The European Center for Science, Art and Culture (ECSAC) and the Trieste International Foundation for Science (FIT), in cooperation with the University of Trieste and Unione Geotermica italiana (UGI), are jointly organizing an international conference on Geothermal Energy: status and future in the Adriatic region, to be held from 30th September to 4 th October in Veli Loinj, Croatia. The initiative is supported by the AlterEnergy (Energy Sustainability for Adriatic small Communities) 2011-2015 transborder Project, leaded by Regione Puglia (IT), and by several institutions from the Adriatic Countries (mainly Croatia, Italy, Slovenia).
Geothermal energy is the energy stored in form of heat below the Earth's surface. It is a primary and renewable energy source, continuous, available everywhere and practically inexhaustible, thus it is an environmentally benign solution for the energy challenge of the third millennium. Besides electric power generation, geothermal energy is used today for district heating, as well as for heating and cooling of individual buildings and for a variety of other direct uses, such as agriculture, balneo-therapy, de-icing, industrial application. The Conference would like to be a stimulating environment for ideas, project, experiences, for the development of the geothermal energy sector. Its goal is to provide the scientific, technical, environmental, economic and regulatory framework for the development and sustainable use of the low temperature geothermal resources.
The Countries of the Adriatic Euro-region (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Montenegro and Slovenia) are facing a persistent structural weakness resulting from insufficient energy resources and an increased dependence on energy import; on the other hand, they all need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficiency, sustainable use and development of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), eventually integrated with other local energy resources, are the master tools to address these challenges, as they are clearly recommended by the new directive 2012/27/UE. This Directive calls for a series of national initiatives and measures covering the entire energy chain, focusing particularly on the heat demand for civil and industrial uses. Within the 27 countries of the EU, the heat demand represents almost half of the total energy consumption.
The goal of the conference is to put together in an isolated but attractive environment a number of distinguished experts in the field to illustrate in plenary sessions to an audience of scientists, students and representatives of the institutions and of the interested industrial actors the major achievements and the future perspectives of the field, with a particular emphasis to the possible realizations in the Adriatic region. More specific discussions will be dealt in parallel sessions and/or working group meetings. The ambitious goal of the meeting is to come up with a "white book" of recommendations to the regional institutions on how to optimize the use and integration of the existing resources.
Five major areas of intervention will be dealt with in the workshop, illustrated with case histories, and discussed in dedicated sessions:

1. Geothermal technologies: status and perspectives
2. Low temperature geothermal resource assessment
3. Low temperature geothermal applications
4. Integrated energy systems for heating and cooling
5. Regulations, funding and guidelines

The meeting is open to everybody active or interested in the research, development and sustainable use of geothermal energy.
There will be room in the programme for a number of additional contributed talks and posters, to be selected by the programme committee. When you register, please indicate if you plan to give a contributed talk, and attach a short (maximum 20 lines, about 1700 characters) abstract of your contribution as a PDF file.
There is no registration fee, but participants are invited to register by 16th September.
Secretariat:
- Serena Baldini (European Centre for Science, Art and Culture, Trieste)
- Fabio Fratnik (Trieste International Foundation for Science)
Strada Costiera 11, I 34151 Trieste - ITALY
tel: +39 040 2240216 - mobile +39 3335680772 - fax: +39 040 224601