USA: The widespread deployment of ground-source heat pumps in the USA would relieve the stress on the grid, lower energy costs and substantially reduce CO2 emissions, a new study claims.
A modelling analysis led by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) takes a detailed look at how geothermal energy, along with building envelope improvements in single-family homes, could relieve the electric power system and reduce carbon emissions within the next few decades.
The results were obtained from a simulation model of the mass deployment of geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) in commercial and residential buildings from 2022 through 2050.
ORNL’s Xiaobing Liu, who served as the primary researcher on the study, said that mass GHP deployment in both commercial and residential buildings, coupled with building envelope improvements in single-family homes, can reduce more than 7,000 million tonnes of carbon emissions through 2050, with more than 3,000 million tonnes of reduction coming from the electric sector and the remaining coming from the replacement of natural gas for heating in the building sector.
Simulations
ORNL buildings and electrification researchers worked with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to build co-simulations of the US building stock and the electric power systems using ORNL’s GHP system simulation tool and building data available in NREL’s energy use load profiles.
This first-of-its-kind study simulates the energy use impacts if GHPs were deployed into 68% of existing and new building floor space across the contiguous United States. Researchers studied three scenarios: continuing to operate the grid as it is today; reaching 95% grid emissions reductions by 2035 and 100% clean electricity by 2050; and expanding grid decarbonisation to include the electrification of wide portions of the economy, including building heating. The analysis team modelled each of these three scenarios with and without mass GHP deployment coupled with building envelope improvements in single-family homes.
“The results were developed using the current capability of existing tools and data,” said Xiaobing Liu. “We combined NREL’s Regional Energy Deployment System model and PLEXOS, a commercial software for more detailed simulation of electric power systems, to perform multiyear simulations of US electric power systems in different scenarios in contrasting regions, in different seasons and during times of peak and low energy demand.”
Regional variations
Although savings in electricity demand and reduction in carbon emissions were realised in almost all regions of the country, the simulations indicated that in cold climates, GHPs are more effective at reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption compared with conventional HVAC systems as the result of displacing natural gas furnaces and reducing the use of electric heaters. In warmer climates, such as in the south and other milder climate zones, GHPs generate higher electricity savings. Peak electric demand reduction is also highest in densely populated areas of the south.
“We showed that a mass deployment of GHPs coupled with building envelope improvements can reduce the generation and capacity needs of the US electric power system by up to 11% and 13%, respectively, in 2050,” Liu said. “The peak electric demand in some hot climate zones can also be reduced up to 28%, which will ease grid operations.”
These percentages translate into saving approximately 600TWh of electricity in 2050 while eliminating more than 5,000 billion Mj of fossil fuels, which is equivalent to 5% of the primary energy consumed in the United States in 2022, including natural gas, heating oil and propane.
Liu maintains that if…
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