke English, but the ones I spoke with said that they think this project is a good idea. I think it's a good idea because you have a new opportunity to get energy. And this is a special thing because I think it's the first one in the world.

We need more and more energy and oil and gas is not good for us, for the climate. And I think this could be a possibility to avoid damage to our environment. Generally, I think it's a good idea. Depends if it's useful. I mean, it depends, I think, on the ground and how much heat that can be extracted. But generally, I think it's a good idea. So those folks wandering around are all in on this. What are the chances that, I mean, people have geothermal perhaps at their own homes, but at scale,

what are the chances of a project like this happening here in Canada? I asked the CEO of Ever about that and John Redfern says it will take time, but he is determined to make it happen. Do you hope to one day have one of your ever loops here in Alberta? says it will take time, but he is determined to make it happen. Do you hope to one day have one of your ever loops here in Alberta? Oh, I don't hope. We will. It definitely will come back here.

We're talking to people already and have been continuously. As soon as it makes commercial sense, we'll be doing that. So that would sound like an important caveat at the end of what he was saying there. Yes, at this point, it is tough to make it make commercial sense in this country. I spoke with Maurice Dussault about this, who is a professor emeritus of engineering geology at the University of Waterloo.

And he says in this country, geothermal has to compete against energy sources like natural gas and hydro, which are relatively cheap and abundant. And he says that can make this type of project a bit of a tough sell. Because the big cost is drilling. That's Evers big cost is drilling. It's the elephant in the room. If we can get that elephant shrunk down to the size of a tiger, well, hey, we might be

in good shape. Now, it's not like drilling is any cheaper in Germany than it is here. In fact, it may be the opposite, but because energy is fairly expensive in that country, the competition is a little bit easier. Still kind of stuck on the idea of shrinking an elephant down to the size of a tiger, but if you're able to do that, could geothermal technology be scaled up enough to make a difference, do you think, in Canada? Well, there's some debate about that. For some, geothermal is really this holy grail of renewable energy, and for others, it's really just more of a niche technology. Now, the International

Energy Agency, for its part, says geothermal has a lot of potential and that as the technology improves, it could meet up to 15% of global electricity demand growth by 2050. We're also seeing some interest from some maybe surprising corners, big name tech companies like Google, which recently signed a contract with a different company for a geothermal project in Nevada to power AI data centers. Even politically in the US, as you know, there's been a bit of a backlash against renewables recently like wind and solar, but still quite a lot of sustained interest in geothermal.

Here's Barry Smitherman. He's with the Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance. I think we're in a special moment right now. It's really golden locks for geothermal. It is something that the left can get behind and the right. Democrats love it because it's zero carbon. Republicans love it because it is using oil and gas technology and skill set workforce. So yeah, we're the cool kids. We're the quarterback of the football team.

And so with all of this momentum growing around geothermal, there are certainly lots of people watching Evers' project in Germany. You know, will it work? How much will it cost? And as they build more and more of these, can they get those costs down and make it cheaper? Now, as for Steve now, who is that drilling manager we met earlier, as you know, he worked in oil and gas a long time before moving to geothermal.

And he doesn't think the technology is going to suddenly replace fossil fuels but he does think that it's part of the way forward. I have two sons one is 17 and one is 19 and one of the things that I think about a lot is you know what is the state of the planet that our generation is leaving for him and his future children. What I find myself is I actually would like to see a more rapid transition towards climate neutrality. So that's one of the things I think that the Everloop geothermal system can play actually a significant role in aiding that transition. Now, Evers Plant in Bavaria is expected to start delivering some power onto the grid later this

year. Clean power developed using skills from the oil and gas industry here in Alberta, Matt. Paula, that is super interesting. Thank you very much for telling us this story. Thanks for having me. Paula Dehaczek is a reporter with CBC's Western Business Unit. She was in our Calgary studio.