| Title | EGC 2016 Country Update Report Summary |
|---|---|
| Authors | Antics, M; Bertani, R; Sanner, B |
| Year | 2016 |
| Conference | European Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | geothermal potential, geothermal power, geothermal direct use, geothermal heat pumps, policy, country update |
| Abstract | The European status of geothermal energy use by the year 2015 is presented. The situation varies from country to country according to the geothermal technology that best suits the available natural resource. The opportunities range from power generation from high enthalpy resources over direct use of hydrothermal resources in sedimentary basins to shallow geothermal applications available everywhere, and mostly harnessed by ground source heat pump installations. Geothermal power generation in Europe currently stands at about 2050 MWel installed capacity. The installed capacity of geothermal heating from medium to low temperature sources exceeds 9200 MWth, of which about 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 impressing, and a capacity of at least 22’900 MWth was achieved by the end of 2015, distributed over more than 1.7 Mio GSHP installations. This year, 33 reports were submitted. It is apparent that the overall growth since the reporting for WGC 2015 is only gradual, but there are interesting individual developments to be noticed. In general, the statistical approach and classification is better defined now, and in some cases this results in decrease in one category and increase in others. For the first time tables for underground thermal energy storage (UTES) were devised and sent to selected countries, as an experiment; you can see the result in the reports from the Netherlands and Sweden. |