Town Geothermal Energy and Country Geothermal Energy: making sense of deep geothermal energy in Strasbourg and in the northern Alsace.
Résumé
The development of deep geothermal energy in Alsace began in the 1980s with a pilot site in Soultz-sous-Forêts, in northern Alsace. In 2008, the site, which is using the EGS approach, was connected to the electricity network. More recently, as part of an acceleration of national energy transition policies, several projects are taking shape. The Rittershoffen plant was inaugurated in June 2016. Located near Soultz-sous-Forêts, it provides heat to a factory. Despite these successes, a strong controversy emerged within the Eurométropole of Strasbourg during the 2015 public consultations on four deep geothermal energy projects. It opposes local residents to operators and local governance bodies. It is in this context that the "Social Sciences" group of the Laboratoire d’excellence G-EAU-THERMIE profonde (Unistra/CNRS/Electricité de Strasbourg) has been set up. Since then, this working group has been involved in several research projects, including the H2020 DESTRESS project. These projects are built around four axes: perception of geothermal energy by local residents; analysis of the political and communicational context; role of the media; analysis of the decision-making processes as well as of the components and structuring of the social movements.
Early works conducted in 2015/2016 revealed the outlines of the controversy and rationalities that are confronting each other (that of the project owners and those of the local residents). Noticeably, the arguments against geothermal projects are not only about the induced risks, but are also concerned about their scientific, technical, economic and political proponents (Chavot & al., 2016). These criticisms, however, remain fairly specific. A project undertaken in the south of Strasbourg stirred little criticism. The development of geothermal plants in northern Alsace also seems to be well received. Several factors seem to influence the attitude of local residents: the location of the implantation site, their attachment to a "living" territory and to its history, prior consultations between local authorities and local residents, the way the project fits in with local development policies... On the basis of these findings, we made the distinction between projects "anchored" (projet ancré) in the territory, on the one hand, which are the result of a long matured concertation between the different actors, and “off-ground” (projet hors-sol) projects on the other hand, which were prompted by economic benefits and/or national political programming, often ignoring the specificities of the local territory (Chavot & al., 2017).
The research currently made under the DESTRESS program is designed to refine these results. We are particularly interested in the constructions and flows of deep geothermal energy representations, mobilized by a number of social actors (local residents, elected officials, associations, journalists and mediators, etc.). We use a variety of tools: exploratory interviews with the various stakeholders (industrialists, elected representatives, associations, journalists); a survey of the opinions and representations of deep geothermal energy in urban and rural areas; analysis of media discourse (press, television, radio, blogs, press releases from local and regional authorities); setting up comprehensive interviews and focus groups with local residents.
The questionnaire survey, carried out on nearly 900 people using the quota method, allowed us to gather the opinion of a wider and more diversified population than the 2015 public consultations. Thus, the first analyses offer results that contrast with citizen contributions from 2015, notably in the way people assess induced risks and information provided by the various stakeholders. These results will be refined in the coming months and will serve as a resource for the interviews and focus groups we intend to conduct in the fall of 2017 and the spring of 2018.
REFERENCES
Chavot P., Masseran A., Serrano Y.: Information and public consultation exercises concerning geothermal projects. “The Strasbourg case”. European Geothermal Congress 2016, Sep, Strasbourg, France (2016).
Chavot, P., Masseran, A., Zoungrana, J.: Penser l’énergie localement ? Le cas de la géothermie profonde dans l’Eurométropole de Strasbourg, Proceedings, Congrès AFSP, Montpellier, France (2017).
Meller et al.: Acceptability of geothermal installations: A geoethical concept for GeoLaB, DOI: 10.1016/j.geothermics.2017.07.008 (2017).