Dec 28 2010
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has awarded a £ 1.1 million funding, which is to be shared by three projects from the Deep Geothermal Challenge Fund’s Second Round.
The latest round of funding has offered Keele University an amount of £ 500,000 for drilling a 1200 meter bore hole to supply power for its sustainable campus. An amount of £400,000 was bestowed on a project carried out by Newcastle and Durham University. This project is located at the Science Central Development situated in the middle of Newcastle and the funds would be utilized for drilling, testing hydraulically and geophysical logging of a bore hole 2 km in size in the location. The Cofely District Energy was offered the balance amount of £ 200,000 for refitting a deep geothermal well in the Southampton region.
According to Greg Barker, Energy & Climate Change Minister, this latest round of funding would ensure that geothermal energy would be promoted as one of the future energy technologies, as it could be produced locally and is also a renewable energy source. The first round of financing focused on deep geothermal power while the current funding concentrates on heat alone. In November 2010, the European Union had called for proposals for their NER300 Funds, which would be utilized to fund 34 renewable energy projects and eight carbon capture and storage projects.