40 years of Dogger aquifer management in Ile-de-France, Paris Basin, France

Geothermal energy has been supplying heat to district networks in the Paris Basin for more than 40 years. The most serious difficulties have been corrosion and scaling related problems that occurred in many geothermal loops in the mid-1980s. The main target of all exploration and exploitation projects has been the Dogger aquifer. Most of the operating facilities use the “doublet” technology which consists of a closed loop with one production well and one injection well. Injection of the cooled brines leads to the progressive exhaustion of the resource at the local doublet scale. Consequently, most of the research effort has been focused on quantifying the temporal evolution of the cooling, and to forecast the lifetimes of doublets and the occurrence of the “thermal breakthrough”. At the turn of the 21st century, there was a revival of geothermal energy development in France and new projects are presently being considered. The 40 years of experience in geothermal exploitation of the Paris basin constitutes a firm basis upon which to devise a sustainable regional management approach for the geothermal resource. Several governmental policies seek to promote further geothermal development of the Dogger aquifer with structures in place to facilitate technical studies.