The geothermal energy market in France for heating and cooling

Abstract

The first market study carried out in France by the French Association of Geothermal Professionals regarding the geothermal domain in France has demonstrated that the installed power for heating and cooling reached 1850 MWth in 2011. One third is related to the exploitation of the Dogger reservoir in the Paris area but the main part is linked to the recent and strong development of shallow geothermal resources in the whole country. The market for single housing using vertical geothermal probes is decreasing since 2009 due to the economic crisis. On the contrary, installations to feed collective housing and residential blocks including offices buildings is growing fast with the installation of very low temperature small district heating. The average power installed for each of these mini geothermal loops is of 2-4 MWth in order to connect 1000 dwelling equivalent in sub-urban areas. Consequently, the number of districts to benefit of geothermal energy is high. The direct uses concentrated mainly Ile de France restarted 4 years ago and more than 15 new deep geothermal doublets are planned in the next 5 years representing additional power of 150 MWth. The oldest plants, tapping the Dogger reservoir, has to be revamped because in exploitation since 40 years and more, consequently the drilling companies has already started to buy new rigs which can be operated in restricted area with no noise and the smallest impact as possible for the public acceptance. The very low temperature installations with doublets using underground waters at depths between 20 and 1000m have been boosted by the Fond Chaleur of ADEME which subsidies the plants to be competitive with natural gas. In the other hand the vertical ground source heat pump dry systems represent now 2/3 of the total installed power for heating and cooling. The main barrier remains administrative constraints and delays to get the permission for drilling in one hand and the calculation rules for new buildings (RT2012) which still encourage gas in the other. In 2020, the market will reach 4000 MWth installed if ecologically driven the target objectives at 6500 could be largely attained. In 2011 the turnover of the domain is around 500 million euros. The role of the French Geotthermal Association is to help the Ministries in charge of ecology, energy and industry to build a policy which will allow boosting the use of geothermal at the same level compared to biomass.