Improving the Use of Energy in Buildings

Geothermal

Geothermal energy is the heat of the Earth, which can be tapped into to produce electricity in power plants, and to use its warm water for industry, agriculture, bathing and cleansing. Although in use worldwide, its potential as an energy source is not fully utilised, thus geothermal offers a real option in future environmentally-friendly energy supply.

Ground Source Heat pumps
When the sun shines on the ground its heat energy is absorbed. Ground source heat pumps extract this energy, to use for space heating. So strictly speaking, the energy source that is used for ground source heat pumps is the sun and not the heat from the earth.

In the UK, the constant ground source heat temperature is around 12ºC and can be utilised to heat and cool buildings. Pipe is buried underground in a trench or in a vertical well and water is pumped through it and heated by the underground energy. A heat pump can extract the ground’s heat and transfer it into a building for space and water heating, or it can remove heat from a building and deposit it into the ground to cool the building during hot weather.

Heat Pumps do need some power to operate. However for 1 unit of energy they use they generate 4 units of power. The energy generated by a ground source heat pump can be considered 100% renewable if the power to operate the pump comes from solar electric panels or a wind turbine for example.