Four geothermal companies have been forced to return Federal Government funding  due to inability to attract matching private sector funds for the grants.

 

The companies, Torrens Energy, Green Rock Energy, Greenearth Energy and Hot Rock, made a combined statement to the ASX that they are terminating their funding agreements under the Geothermal Drilling Program and returning grants already received.

 

Projects that had won the funding included a $16 million  project of Green Rock Energy to provide power to the University of Western Australia from hot aquifers under the campus.  Torrens Energy was progressing its geothermal site at Parachilna  in South Australia with assistance from the $7 million grant,  while Greenearth Energy received funding for its Victorian geothermal energy project, the Geelong Geothermal Power Project.  The funding for Hot Rock was to support a drill and test program at the Koroit Hot Sedimentary Aquifer Geothermal Project in the Otway Basin in southwest Victoria.

 

The  $26 million of funds returned by the companies will increase the Federal Government’s new Emerging Renewables program, taking its total funding to $126 million. The new program was opened yesterday by the Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, who said that at least one third of the funding would be available to geothermal projects.