Risk insurance fund for geothermal energy projects in selected european countries – operational and financial simulation

The insurance funds belong to efficient measures mitigating risks in geothermal projects, including resource risk. They already exist in some European countries, e.g., France, the Netherlands, Turkey. Recently, the proposals of establishing such funds were elaborated for three countries: Greece, Hungary, and Poland within the framework of the EU-funded project “Developing geothermal and renewable energy projects by mitigating their risks”, GEORISK (www.georisk-project.eu). A 10 year operational and financial simulation of the proposed public insurance funds was conducted to prove their sustainability in each of three listed states. It started with the determination of the country-specific premises. The numbers of projects in the next 10 years possible to be covered by funds were assumed by the authors on the bases of realistic estimations. The initial capital, the fixed costs, the costs of the project evaluation, the premium fees paid by the investors, the payment for the unsuccessful projects altogether were taken into account. The first draft simulation was done with the exact Hungarian assumptions and inputs of fixed costs and also with average project data, thus making it appropriate to perform sensitivity analyses on: insurance premiums, success rates and the risk coverages. Then, complete simulations were made for three listed countries. The results of the simulation show that a resource risk insurance fund can be a sustainable and an effective measure to support geothermal energy sector development. During the planning of a new fund, it is important to make use of long experiences both of the former and existing funds.