Can Europe Drill Its Way to Energy Independence?
In the wooded hills south of Munich, a team is drilling into the Earth. Not looking for oil. Not chasing gas. Just heat.
They are going down eight kilometers, through layers of cold stone, to find rock hot enough to drive a new kind of power plant. No volcano needed. No rare reservoir of boiling water. Just heat and time and pressure.
The project belongs to Eavor, a Canadian startup that believes geothermal energy can be scaled anywhere. If it works, it could give Europe something it has long wanted but never quite achieved. Energy independence. From Russia. From gas. From the weather.
The company’s system is sealed off from the Earth around it. It runs a closed loop. Water moves down, picks up heat, and rises again. The pressure differential drives a natural flow called a thermosiphon. No pumps. No combustion. No carbon.
At the surface, the heat moves through a heat exchanger and into a district heating network. In summer, when heating demand drops, the same heat runs a steam turbine. Electricity follows.
The math is not small. Eavor’s plant in Geretsried could heat an entire Bavarian town. The site has already secured more than 130 million euros in public support. First power is expected within the year.
All eyes are on it.
The Hidden Layer
Geothermal is not new. The Romans used it. Iceland lives by it. But in Europe today, it makes up just a fraction of total energy. Most of that is heat. Very little is electricity. The main reason is geological. Conventional geothermal needs water trapped deep below ground. That kind of geology is rare.
Eavor wants to change that. Instead of relying on natural aquifers, it drills for dry hot rock. The system creates its own heat circuit. It works anywhere deep enough. That makes it easier to replicate. It also means the main constraint is no longer the heat source. It is the drill.
Which is where the next wave of startups comes in.
Engineering the Deep
GA Drilling in Slovakia is developing a drill that combines a diamond-tipped bit with plasma pulses. These discharges weaken rock before the bit reaches it. The goal is speed. If they can drill faster, they can drill cheaper. If they drill cheaper, they change the economics of geothermal entirely.
The target is ten kilometers down. At that depth, water reaches supercritical conditions. It becomes both liquid and gas. The energy potential multiplies. In theory, one deep well could generate ten times the power of a standard system.
But for now, the company is starting with more modest depths. It plans to drill a six kilometer well in the Netherlands. Another project may supply a data center. If proven, the technology will be licensed out. Oil companies. Utilities. Anyone who already knows how to work underground.
Which many of these founders do.
Eavor’s leadership came out of the oil and gas sector. So did the team at Canopus Drilling. They are repurposing old extraction techniques for heat instead of hydrocarbons. One method fires steel shot into rock, fracturing it mechanically rather than chemically. It avoids fracking. It triples surface area. It increases flow.
The skills are not new. The purpose is.
Shallow Ground
Not all geothermal has to go deep.
At 250 meters below most of Europe, the temperature is stable year-round. That is enough for a heat pump. Not to make electricity, but to warm and cool homes. Ground-source systems are highly efficient. They match well with radiator infrastructure. They are quiet. They are almost invisible.
A startup in Zurich called Borobotics has built a robotic drill to make these systems cheaper to install. The drill is small. Fast. Autonomous. It can thread into urban basements. It does not need industrial space.
These systems will not electrify the grid. But they will take pressure off it. Which is exactly what Europe’s energy strategy requires.
Policy at Depth
The numbers tell the story. Heating makes up half of the EU’s total energy use. About a third of its emissions. Replacing gas with geothermal is not about novelty. It is about load.
France plans to double geothermal capacity by 2028. The Netherlands wants to triple it by 2030. Germany aims to increase geothermal heat output tenfold within five years.
The incentive structures are also shifting. Germany is paying Eavor 252 euros per megawatt hour of electricity until 2042. That price would not be possible on the open market. But it does something more important. It sets a floor. It signals commitment.
Without that kind of support, geothermal remains a gamble. Drilling is expensive. Returns are uncertain. Risk is front-loaded. Feed-in tariffs and loan guarantees shift those odds.
They worked for wind. They worked for solar. Now they are being tested at depth.
What the Earth Offers
Geothermal energy is not intermittent. It does not sprawl. It does not depend on weather. It is always on. Which is what grids need as solar and wind come to dominate production.
But it comes with friction. Public concern around induced seismicity is real. In 2006, a project in Switzerland caused a series of small earthquakes. It was shut down. The industry has learned from that moment. New systems are sealed. Pressure is controlled. Risk is reduced. But trust is not automatic.
What geothermal offers is not magic. It is heat. Heat that already exists. What the startups offer is not a breakthrough. It is access. The ability to reach and use that heat safely and affordably.
If they succeed, the ground beneath Europe could start pulling its own weight. Not in theory. Not in the future. But now.
Not every energy transition needs to be loud.
Some are buried quietly under our feet.