Untangling the Regulatory Barriers for High-Temperature Underground Thermal Energy Storage within the PUSH-IT Project

The EU-funded project PUSH-IT (Piloting Underground Storage of Heat In geoThermal reservoirs) is piloting the implementation of high- temperature thermal energy storage in aquifers (HT- ATES), boreholes (HT-BTES) and mines (HT-MTES). The project will implement and test the potential for thermal storage at higher temperatures in six pilot sites (three demonstrator and three follower sites; two per technology) located in four countries: the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. As with other new technologies, the widespread implementation and use of HT-UTES face a variety of scientific and social challenges that delay market uptake and implementation, including a lack of targeted regulation, uncertainty about the environmental impacts of high temperature storage and a lack of awareness about the new technology among the public, developers and policy maker. In this paper, we present an analysis of current regulatory frameworks and approaches applied to the three HT-UTES technologies in the countries and sites represented in the PUSH-IT project. The analysis is based on literature studies and semi-structured interviews aimed at collecting direct experience of project stakeholders, including developers, operators, regulators and authorities