DOE study finds US geothermal electricity generation could increase > 26-fold by 2050
31 May 2019
The US Department of Energy released an analysis suggesting that US geothermal electricity generation could increase more than 26-fold from today—reaching 60 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity by 2050.
In addition to describing electricity-generation opportunities, the GeoVision analysis also shows how geothermal can enhance heating and cooling solutions for American residential and commercial consumers through direct-use and heat-pump technologies.
The GeoVision analysis represents a multiyear collaboration among industry, academia, the National Laboratories, and federal agencies to evaluate the potential for different geothermal resources. The effort assessed opportunities to expand nationwide geothermal energy deployment through 2050 by improving technologies, reducing costs, and addressing project development barriers such as long permitting timelines.
In the electric sector, under business as usual, geothermal generation capacity will grow to 6 GW by 2050. By accelerating geothermal development timelines, geothermal capacity could more than double from business as usual, to 13 GW. Geothermal capacity could increase even further—to 60 GW—by combining faster development timelines with technology improvements.
In the non-electric sector, technology improvements could enable more than 17,500 geothermal district-heating installations nationwide, and 28 million US households could realize cost-effective heating and cooling solutions through the use of geothermal heat pumps.
The analysis also examined economic benefits to the US geothermal industry; investigated opportunities for desalination, mineral recovery, and hybridization with other energy technologies for greater efficiencies and lower costs; and quantified potential environmental impacts of increased geothermal deployment.
In addition to summarizing opportunities for geothermal energy in the United States, the GeoVision analysis includes a roadmap of actionable items for stakeholders to reduce technology costs and speed up project-development timelines.
NREL's map of geothermal potential of the USA shows next to nothing east of the Mississippi and really nothing east of Colorado. How geothermal power generation could reach 60 GW when current and planned generation is under 3 GW is a question which should be put to the GeoVision authors. If this report is vaporware rather than being based on solid technical developments, they should be asked to find employment elsewhere instead of deceiving the public on the taxpayer's dime.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 31 May 2019 at 02:44 AM