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Harnessing the Heat Below our Feet - New Grant for Ethemcan Turhan and Marco Armiero

Promises, pitfalls and spatialization of geothermal energy as a decarbonization strategy.

Photo by Matt Palmer, Unsplash
Published Feb 04, 2021

Ethemcan Turhan was granted 3 million Swedish kronor, for a three year project with focus on socio-technical pathways to geothermal energy, from Formas/the Swedish Research Council. The project is a collaboration between the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, The University of Groningen and the University of Chile.

Ethemcan Turhan was a researcher with the Divsion and the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory from 2016 until last fall, where he among other things was active in several projects, Occupy Climate Change  being one as well as in teaching the Political Ecology  and Environmental History  courses. His current position is at the University of Groningen as assitant professor of environmental planning. The new project will be led by him together with Marco Armiero at the EHL.

"Harnessing the energies of steaming hot waters pumped from deep underground aquifers with high pressure, geothermal energy is one of the much-lauded forms of sustainable energy in a time of climate crisis. Often praised concerning its 'untapped' potential, the promise of geothermal resources is to provide high quality, climate-friendly, reliable and cheap energy for societies on their green growth pathways. Transnational initiatives such as the Global Geothermal Alliance as well as other regional strategies such as the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan also indicate the crucial role geothermal plays towards global decarbonization. Nonetheless, this enthusiasm in harnessing the heat under our feet through geothermal investments is not shared equally and unequivocally." (From the abstract of the application)

Visit the project page  for more information.