Serbia Advances Geothermal Drilling for the Mišeluk District Heating Plant in Novi Sad Serbia is moving forward with plans to develop a geothermal district heating system in Mišeluk, a rapidly urbanizing area of Novi Sad. The project is intended to place geothermal energy at the centre of a new low-carbon heating network, supported by solar power and natural gas backup. Exploratory drilling and construction of the heat distribution network are being carried out by JKP Novosadska toplana, Novi Sad’s public district heating utility. The initiative is supported through the United Nations Development Programme’s “Geothermal Energy in Serbia” programme, with financial backing from Slovakia. The Mišeluk project is important not only because it could provide a new renewable heat source for Novi Sad, but also because it demonstrates how geothermal energy can be integrated into urban development from the earliest planning stages. Rather than retrofitting a geothermal system into an establi...
Enhanced geothermal systems are one of the few realistic paths to firm zero carbon power at scale, but they work by deliberately changing stresses in the crust, so induced seismicity is not a bug; it is a built‑in consequence that we have to manage, not eliminate. Image: geothermal wells of power The real question is whether we can design and regulate EGS so that most earthquakes stay tiny and useful as a reservoir diagnostic, and rare felt events stay within a risk envelope society will accept, with clear rules on who pays when something still goes wrong. EGS and induced seismicity Enhanced geothermal systems increase permeability in hot but relatively tight rock by injecting fluid under pressure, which raises pore pressure and shifts effective stresses on pre‑existing fractures and faults. When those faults are close to failure, even modest pressure changes can trigger slip, generating induced seismic events that range from microquakes only instruments detect to felt earthquakes like...