Geothermal Energy in the UK: Potential and Challenges

Declaration
Acknowledgement

Abstract
Despite the fact that national and international both sources of geothermal energy sources
could prove beneficial and a successful contribution to climatic change mitigation objectives
of UK, the exploration risks and regime of current electricity market mean that an attractive
proposition is not been currently found for commercial investigation.As considering the
benefits of geothermal energy in terms of more power and heat generation, interest on
development of its project for producing electricity has been increasing continuously from
more than a century. One of such main reason includes potential of geothermal resources
that provides energy and heat at commercial prices, with more reliable base-load of low-
carbon with clean electricity generation.
The United Kingdom has a number of resources based on geothermal energy that raises its
potential for high exploitation. Most of the sources, although are suited for industrial heat use
as well as district heating. In addition to this, for electricity generation for homes and
building, UK is also identified as high potential regions, which in turn, gives an opportunity for
accessing geothermal-based generation in regions like Iceland.
For increasing more potential, UK needs to introduce licensing to companies for exploration
of risk mitigation sources and geothermal heat resources and well. By securing an
international treaty and structure in terms of power purchase agreement which is financially
viable, will aid UK to deliver geothermal generation with 1GW by its HVDC (High Voltage
Direct Current) interconnector.
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List of figures
1. Inside the earth
2. Earth temperature
3. Geothermal Resources
4. World map showing the lithospheric plate boundaries, dots= active volcanoes
5. Hotpots in the world
6. GHP in the heating cycle
7. Open Loop Groundwater Heat pump Doublete
8. Geothermal energy heating and cooling
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9. Geothermal energy data
10. Map of Global Goethermal Energy Power Plant (Think Geothermal energy, 2018).
11. Geothermal energy production
12. Importance of the right terminology
13. Geothermal Resources and Technologies
14. Energy Cost
15. Applications of geothermal energy
List of tables
1. Types of resources/Temperature range
2. 2004 product in the world renewable energy supply
3. Integrated data for expected world geothermal potential and actual production
Table of Contents
Chapter 1.........................................................................................................................6
Introduction....................................................................................................................6
1.1 Background of the study........................................................................................6
Figure 1. inside the earth (Utah Geological survey)................................................7
Figure 1.2 Earth’s temperature....................................................................................8
1.3Structure of the research........................................................................................8
[Old Oak common, TfL, 2019] Figure 1.3...................................................................9
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1.4Geothermal history.................................................................................................10
1.5 Research Hypothesis............................................................................................10
1.6The aims and objectives........................................................................................11
Chapter 2.........................................................................................................................12
Literature Review.........................................................................................................12
2.1 Geothermal energy exploitations........................................................................12
2.1.2 Table 1. Types of resources.............................................................................13
Table 1. Geothermal resources (Source: White and Williams, 1975)..................13
Figure 2. Geothermal Resources (Source: US department energy)....................14
2.1.3 Geothermal system............................................................................................14
Figure 3. World map showing the lithospheric plate boundaries, dots= active
volcanoes (Source: Geological survey)...................................................................15
2.2.4 Geothermal Hotspot on Earth...........................................................................16
Figure 4. Hotpots in the world (IPPCC, 2007)..........................................................16
2.2 Technical potential................................................................................................16
Figure 5. GHP in the heating cycle (Source: Oklahoma state university)..........17
2.3 Technologies and Maintenance..........................................................................17
Figure 6. Geothermal energy heating and cooling (Bertani, 2006)......................18
Figure 7. Open loop Groundwater Heat Pump Doublete (Omer, 2006................19
Table 2. 2004 product in the world renewable energy supply..............................20
Figure 8. Geothermal energy data.............................................................................21
2.3.1 Efficiency of geothermal energy......................................................................21
2.4 Importance of geothermal energy.......................................................................21
Figure 9. importance of the right terminology........................................................22
2.4.1 Geothermal Energy resources and technologies.........................................22
Figure 10. Map of Global Geothermal Energy Power Plant (Think Geothermal
energy, 2018)................................................................................................................23
2.4.2 Geothermal energy surface Manifestation resources..................................23
Figure 11. Geothermal energy production...............................................................25
2.4.3 Geothermal Power Plant (ref)...........................................................................25
2.4.4 types of geothermal power plants...................................................................25
2.4.5 Energy Resource................................................................................................25
2.4.6 Turbine.................................................................................................................25
2.4.6 Magma..................................................................................................................25
2.4.7 Geothermal Water...............................................................................................25
