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PROGRESS IN GERMANY
source: www.panda.org/climate
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There are currently around 70,000 to 80,000 heating systems in Germany employing heat pumps to utilise shallow geothermal heat for space heating purposes.- About 4% of all new houses built in Germany employ such a system. Because electricity is required to operate the heat pumps, this type of heating system only has a very small ecological advantage over the classical gas heating system.
- The well known thermal waters of the North German Plain, the South German molasses basin between the Danube and the Alps, the Swabian Alb and the Upper Rhine Valley have temperatures between 40 C to around 100 C. Development of these resources could provide up to 29% of Germany’s heat requirements*.
- The use of underground heat sources was limited exclusively to heating purposes until 2003. The sum capacity of systems installed for this purpose currently totals about 85 MWth*.
Electricity was generated from geothermal heat for the first time in November 2003: - the geothermal co-generation power station in Neustadt-Glewe produces 210 kW of electricity.
- The electricity generating potential of geothermal energy is regarded as very large. The BMU study**, for instance, comes to the conclusion that around 290 TWh electricity could be geothermally generated annually.
* Staiß (2003): Jahrbuch Erneuerbare Energien 02/03.
**BMU (2002): Erneuerbare Energien und Nachhaltige Entwicklung.
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