In the foothills of the Alps in southern Germany, a clearing in the evergreen forest presents a strange tableau. The derricks of two drilling rigs jut toward the gray winter sky. Scattered around them are stainless steel tanks, stacks of pipe and toothy attachments for boring into the ground below.
This drilling operation, near Geretsried outside Munich, is using people and equipment from the oil and gas industry, but it aims to harvest heat, not fossil fuels.
Tapping into geothermal energy from deep in the earth is not new, but this effort…
