A main challenge in developing deep geothermal projects is the high upfront cost of drilling the first well, coupled with a great uncertainity at this early stage of exploration, when relatively little is known about the subsurface conditions. That's why geothermal projects are considered as risky, and without proper grants or insurance schemes it is hard to find investors.

Assessing geological risks and establishing a risk mitigation scheme is part of DARLINGe project's activities and it has a strong collaboraton with the recently started GEORISK project  http://www.egec.org/georisk-project/ which aims to develop financial schemes mitigate the impact of the resource risk by spreading it in such a manner that project developers can accept their fair share of it. The GEORISK project works to establish such risk insurance all over Europe and in some key target third countries to cover the exploration phase and the first drilling.

GEORISK project held a webinar on its first results on February 26, where strong DARLINGe inputs into a risk register were also preseted.