Pakistan Daily Times

A major new project is under way in Paris to provide ecologically clean heating for an entire district by extracting piping hot water from nearly two kilometres (1.2 miles) under the earth.

In a revival of the French capital’s geothermal potential, drilling has just begun in the north of the city on a desolate building site sandwiched between the traffic-clogged inner ring road and the Saint-Denis canal.

“In Paris we’re trying to adopt a strategy in which France is largely behind other European countries, because we’ve under-invested in renewable energies,” said Denis Baupin, a Paris deputy mayor. At the construction site, a 36-metre (120-foot) yellow mast rises above a dense cluster of machinery that is usually used to drill for oil. Here the drilling is not for black gold but for hot water.

“The lower you go, the hotter the water,” said Michel Galas of CPCU, the urban heating company doing the work, as he stood next to a shaft that when finished will delve 1.7 kilometres into the earth.

At that depth lies a geological stratum called the Dogger from which water, heated naturally to 57 degrees Celsius (135 Fahrenheit), will be sucked up to the surface, where it will be used to heat another stock of water.

This will be pumped to apartment blocks to heat radiators and provide hot water.

“It’s energy that is 100 percent renewable,” said Galas.

The scheme will heat around 12,000 apartments and other buildings due to be built by 2011 in a new residential area in the city’s 19th district. The project will cost 31 million euros (40 million dollars), five million euros of which will come from the state environment agency and the regional council.

The use of this natural energy source will prevent 14,000 tonnes a year of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide being pumped into the capital’s already polluted air.

That is roughly the same amount of CO2 that an average car would belch out if taken on a 470,000-kilometre trip, which is longer than the distance from the Earth to the moon. It will also provide 54 percent of the new area’s energy needs.

Galas said there were around three dozen sites using geothermal energy in the greater Paris region, nearly all dating from the 1970s and 80s.