The Russian-Ukrainian war conflict that broke out in 2022 significantly reassessed the role of locally available, exploitable and storable energy in Europe. In this context, the South Transdanubia Regional Innovation Agency provided expert support to József Ribányi, then head of the Hungarian National Delegation to the European Committee of the Regions, for the development of his own-initiative opinion entitled “Localising energy production: the role of geothermal energy”.
The position paper was a significant success, as it was adopted unanimously, without any votes against or abstentions, at the plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions in April 2024. Nothing proves the relevance of this document better than the fact that its main elements were used by the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the Presidency’s final conclusions.
Based on our work related to geothermal energy, the Croatian “Energy institute HRVOJE POŽAR” invited the Agency to participate in the GreetGeo application submitted under the Interregional Innovation Investment Instrument (I3 Instrument) in February 2024. The application was granted in July 2024 and started on 1 November 2024. The project focuses on three professional topics related to shallow and deep geothermal solutions:
- Industry, domain, value-chain research & analysis, work-programme validation,
- Interregional value-chains and regional policy development, communication and dissemination,
- De-risking and increasing innovative geothermal investment with a holistic approach.
Although the project is currently still in the phase of situation analysis and strengthening the South-Transdanubian connections, in 2026 the task will be to prepare specific local geothermal investments.
In view of the above, we were pleased to participate in the project launch meeting of the Bóly City Government’s new third production well to serve its increased needs. The opening ceremony of the project „Development of Bóly with geothermal energy”, which is part of the SM06-GEO-006 „Geothermal energy sources for district and urban heating” programme, part II of the Swiss-Hungarian Cooperation Programme, that took place on 24 March 2025. Thermal water is used for heating and hot water production in Bóly. In recent years, a smaller and a larger well have provided the supply, but it became necessary to create a new one with the same capacity as the existing production well. Complete energy security is provided if the city also has a reserve well, which is currently being developed. Thus, in the future, if any of them fails, uninterrupted supply is ensured. Another reason for drilling the new thermal well is that the demand for environmentally friendly energy is growing – in the industrial park, those businesses that have not used the energy provided by thermal water so far have already indicated that they would like to connect to the network. The investment in Bóly therefore fits well with the GreetGEO project financed by the I3 Instrument, and its implementation can therefore provide many lessons.
The GreetGEO project is financed by the European Union.
