City of Konin in Poland hopeful for government funding for geothermal heating project
City square of Konin, Poland (source: flickr/ János Korom, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
30 Aug 2019
The city of Konin in Poland is hopeful to receive funding from a a national fund for a planned geothermal heating plant, with the announcement expected later this year.
Following a recent regional geothermal event in the city of Konin in Poland, Urszula Zaj?c – director of the Energy Department of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management announced that Konin will learn later this year if it will receive funding for the construction of a geothermal heating plant.
The planned geothermal heating plant is expected to cost around PLN 46 million, or around EUR 11 million. The capital cost is estimated for the construction of the plant, the implementation of the injection (absorptive) GT-3 hole and the connection to the municipal heating network. Earlier in August 2019, the project received a necessary building permit. Now MPEC-Konin is waiting for a decision from the NFEPWM to finance the project in the amount of 56%. In addition to subsidies and loans from the fund, the project will also need to raise own funding.
In the event of a positive decision of the fund, the investment will be implemented in 2020-2021 so that in 2022 it will become one of the three heat sources for Konin. Thus, as the president of MPEC Konin Stanis?aw Jarecki informs, using the heat generated by the biomass power plant, municipal waste incineration plant and geothermal heating plant – Konin would be one of the few cities in Poland heated almost 100% from renewable energy sources.
According to Marek Hajto from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, our city has great geothermal potential. Konin is on the list of 50 other centers where hot springs have played or can play a big role. The temperature of sources discovered with us is very high – it is 97.5 degrees.
– The use of geothermal sources fits perfectly into the new vision of the city of Konin as a green energy city, as well as the pan-European trend of maximizing the share of renewable energy sources in electricity and heat production. It is somehow a response to EU climate goals, which Poland will soon have to face, and our city and region may become part of a larger development plan for the use of renewable energy sources – said President Konina Piotr Korytkowski.
Today, there are 6 geothermal heating plants in Poland and around 500 district heating networks.
Source: Konin
