Introduction to Scenarios
Scenarios:
Navigant Research is a market research and advisory firm that developed this data as part of a 2013 global market analysis on geothermal heat pumps.
GHP deployment depends directly on consumer behavior. This behavior is described by market-adoption rates, which relate maximum market-adoption potential (i.e., number of consumers who would eventually adopt the technology) and the investment payback period.
The market potential of GHPs in each scenario was determined using two market-adoption rates: one from Navigant (Navigant Low) and the other from NREL (NREL Optimistic).
The Navigant Low adoption rate is based on a combination of insights from consumer surveys and market data for energy efficiency and heat pumps, whereas the NREL Optimistic rate is based on market-adoption data for distributed solar photovoltaics.
Deployment Potential
The GeoVision analysis concludes that—under the Breakthrough scenario—market potential for geothermal heat pumps is more than 14 times larger than existing capacity. This potential could translate to heating and cooling for about 28 million U.S. homes.
The GeoVision analysis only considered deployment potential for heat pumps in the contiguous United States.
Economic potential is driven by capital costs and fuel costs and can vary with time as these factors change. Therefore, the economic potential (and the related market potential) of a given county can increase and/or decrease with time.
Counties located in climates designated as "Very Cold" (IECC 2009), such as those in Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine, have no deployment projections due to a lack of building simulation data for that particular climate zone.
Installed capacity for this map is using only values for newly installed capacity and does not include existing capacity.
Economic potential is that portion of geothermal heat-pump capacity that is cost effective to recover based on technology costs and anticipated revenues.
Market potential indicates how much of and how quickly the resources could actually be adopted and deployed from the economic potential, given market conditions such as regulatory environment, capital availability and investor interest, consumer demand, and energy competition.
Installed is the actual installed capacity of geothermal heat pumps projected by modeling under each scenario.
Development Expenditures
Geothermal energy offers economic development opportunities in both rural communities and urban centers across the United States.
Economic development opportunities are expressed in terms of the expenditures—such as operations and maintenance and supply chain—associated with increased use of geothermal heat pumps.
Economic Impacts of all Geothermal Heat Pumps
Induced - expenditures supported by increased wages from expenditures and activities
Indirect - expenditures related to supply chains such as raw materials or professional services
Direct - expenditures for construction and installation
Economic Impacts of all Geothermal Heat Pumps by State
Air Emissions
Installed capacity as of 2012 (Navigant 2013) was used as a baseline for comparison between the GHP scenarios.
Air quality impacts were calculated relative to air and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the fixed 2012 baseline value.
Deployment of GHPs in the Breakthrough scenario results in as much as 90 MMT of displaced annual GHG emissions by 2050 relative to the 2012 baseline—the equivalent emissions of about 20 million cars.
The decrease in onsite fuel use that results from achieving the Breakthrough scenario reduces cumulative emissions (from 2015 to 2050) of SO2, NOx, and PM2.5 by 232,000, 711,000, and 57,000 metric tons, respectively, relative to the 2012 baseline.
The reduction to on-site fuel use that occurs from achieving the GHP Breakthrough scenario reduces cumulative emissions (from 2015 to 2050) of SO2, NOx, and PM2.5 by 232,000, 711,000, and 57,000 metric tons, respectively, relative to the 2012 baseline. These emission reductions are equivalent to double to triple the total single year SO2 and NOx emissions from all residential combustion sources and one-fifth of a single year of PM2.5 residential emissions (EPA 2016).
GHP installations in the Breakthrough scenario offset a total of 1,281 MMT CO2e, representing an 8.3% reduction to on-site emissions from buildings relative to the 2012 baseline.
Air Emissions Impacts for Geothermal Heat Pumps -