High technical and economic risks stemming from the lack of detailed knowledge of the subsurface hold back large-scale investments in geothermal energy. In a survey conducted on nine use cases from diverse geological settings across Europe and with different purposes (electricity/heating and cooling) and project objectives (scientific/commercial), we identify the “common practice” and the aspiration for the “state of the art” in geothermal exploration. For each use case, the survey investigates what workflows have been adopted and what data acquired by which methods at different stages of exploration. This provided a benchmark for exploration in a range geothermal play types. The survey shows that this industry-standard base-case can be adapted to improve exploration success and efficiency by (1) applying numerical modelling in early stages of exploration to guide strategic data collection, (2) novel application of innovative technologies and (3) closer integration of software tools for static geological interpretation and dynamic heat flow simulation.

To enable reliable exploration strategies for geothermal energy that have inherently lower economic and technical risks and hence increase public support, the multi-national, multi-disciplinary, and publicly funded FindHeat project is developing a novel, conceptual model-based geothermal exploration workflow. This workflow specifically focuses on faster turnaround times for exploration and appraisal of geothermal resources, making better use of legacy data and non-invasive geophysical techniques, and constraining uncertainties with respect to the size of the heat source and the range of possible heat production rates. Comprehensive social science research complements the technical work to set the foundation for new communication strategies that allow geothermal operators to earn the public trust that improved geothermal exploration and appraisal will lead to a more efficient and sustainable exploitation of geothermal energy. The workflow is being tested and validated at eight geologically diverse geothermal plays situated in Iceland, France, UK, Spain, and Netherlands, which allows us to demonstrate its economic and technical benefits as well as its societal impact.

A novel way of treating seismic-to-well misties is presented, which allows for the fact that logs and seismic have been acquired at very different scales. Also the case where a well is offset from a 2D line is covered by this procedure. The scale gap is bridged by defining a log perturbation mechanism, whereby the logs are realistically modified, driven by a small parameter set only. These parameters are optimised by inverting the seismic gather for them. The modelling of the well synthetic traces for the various perturbation réalisations is a full waveform modelling technique that produces all internal multiple reflections and mode conversions over the target interval. In this way it will be more difficult to match seismic noise by adjusting the log perturbation parameters. A wavelet extraction procedure has been built into this procedure. The method is demonstrated on a public data-set and leads demonstrably to a better match and consequently to better scaling in the wavelets extracted. This is important in quantitative interpretation projects.