Preventing human-induced seismicity to fight climate change

Climate change poses an imminent threat to our civilization. Prominent new technologies to fight climate change involve the earth’s underground renewable and sustainable energy resources and underground storage. However, all these technologies depend on the injection of fluids into the earth’s crust, which, in turn, can cause significant earthquakes. INJECT will solve this problem on the basis of a new, ground-breaking scientific method that will prevent human-induced seismicity and will maximize energy production and storage from renewable and sustainable natural resources.

INJECT’s interdisciplinary methodology is based on an astute scientific programme that brings knowledge far beyond the current state of the art. It brings control theory and mathematics to the heart of this new challenging problem. Based on cutting-edge theoretical developments, robust controllers and observers will be designed to optimally adjust fluid injection rates, prevent induced seismic events over large regions and optimize energy production and storage. The controllers will be derived using rigorous mathematical proofs and will take account of the complexity, the heterogeneities and the various uncertainties of the underlying physical processes. INJECT’s innovative theoretical methods will be thoroughly tested through novel numerical models and original experiments. High-fidelity numerical models will account for poro-elasto-dynamics, Coulomb friction, multiphysics and reduced-order modeling, and will outpace any existing algorithms in fault mechanics, both in terms of speed and accuracy. The experimental plan will build on a novel laboratory-scale demonstrator and hybrid lab-computer testing that will be designed and constructed to experimentally validate INJECT’s new concepts. Only then will it be possible to apply INJECT’s methodology in practice and unlock the significant energy potential of the Earth, reduce carbon emissions and help save our civilization.