EGS Energy Limited and the Eden Project on Friday unveiled plans for a £20 million engineered geothermal system (EGS) power plant on Eden’s site at Bodelva, near St Austell, and its all thanks to an old quarry near Penryn.

Eden’s partnership with EGS Energy, a privately-owned company based in Penzance, is to establish a plant to supply Eden with the electricity and heat to power its site, plus as many as 4,000 households. Any excess power could go on to the National Grid.

The meeting heard how technical expertise developed at the Hot Rocks geothermal plant at Rosemanowes Quarry near Penryn, from the 1970s to 1991 has been refined in France and Germany. This expertise is now ready to be tried and deployed at Eden in what could be the UK's first EGS plant providing electricity and heat.

An audience of around 150, including leading members of Eden’s Neighbours’ Forum, heard Eden chief executive Tim Smit describe how the earlier geothermal research project at Rosemanowes Hot Rocks project was held up as the “Holy Grail of renewable energy”.

The baseline scientific understanding and engineering skills achieved there had made the Eden EGS plant project possible, and Eden had welcomed the approach of experts from EGS Energy involved in developing further the technology.

Details of the proposal were outlined by the leading geophysicist Roy Baria, EGS Energy's technical director, who was the deputy director of the Rosemanowes project before moving to lead the EU geothermal programme at Soultz in France in 1990.

He said that Cornwall had the best potential to develop geothermal energy in the UK.

Tim German, head of the Low Carbon Cornwall Unit, said that Cornwall had the best resources in the UK to develop geothermal power: “We have to consider our own self-sufficiency. Projects like this fit in to the new low carbon Cornwall. I think it is a fantastic project for Cornwall.”