| Abstract |
The European status of geothermal energy use by the year 2012 is presented. The situation varies from country to country according to the geothermal technology that best suits the available natural resource. The spectrum includes power generation from high enthalpy resources (Iceland, Italy, Greece, Turkey), direct use of hydrothermal resources in sedimentary basins (France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and others). Shallow geothermal is available everywhere and is mostly harnessed by ground source heat pump installations. Geothermal power generation in Europe currently stands at about 1850 MWel installed capacity. The installed capacity of geothermal heating from medium to low temperature sources exceeds 8000 MWth, of which almost half is used in district heating. Concerning shallow geothermal energy (ground source heat pumps – GSHP and Underground Thermal Energy Storage – UTES), the installation growth rate is even more spectacular, and a capacity of at least 17’000 MWth was achieved by the end of 2012, distributed over more than 1.3 Mio GSHP installations. Summing up, geothermal energy scored well in Europe and has an enormous potential. For the heating sector, the deep and shallow energy production combined has meanwhile exceeded even the ambitious target of 15’000 MWth set forth in the Ferrara Declaration for 2010 (table 1 and figure 1; EGEC, 1999). |