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Geothermal plants have been producing power in Italy for more than a century. Since local opposition to geothermal development is often fuelled by incomplete and inaccurate environmental information, this paper provides a comprehensive description of the effect of geothermal development on the air, water and soil and investigates potential disturbance from noise, subsidence, and seismicity, as well as the visual impact on the local area. After discussing the risks associated with the geothermal development and the reference data, the paper describes the wide-reaching environmental monitoring and mitigation measures in Italy that have maintained impact values below the thresholds defined by European and Italian regulation. The social benefits for areas where geothermal energy is developed are also described, with the aid of case studies highlighting that citizens do not feel that they are sufficiently informed to have a voice in the innovation process. A regular and comprehensive review of the geothermal environmental and safety regime, as the one carried out in this paper, and a mutual exchange of knowledge between the different stakeholders should be strongly encouraged.

We exploit the concept of the geothermal favourability, widely used for hydrothermal and EGS systems, to present an innovative methodology for assessing geopressured-geothermal resources occurring in terrigenous units in sedimentary basin plays. Geopressured-geothermal systems are an unconventional resource for power trigeneration exploiting three forms of energy from hydrocarbons, hydrothermal fluids, and well-head overpressure. This paper is intended to be a practical analytical framework for the systematic integration of the relevant data required to assess geopressured-geothermal resources. For this purpose, innovative parameters were also implemented in the methodology. The final result is the favourability map for identifying prospective areas to be further investigated for the appraisal of the geopressured-geothermal potential. We applied our methodology to the foredeep-foreland domains of the Apennines thrust belt in the Abruzzo region (central Italy). We analysed hundreds of deep hydrocarbon wells in order to create 3D geological and thermo-fluid dynamic models at a regional scale as well as to obtain information on the pressure regimes and on the chemistry of the system. The final favourability map for the Abruzzo case study is a first attempt at ranking these kinds of unconventional geothermal resources in a region that has been historically explored and exploited mostly for hydrocarbons.

This paper describes a data integration tool used to identify potentially undiscovered geothermal resources in the island of Sicily. The factors facilitating the recovery of exploitable geothermal energy were defined, and their spatial correlation established by Geographic Information System (GIS) models.By prioritizing favourable conditions using an Index Overly method, "favourability" maps of Sicily were obtained. The maps considered both geological and economic aspects, and energy recovery was considered for current technologies. Our approach and maps are useful for developing and planning local or national energy policies including geothermal energy.