France Makes It Easier To Go Geothermal With New Procedures

Accelerating Energy Transition: France Simplifies Geothermal Mining Procedures

In a bold move to expedite France's energy transition and bolster its supply security, Bruno Le Maire and Roland Lescure unveiled groundbreaking measures on April 12th, aimed at simplifying mining procedures. These measures are poised to pave the way for crucial projects vital to both energy transition and supply security.

France boasts a rich subsoil teeming with essential resources pivotal for successful energy transition endeavors, such as geothermal energy, lithium, and copper. However, the exploitation of these resources has been hampered by lengthy bureaucratic procedures.

Unlocking Geothermal Potential:

Geothermal energy, a renewable and carbon-neutral energy source, harnesses the thermal energy from the Earth's subterranean depths and aquifers. With 90% of the national territory suitable for geothermal exploitation, it stands as a prime candidate for scaling up renewable energy production.

The national geothermal action plan, coupled with the Strategic National Energy Plan (PPE), sets ambitious targets for expanding geothermal operations, both in deep and surface geothermal projects. However, the current regulatory framework, particularly the mining code, imposes lengthy procedures for obtaining exclusive research permits, hindering the timely realization of geothermal projects.

Securing Critical Minerals:

The burgeoning demand for critical minerals, essential for green technologies, underscores the need to fortify France's sovereignty over its resource base. The country harbors significant reserves of minerals like lithium and copper, imperative for electrification and renewable energy deployment.

For instance, France's lithium reserves, pivotal for electric mobility, could meet a substantial portion of future demand. Similarly, copper reserves, crucial for wind turbines and solar panels, underscore the strategic importance of domestic resource extraction.

Streamlining Mining Procedures:

Recognizing the urgency of expediting energy transition projects, the government has introduced sweeping reforms to streamline mining procedures. These reforms aim to significantly reduce the bureaucratic hurdles associated with obtaining exclusive research permits (PER), thereby catalyzing the development of mining projects.

Key reforms include the parallelization of permit processing stages, enabling a substantial reduction in approval timelines from over 2 years to as little as 6-9 months. Additionally, exceptional extensions for existing permits and provisions for repurposing hydrocarbon wells for CO2 storage further enhance the regulatory framework.

Charting a Greener Future:

To showcase France's commitment to sustainable resource utilization, Bruno Le Maire and Roland Lescure will convene the Bercy Summit on Geothermal Energy, Mines, and Transitions. This event will serve as a platform to unveil the National Policy on Subsoil Resources and Usage, outlining the strategic vision for mining and geothermal policies.

As Bruno Le Maire aptly stated, "To succeed in energy transition and bolster industrial sovereignty, France must embrace its mining heritage in the 21st century." The proposed simplification measures will not only accelerate vital projects but also position France as a global leader in responsible mining for energy transition.

The USA has also been making it easier for companies to harnes steam and seeing France going in the same direction it's really encouraging to be in Geothermal today

In essence, France's bold strides towards simplifying mining procedures underscore its unwavering commitment to forging a sustainable, greener future powered by domestic resources.

Source:francaise

Connect With Us:Alphaxioms

Comments

Hot Topics

Blowout at Cape Station: Fervo Energy’s First Major Crisis After Blockbuster IPO

Just weeks after a record-breaking IPO, the flagship project of the "geothermal unicorn" faces its first major operational crisis. By : Robert Buluma Beaver County, Utah – The morning of May 27, 2026, began like any other at the Cape Station construction site in rural Utah. Workers for Fervo Energy, the newly public darling of the renewable energy world, were engaged in the complex task of drilling deep into the Earth’s crust to unlock what the company promised would be the future of 24/7 clean power. But by the afternoon, the routine had turned into a crisis. The site had experienced a blowout—an uncontrolled release of fluid or pressure from a well. For any energy company, a blowout is a serious matter. For Fervo Energy, which had just raised $1.89 billion in a blockbuster Nasdaq debut two weeks prior, it represents an immediate stress test of its technology, its safety protocols, and its $7.7 billion market valuation. While the well has since been contained and no injur...

