The Prospects of Geothermal Industry In Rural Areas

Clean heating in rural areas is the focus and difficulty of clean heating in Northern China. Since 2017, rural areas have adopted electricity and gas as the main means of promotion, having problems such as high operating costs, tight gas sources, and unsustainable. In order to further promote clean heating in rural areas, this paper divides rural residential houses into distributed and concentrated houses. Through carry out technology and economic comparisons of geothermal, gas, biomass and electric, the suitable method for clean heating in rural areas is studied. The research results show that: rural areas in Northern China are rich in geothermal resources, which can meet clean heating needs of rural areas. The household ground source heat pumps are suitable for distributed houses, with high heating efficiency, low energy consumption, and low heating operation costs. Based on calculating of savings of operating costs, the difference in equipment investment for different heating methods is analyzed, and the upper limit of the investment for household ground source heat pumps is 374.46 yuan/m2. Medium-to-deep geothermal heating is suitable for concentrated houses with no carbon emissions and low operating costs. It is recommended to construct household ground source heat pumps demonstrations in energy-saving distributed rural areas with high government subsidies and high disposable incomes while construct medium-to-deep geothermal heating demonstration in concentrated rural houses with rich geothermal resources and high heating prices. The government should consider increase subsidies for initial investment in geothermal heating, adjust the subsidy structure for household ground source heat pumps, and introduce subsidy policy for medium-to-deep geothermal heating system. Conclusion: Geothermal heating is environmental friendly, and is a method of “subsidy of equipment investment but not operating”, which is suitable to promote in northern rural areas.