Irish company TerraThermo Ltd and alfa8 Colab Ltd (alfa8) have announced the signing of an Investment Agreement to financially support the development of Projekt Thermo, a 12MW deep geothermal power plant project in Germany.

The investment made by alfa8 covers the provision of up to EUR€1mn in working capital to advance Projekt Thermo to a financial close, and up to EUR€32.5mn in future financings for the project.

TerraThermo will use the working capital to undertake technical and financial due diligence on the project, with the intention of reaching financial close in Q4 2024/Q1 2025. The company is also in discussions with the European Investment Bank EIB for a potential parallel investment to fund up to EUR€32.5mn for the project, in addition to the investment already provided by alfa8.

The first stage of Projekt Thermo is to develop a 12MW ‘Hot Dry Rock’ geothermal power plant in Lower Saxony, Germany, marking the first of many deep geothermal generation and energy storage projects to be developed by TerraThermal in Europe.

John Ashbridge, CEO of TerraThermo, is “extremely pleased” to welcome alfa8 as an investor in the project, given the company’s “focus on first-of-a-kind technology and our matching visions and expectations of what can be achieved in the geothermal energy industry in the coming years.”

Erin Glen, COO of alfa8, commented, “TerraThermo is focused on delivering a first-of-a-kind, deep hot dry rock geothermal project in Europe. We are excited to team up with them to accelerate the development of geothermal technology in Europe. At alfa8, we are on a mission to deploy catalytic capital into the energy transition and promising first-of-its-kind technologies that can accelerate the path to net-zero.”