Earth energy reaches 12,000 MW of thermal energy
KLAMATH FALLS, Oregon, US,
2004-11-03
Refocus Weekly
Present worldwide installed capacity of earth energy systems has reached 12,000 MW of thermal energy according to an international analysis, and the annual energy use is 72,000 TJ (20,000 GWh) from a total of 1.1 million installations, although the report notes that data are incomplete.
Five of the top countries in the world for earth energy installations provide
17,810 GWh a year of green heat, according to the analysis. The 942,400
installations in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and the United States
account for 10,200 MW of thermal equivalent, with two-thirds of the
installations in the U.S. Sweden is in second place with 230,000 installations,
46,400 in Germany, 36,000 in Canada and 30,000 in Switzerland.
Earth energy systems, also called ground-source or geothermal heat pumps, use
the relatively constant temperature of the earth to provide space heating and
cooling, as well as water heating, for residential and commercial buildings.
They are “one of the fastest-growing applications of renewable energy in the
world, with annual increases of 10% in about 30 countries over the past ten
years,” it explains.
“While installations of these systems have been quietly growing, there has
been limited recognition that they make a contribution to the adoption of
renewable energy,” the report notes. “This is partly because they are purely
associated with the provision of heating and cooling and, therefore, do not
figure in renewable electricity considerations.”
Other factors include uncertainty over the sustainability of energy from the
ground, and a widespread notion (“based on air source heat pumps”) that
there is no net gain in energy output and that earth energy systems are an
energy efficiency technology. The paper argues that current efficiencies of
ground-coupled systems exceed 140%, with 70% of the final energy coming from the
ground.
Assuming annual energy use of 65,000 TJ (18,000 GWh) and using power generation
with fuel oil at 30% efficiency, the annual savings are 35.8 million barrels of
oil or 5.4 million TOE, it estimates, for a saving of 16 megatonne of CO2. The
figures would double if the units are used for cooling, too.
An earth energy system can reduce overall CO2 emissions by 50% compared to
conventional space heating technologies based on fossil fuels and, “with the
use of renewable-derived electricity, there need be no CO2 emissions associated
with the provision of heating (and cooling) of a building,” it notes. “There
are suggestions that, in order to maximize the delivery of renewable energy, it
makes economic sense to couple expensive renewable electricity to ground-coupled
heat pumps as quickly as possible.”
The analysis was performed by the Oregon Institute of Technology in the US, the
Institute of Applied Geosciences at Justus-Liebig University in Germany, the
Institute of Geophysics in Switzerland, GeoScience in England and Lund
University of Technology in Sweden.
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