Eavor steps back from operator role in the Geretsried geothermal project

Eavor at the Crossroads: What Geretsried Really Tells Us About the Future of Closed-Loop Geothermal By Alphaxioms Geothermal Insights | May 13, 2026 For years, Eavor Technologies was the geothermal sector's most talked-about enigma. The company raised hundreds of millions of dollars, attracted backing from heavyweights including BP , Chevron , Helmerich & Payne , and Temasek , and made bold promises about a proprietary closed-loop technology that would quietly revolutionise how humanity extracts heat from the earth. But it rarely said much in public. The secrecy was, to many observers in the geothermal community, a feature rather than a bug — protecting intellectual property, managing competitive intelligence, buying time. Now, Eavor is talking. And what it is saying is worth listening to very carefully. In an exclusive interview published on May 13, 2026, by GeoExpro editor Henk Kombrink, Eavor's new president and CEO Mark Fitzgerald — who took the role in October 2025 ...

Eavor Geretsried Geothermal Breakthrough: Inside the Closed-Loop Energy Revolution, Drilling Challenges, and Path to Scalable Clean Power

The Geothermal “Holy Grail” Just Got a Reality Check: Inside Eavor’s Geretsried Breakthrough By: Robert Buluma May 22, 2026 It’s not every day a deep-tech energy company publishes a detailed technical report that openly documents what went wrong on its flagship project—and still comes out looking stronger. That’s exactly what Eavor Technologies did with its Geretsried geothermal project in Bavaria, Germany. The result is unusually transparent: part technical post-mortem, part validation of a technology many have doubted for years. And the core message is simple. They built it. It works. But it wasn’t smooth. The short version Eavor is trying to solve one of geothermal energy’s hardest problems: how to produce reliable heat and power anywhere, not just in rare volcanic hotspots. Their claim has always been bold: a closed-loop geothermal system that is scalable, dispatchable, low-carbon, and independent of natural reservoirs. Critics have long argued it wouldn’t survive...

GEN Electric Grid Impact Study RFP in Framingham Massachusetts Advances Utility Geothermal Networks

GEN Electric Grid Impact Study RFP Signals a Defining Moment for Geothermal Energy Networks in the United States By: Robert Buluma The United States geothermal sector is entering a new phase, one where geothermal systems are no longer being viewed only as sources of heating and cooling, but increasingly as strategic infrastructure capable of strengthening the electric grid itself. In one of the most important emerging developments in utility-scale thermal network deployment, the Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), in partnership with Eversource Gas, has officially launched a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a groundbreaking Electric Grid Impact Study focused on Geothermal Energy Networks (GENs), also referred to as Thermal Energy Networks (TENs). Backed by funding from the U.S. Department of Energy under grant “DE-EE0010662.0002 Home Energy Efficiency Team Utility-Managed Geothermal Pilot in Framingham, Massachusetts,” the initiative represents far more than a local energy pilot. It is...

Rodatherm Energy: The Refrigerant Gambit

By: Robert Buluma Rodatherm Energy has done something no other geothermal startup has attempted at commercial scale: swapped water for refrigerant in a closed-loop system. The claim is 50% higher thermal efficiency than water-based binary cycles, achieved by circulating a proprietary phase-change fluid through a fully cased, pressurized wellbore. The company emerged from stealth in September 2025 with a $38 million Series A—the largest first venture raise in geothermal history. Lead investor Evok Innovations was joined by Toyota Ventures, TDK Ventures, and the Grantham Foundation. The engineering thesis is elegant. The execution risks are significant. This is an Alphaxioms examination of both. II. The Thermodynamic Distinction Every geothermal company you've covered moves heat using water or steam. Rodatherm moves heat using a fluid that boils and condenses inside the wellbore. In a conventional closed-loop water system (Eavor's model), water circulates as a single-phase liq...

Steam and Silence: Why Ethiopia's Geothermal Promise Remains Unfulfilled

Steam and Silence: The Uncertain Fate of Ethiopia’s Geothermal Revolution By : Robert Buluma Despite sitting on a volcanic rift valley with over 10,000 MW of clean energy potential, Ethiopia produces just 7.3 MW of geothermal power—enough to power a small town, but a fraction of what the nation needs. For a country long dependent on hydropower (which fluctuates with drought) and biomass (which degrades forests), geothermal offers the dream of steady, 24/7 baseload energy. However, as investigations into the flagship Aluto Langano and Tulu Moye projects reveal, the road from geological promise to actual megawatts is fraught with technical failure, financial gridlock, and conflicting narratives. The Ghosts of Aluto Langano The story begins and, in some ways, remains stuck at Aluto Langano. Developed by the former EEPCO (now Ethiopian Electric Power/EEP), this site is a textbook case of high potential meeting harsh reality. The resource itself is world-class. Data confirms a high-te...

