The Citys of Geotherm in China

Abstract

The direct utilization of low-temperature geothermal resource is popular in China. Many geothermal zones of high quality are developed not only because they have abundant geothermal resource, but also they are large population centers. The Ministry of Land and Resources of PRC had set up fifty-six Citys of Geotherm since 2003, and almost all of them have the characteristics mentioned above. These Citys of Geotherm are located in twelve primary sedimentary basins. According to statistics, there is 2.5×1022J geothermal energy, that amounts to 8.532×1011t standard coal, in these twelve sedimentary basins. And the recoverable resource is 7.5×1021J heat energy or 2.56×1011t coal equivalently (Guiling Wang, 2011. ). In the future, the fifty-six Citys of Geotherm will be developed rapidly along with the significant investment. According to the twelfth “Chinese Building Energy Efficiency Five Years’ Planning”, by the end of 2015 the geothermal heating area will be larger than 1.0×108m2 in China. The fifty-six Citys of Geotherm, which have superiority in the aspect of policy and funding budget, will contribute most.