Abstract
Geothermal heating and cooling from a depth of 10–3′500 meters have considerable decarbonization potential but understudied life-cycle environmental impacts. We quantified the life-cycle impacts of six heating and cooling configurations from shallow to medium-depth geothermal wells with connected, decentralized heat pumps and district heating and cooling in the State of Geneva. Shallower systems with connected heat pumps have better environmental performance than systems with district heating, whereas shallow systems with free cooling perform best for cooling. These environmental impacts are lower than those of fossil fuels, except for mineral resource scarcity, especially with decentralized heat pumps and free cooling.
Highlights
Decarbonization efforts need to include heating and cooling in the building sector, as it represented 40% of the total energy demand in the European Union in 2015 (European Commission, 2018)
Thanks to Geneva’s electricity mix, which is based on hydropower, the environ mental impacts are sufficiently low during the operation phase, allowing the increase in production to reduce the impacts per MWh of geothermal heat
Like other types of low-carbon technologies for decarbonization (Sovacool et al, 2020), geothermal heating and cooling combined with a renewable electricity mix poses a challenge concerning the impacts on mineral resource scarcity, which are higher than those of fossil fuel-based systems
Summary
Decarbonization efforts need to include heating and cooling in the building sector, as it represented 40% of the total energy demand in the European Union in 2015 (European Commission, 2018). The State of Geneva in Switzerland adopted an objective to reduce its CO2 emissions in its building sector by 45% in 2030, as compared to 2012 (Republique et Canton de Geneve, 2018), in line with its ambition to reduce its green house gas emissions by 60% in 2030, as compared to 1990 (Republique et canton de Geneve, 2019). These objectives have driven increased interest in renewable energy in buildings, including geothermal heating and cooling. Depending on the geothermal extraction temperature and the existence of other heat sources (Sayegh et al, 2018), the networks could be configured in a traditional centralized or decentralized manner (Molyneaux et al, 2010)
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