Geothermal Engineering closer to drilling at Cornwall, UK

Pernzance, Cornwall, UK (source: flickr/ The Brit_2, creative commons)

Alexander Richter 4 Jul 2010

“UK-based Geothermal Engineering says that it hopes to make a funding announcement in the next month, which would enable it to drill its first well at its project in Cornwall.”, so a recent interview with the company published by NewNet.

Ryan Law, founder and MD of Geothermal Engineering said the company had already received £1.46m in funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The DECC funding really helped to start the ball rolling. It was enough of a vote of confidence to enable us to bring in other investment,’ he said. ‘We hope to make a funding announcement in the next month.’

Law said he hopes to drill the first well in early 2011 and is currently awaiting planning permission that he hopes to receive at the end of July. It secured DECC funding in December 2009 and has worked with local residents to reassure them about temporary noise levels while drilling.

Law has also welcomed the discussions taking place around the establishment of a Green Investment Bank (GIB) in the UK but stressed it would need to be centrally driven.

‘I think it would be really good to have a central point because a lot of time I spent in the early years of this project was finding out which [government-backed] bodies there are out there,’ he said.

‘There are many technologies that have to get over the first hurdle of attracting substantial amounts of capital before the technology is necessarily proven. The idea of a GIB to get companies like ours over this hurdle is a good idea.’”

Source: NewNet