Tenerife geothermal survey finds water above 100 °C at 3,000 meters

Spain's first deep geothermal survey in the country's history reached 3,000 meters at Vilaflor, in southern Tenerife, and detected high-pressure fractures and temperatures above 100 °C, signs of a hydrothermal reservoir with electrical and thermal potential, the Ministry for Ecological Transition reported on September 16, 2026.

The well is being drilled by Energía Geotérmica de Tenerife (EGT), a public-private consortium formed by the Cabildo de Tenerife through the Technological Institute for Renewable Energy (ITER) and the Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands (Involcan), the Canary Islands company DISA and Iceland's Reykjavík Geothermal. The ministry said it is the deepest survey in Spain since the 1970s and that it received 14.5 million euros from IDAE through the VIAGEO program, part of 43.2 million euros under the Recovery Plan and Next Generation EU funds. It is the most advanced of nine deep exploration projects across the Canary Islands, spread over Tenerife, La Palma and Gran Canaria, which mobilize more than 100 million euros. The program aims to reduce the economic risk of the exploration phase, the obstacle developers cite for deep geothermal and a bottleneck shared across high-enthalpy markets in Latin America.

The productive capacity of the resource depends on the final size and temperature of the fluid reservoir, parameters that will be determined in the coming months. Europa Press reported that the Secretary of State for Energy, Joan Groizard, said that "the result of these surveys and their progress will be the foundation that allows us to develop that regulatory framework," and that the government will work on "regulation, financing and commitment." Magnus Ásbjörnsson, chief executive of Reykjavík Geothermal, called for caution about the results. Energías Renovables notes that developers see a remuneration framework as necessary to offset exploration risk, with the Azores and Germany as reference points, and estimates savings of more than 130 million euros a year for the Canary Islands electricity system.

The consortium plans a second survey at a different angle on the same plot and a third at another location in Vilaflor. The figure to watch is the characterization of the resource. On that depends whether the Canary Islands move toward firm generation and cut the fossil dependence that its developers put at close to 80% of the archipelago's electricity.

This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.