Environmental Benefits of Geo
Geothermal heat pump systems use the Earth’s energy storage capability to heat and cool buildings and to provide hot water. The earth is a huge storage device that absorbs 47% of the sun’s energy in the form of clean, renewable energy — 500 times the total energy we use every year.
GSHPs work by taking this energy (heat) from the earth during the heating season at an efficiency approaching or exceeding 400% and return it during the cooling season:
- Installation of 100,000 typically-sized residential GSHP systems corresponds to an emissions reduction of about 2.18 million metric tons of carbon equivalents
- Geothermal systems generate no on-site or point-of-use emissions and have the lowest source emissions among all heating and cooling technologies
The statements here were taken directly from:
IGSHPA (2009) and the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium.