Management of the groundwater resource beneath the city of Ljubljana

Ljubljana is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It has been developed in the vicinity of the Sava River on an alluvial plain that for more than a century has been used as a local resource for drinking water. Thanks to the natural hydrogeological conditions and protection measures, the groundwater beneath the city is still the city's main resource of drinking water. The city's growing energy demands initiated the search for new alternative sources of energy which could contribute to the reduction of CO2 and other health hazardous emissions. In this respect, the ground beneath the city, the groundwater especially, offers favorable conditions for the implementation of ground-source heat pump systems, which represent one of the key technologies of renewable energy for heating and cooling. The city's future challenges regarding the subsurface will be related to the sustainable and efficient use of all resources and the avoidance of conflicts in their mutual use, in which drinking water resources will be of paramount concern.