A new report, “The Geothermal Report: Edition 5, 2009,” has been released to spotlight developments in the geothermal market and pinpoints regions that are developing geothermal capacity.
Geothermal energy can be harvested in two ways, either via direct use of hot water or steam from low enthalpy deposits for space heating, or by indirect use which transforms the energy in high and medium enthalpy deposits into electricity in geothermal power generation plants. A third method of harvesting is the increasingly important sub-category of direct use, the ground source heat pump (GSHP).
GSHP is one of the fastest growing applications of renewable energy in the world and the fastest growing forms of geothermal energy, with annual increases of well over 10% in about 30 countries over the past ten years. It is a small but fast growing proportion of the space heating market. This is a technology of the future and the report predicts that it will make fast progress.
Although the geothermal sector has expanded, it has still reaped the backlash of the global economic crisis. The report also includes a long list of projects that are at the early stages in the US, suggesting that the process of installing geothermal resources has slowed somewhat.