To achieve the Dutch policy objective to reduce carbon emissions by 49% in 2030, a shift from fossil towards renewable energy resources is required. Within the Netherlands, Geothermal Energy is a proven renewable energy resource, but currently only with a limited number of operating installations, which are located in areas of good subsurface data coverage. However, subsurface data coverage is poor in roughly half of the country, including major residential and industrial areas with high heat demand. Improving the data coverage in these areas would increase the benefit-risk ratio of geothermal projects, which would greatly support the development of these projects. To address these data shortcomings, EBN B.V. and TNO-AGE have received funding from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate to embark on a geothermal data acquisition, which includes reprocessing of vintage data as well as the acquisition of new, long-offset 2D seismic to improve the subsurface imaging and allow reliable interpretation to a depth of at least 6 km and all data will be made public. This is the so-called “SCAN project”. This paper will introduce the SCAN project and give an overview of the geophysical work program to date, discuss results achieved by October 2020 and outline further plans.
Note: This paper was accepted into the Technical Program but was not presented at the 2020 SEG Annual Meeting.
