| Abstract |
While the technology has existed since the late 1940s, geothermal heat pumps, also known as ground-source heat pumps and GeoExchange®, currently account for less than two percent of the total North American heating and cooling market. With support from the United States Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Program through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Bob Lawrence & Associates, Inc. and the California Geothermal Energy Collaborative will gather and analyze manufacturing and installation costs and geological and geographic data to assess the costs and economic, environmental, and social benefits resulting from three varying scenarios of nationwide geothermal heat pump deployment. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), buildings annually account for almost half (48 percent) of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. Residential, commercial, and industrial building operations consume 76 percent of total U.S. electricity generation. Weather-related energy use, in the form of heating, cooling, and ventilation, accounted for more than 40 percent of all delivered energy use in residential and commercial buildings in 20061. And trends show that the building sector is growing faster than any other energy-use sector. The building sector is one of the best areas in which to economically reduce energy consumption and limit GHG emissions. GHPs currently account for about 1.54 percent of the North American heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) market. In 2008, total shipments of geothermal heat pumps were up more than 40 percent to 121,243 units; capacity shipped rose almost 43 percent to 416,105 tons2. Figure 1 shows geothermal heat pump shipments from 1994 (when EIA first began surveying the GHP industry) through 2008. No survey was conducted in 2001. The total market for U.S. GHPs in 2008, including equipment and installation cost (not reduced by government or other incentives3, was estimated at $3.7 billion dollars. The GHP market is expected to triple in value by 20134. Since geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) use the constant temperature of the earth, they are among the most efficient heating and cooling technologies currently available5. GHPs move heat between buildings and the earth three to five times more efficiently than other HVAC systems. According to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) study6 which examined the barriers to increased GHP use in the United States, although the U.S. was once the world leader in GHP technology and market development, Europe now absorbs two to three times the number of GHP units per year as the U.S. Market growth rates in Europe, China, South Korea, and Canada exceed those in the United States. While the U.S. has the greatest number of GHPs installed, on a per capita basis it falls behind many European countries. The ORNL study concluded that: • “If the federal government set a goal for the U.S. buildings sector to use no more nonrenewable primary energy in 2030 than it did in 2008…it is estimated that 35 to 40 percent of this goal, or a savings of 3.4 to 3.9 quads7 annually, could be achieved through aggressive deployment of GHPs.” • GHPs could avoid the need to build 91 to 105 GW of electricity generation capacity, or 42 to 48 percent of the 218 GW of net new capacity additions projected to be needed nationwide by 2030. |