Speaker
Description
European and African institutions initiated in 2020 the Long-term Europe-Africa Partnership for Renewable Energies (LEAP-RE). In LEAP-RE the Geothermal Atlas for Africa (GAA) has been developed, aimed at the visualization of geothermal energy potential of the African countries, and based on a comprehensive compilation of available data, subsurface models jointly with many key R&D and geological survey partners in Europe and Africa*.
All the GAA geoscientific data and maps, as well as resource characterization and performance assessment are available in the Geothermal Atlas of Africa website (https://www.geothermalatlasforafrica.org/).
In this paper we present the novel integrated techno-economic and environmental resource assessment approach which has been developed for the GAA. It is designed in such a way that it a) allows for continental scale assessment at the face of limited and very heterogenous subsurface data density, b) is capable to estimate optimized potential reservoir performance and exploitation depth dependent on exploitation use-case/scenarios (i.e. direct heat, direct heat including a heat pump, refrigeration or power production).
The workflow takes into account complementary information from tectonics and heat flow for geothermal gradient, basin analysis for hydrological parameters of sediments as well as zones of active faults and volcanism to be indicative for fracture related permeability. Subsurface information has been used subsequently processed to quantitatively to define best possible potential reservoir depths and performance potential (including both technical , economic, and environmental performance indicators, i.e. LCOE, power produced, gCO2/kWh), including uncertainty.
*) Project partners are as follows: Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Deutsches, Geo Forschungs Zentrum (GFZ), Addis Ababa University (AAU), University of Florence (UNIFI), University of Nairobi (UoN), Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (SSSA), University of Torino (UNITO), Fraunhofer Institution for Energy Infrastructures and Geothermal Systems (Fh IEG), Utrecht University (UU), British Geological Survey (BGS), Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BGRM), National Council of Research Italy (CNR), Ressources Géol. Pour le Dévelopment Durable (Geo2D), Djiboutian Office of Geothermal Energy Development (ODDEG), Dedan Kimathi University of. Technology (DeKUT), Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS), University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM).