Baseload Capital launches new geothermal power plant in Japan, expanding its presence in the country’s untapped geothermal sector

Bill Gates-backed Baseload Capital has commissioned its second geothermal power plant in Japan, marking further expansion into a market with significant untapped geothermal resources. By : Robert Buluma Image : Kazuyuki Akaishi, manager at Furusato Netsuden and Anders Helling, CEO at Baseload Capital. Press photo ., Credit : Imapct loop The Waita Model: How a Swedish-Backed Startup Just Cracked Japan's Geothermal Code KUMAMOTO / STOCKHOLM — In the misty highlands of Kumamoto Prefecture, on the southern island of Kyushu, a quiet revolution in renewable energy has just switched on. On June 4, 2026, Stockholm-based Baseload Capital officially commissioned its second geothermal power plant in Japan: Waita No. 2. While a 4.995 MW facility might seem modest compared to a nuclear reactor or an offshore wind farm, the financial and political ramifications of this event are seismic. For decades, Japan has been described as the "Saudi Arabia of geothermal." The archipel...

LCOE Benchmarking: Eavor Technologies vs. Fervo Energy

LCOE Compared: Eavor Technologies vs. Fervo Energy Two Bets on Next-Generation Geothermal An Alphaxioms Geothermal Insights Analysis | May 2026 Image: Eavor and Fervo Drilling Rigs well poised in their respective well pads , drill baby , baby what a time to be a live Introduction: Why the Cost Question Matters Now The global geothermal sector is in the middle of a pivotal moment. After decades of stagnation largely confined to volcanic hotspots, two fundamentally different technological approaches are racing to prove that geothermal energy can be deployed broadly, cheaply, and at scale. Eavor Technologies , the Calgary-based advanced geothermal systems (AGS) company, and Fervo Energy , the Houston-based enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) pioneer, represent the sharpest divergence in next-generation geothermal strategy today. Each company is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in private capital, each has reached key commercial milestones, and each is advancing ...

Ormat’s Ormega100: How the World’s Largest 100 MW Binary Unit Is Industrializing Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)

The Geothermal Tipping Point: Ormat’s 100 MW Bet on an Engineered Earth By: Robert Buluma An Analysis of the Ormega100 and the Industrialization of Enhanced Geothermal Systems In the quiet corridors of the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre, amid the hum of the World Geothermal Congress 2026, a threshold was crossed. It wasn’t marked by a flashy prototype or a speculative white paper. Instead, it came in the form of a press release from Reno, Nevada-based Ormat Technologies —a company that has spent six decades drilling, building, and operating quietly in the background of the renewable energy boom. The announcement was deceptively simple: Ormat unveiled the Ormega100, a 100 MW binary power generation unit designed specifically for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Buried beneath the technical jargon of heat exchangers and working fluids lies a seismic shift in energy economics. For the last twenty years, the renewable energy narrative has been dominated by the intermittency pro...

Data-Driven Site Selection in Nevada Pushes SLB and Ormat's EGS Development Forward

Breaking Ground Below: How Data-Driven Site Selection in Nevada Is Unlocking the Next Generation of Geothermal Energy Published: June 9, 2026 | By Robert Buluma In the high desert of northern Nevada, where the sagebrush gives way to volcanic rock and the heat beneath the surface has long been a whispered secret, a quiet but profound shift is underway. It is not marked by the dramatic collapse of a coal plant or the sudden rise of a solar farm, but by something far more subtle: the deliberate, data-driven selection of a patch of earth known as Desert Peak. On June 9, 2026, SLB and Ormat Technologies announced that Desert Peak has been selected as the preferred location for a planned enhanced geothermal system (EGS) pilot. This decision, the culmination of a rigorous multi-site evaluation across several of Ormat’s existing geothermal fields, marks a critical inflection point. It is the moment when enhanced geothermal—long a theoretical promise of limitless clean energy—begins it...

ALPHAXIOMS Geothermal News & Energy Research

Search This Blog