Geothermal energy is, among renewables, the most efficient and reliable source, both because of its high temperatures and because it is constantly active h24. Yet Italy, despite being among the first countries in the world to exploit geothermal energy, today uses it to cover less than 3% of its energy needs. So much so that the “RePoweEU” program funded by the European Union has among its goals to triple the use of this source by 2030. A goal that would be easily achievable by setting up offshore geothermal plants around the Aeolian archipelago, where for years experts have been studying “Marsili”, Europe's largest undersea volcano that, according to some calculations, could generate the production of about 4 TWh of energy per year. In addition, according to some recent studies, the entire submarine area around the Aeolian Islands and that of the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, extending about 3 thousand square kilometers in total, have a multiplicity of volcanic sources for a theoretical geothermal potential of 30 MWe per square kilometer. Thus, in a currently entirely theoretical line, by exploiting with modern technologies all the sources present on these seabeds, an annual production of 630 TWh per year could be reached, capable of satisfying the needs of 156 million households, that is, almost the total of those in Europe, which are about 200 million.
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