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2.4.8 Steam....................................................................................................................25
Figure 12. Geothermal resources and technologies..............................................26
2.4.8 Discussion on geothermal energy and renewable energy..........................26
2.5 Sustainable and environmental...........................................................................26
2.5.1 Sustainable/ stable.............................................................................................27
2.5.2 Geothermal energy in today’s life....................................................................27
2.6 Economics of Geothermal energy......................................................................27
Figure 13. energy cost................................................................................................28
2.6.1 Advantages..........................................................................................................28
2.6.2 Pollution Free......................................................................................................28
2.6.3 Economic Benefits.............................................................................................29
2.6.4 Disadvantages of Geothermal Energy............................................................29
2.6.5 Transportation....................................................................................................29
2.6.6 Possibility of running out of steam.................................................................29
2.6.7 Toxic Gases.........................................................................................................29
2.7. Geothermal Energy Application.........................................................................29
Figure 14 Application of Geothermal energy(Namarata B, 2015)........................30
2.7.1 Direct Heating.....................................................................................................30
2.7.2 Electricity Generations......................................................................................31
2.7.3 Heat pumps and Space heating.......................................................................32
2.7.4 Greenhouse Heating..........................................................................................32
2.7.5 Agriculture and Aquaculture use.....................................................................33
Chapter 3.......................................................................................................................33
Methodology.................................................................................................................33
3.1 Research Hypothesis............................................................................................34
3.2 Data collection.......................................................................................................35
Research strategy.....................................................................................................35
Chapter 4 Case Studies (Results).............................................................................36
Chapter 5 Discussions................................................................................................37
Chapter 6 Conclusion.................................................................................................38
Recommendation for further research.....................................................................39
7. Appendix...................................................................................................................40
References....................................................................................................................41
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Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
The United Kingdom has set some targets in order to harness the geothermal energy
recourses. The aim of the department energy and climate is to support projects of exploiting
the geothermal energy resources. The department of energy and climate are funding for the
projects up to 2 million pounds. Lastly, some companies have been employed geotechnical
engineers to carry out feasibility studies. Heat and power systems can be considered as well
during the work process (Regions generating mix, 2013).
The potentials of geothermal energy are huge, and it can heat millions of homes within the
United Kingdom (ASTM, 2005). The researchers believe that the source of energy is not
enough for a long-term use. Next, the world will be requiring up to 60% or more energy by
2030. There are potentials for the renewable energy to balance every demand. Untouched
resources can be found and there are potentials to meet the current demand of the United
kingdom’s energy up to 20% (ASTM, 2005).
In addition, at the moment there are no deep geothermal plants in the United Kingdom.
some sites like the Redruth have the potential of supplying over 10 megawatts of electricity
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power and also 550 megawatts of heat energy as well for the whole area. During the whole
year the energy is produced, it is useful energy for the community, and it is produced by 25
wind turbines in the United Kingdom (Arbor, 1919). The wind turbines create electricity
power energy for the country, and it would benefit for long term use.
Because of the issue of draining demonstrated hold of fossil-based vitality energizes
particularly oil and gas, under 60 years is the assessed remaining time of world non-
renewable energy sources extraction if there are not any more gigantic effective finding of oil
and gas demonstrated save sooner rather than later (Knoema, 2017).
The United Kingdom has a few low to medium heat resources and geothermal energy being
exploited in United Kingdom, it is very useful for the coming up future. The ground source
heat pump energy is mainly used for heating up and cooling homes and all different types of
buildings in the area. The surface of the ground is heated from the sun and it stores up the
heat energy from the ground. The geothermal energy can be used for heating and also for
generating electricity (Utah Geological survey, 2005). The upper 10 to 15 centimetres of the
ground surface is heated by solar radiation.
Figure 1. inside the earth (Utah Geological survey).
When the depth of the ground goes deeper then, the ground temperature does not get
affected by the sun at all but therefore it warms up the heat from the earth’s core. There are
not any volcanos which not known to be active at all. There are many geological features
which has the potentials for exploiting geothermal energy in the United Kingdom (Jason M,
2009). The aim of the United Kingdom would be to generate heat and electricity if there are
geothermal energy projects planned in the United Kingdom for exploitation. There are
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