Five schemes across Scotland have been awarded funding to investigate how thermal energy can be used to heat properties.

A total of £234,025 has been given to projects targeting sites in Fife, West Lothian, North Lanarkshire and Aberdeenshire.

The projects will explore the technical feasibility, economic viability and environmental sustainability of the technology.

The funding was made possible through the Scottish Government's Geothermal Energy Challenge Fund, supported by the Low Carbon Infrastructure Fund.

They are the first support for geothermal projects in Scotland following a 2012-2013 study which identified significant potential for geothermal heat as a renewable heat source.

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An estimated £2.6 billion a year is spent on heating by households and businesses.

The five project sites are:

• Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre: to conduct a feasibility study for the installation of a deep geothermal single well system to provide heat to the new Centre and associated buildings.

• Guardbridge, Fife: to explore the geothermal potential under a brownfield site to provide heat to on-site industries and the local community.

• Polkemmet, West Lothian: to establish the feasibility of geothermal heat from mineworkings, which will heat proposed new social housing in the area.

• Hartwood, North Lanarkshire: to develop a fully operational minewater geothermal district heating system which could act as an exemplar of how to transform farm economics and transfer benefits to local communities.

• Hill of Banchory, Aberdeenshire: to explore the viability of adding geothermal energy from hot dry and hot wet rocks to the existing renewable heat network that is already serving the local communities.

Energy Minister Fergus Ewing, said: "As set out in the Heat Policy Statement published last week, heat is estimated to account for over half of Scotland’s total energy use and is responsible for nearly half of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions, so it makes sense that we explore and grow technologies such as geothermal energy."

(LM)