Market development
Most of the plants installed are currently used for heat generation. In 2010, around 50,600 MW of thermal capacity was installed in almost 80 countries worldwide. In the area of electricity generation, a geothermal capacity of just under 10,700 MW was installed in a total of 24 countries in 2010. The largest installed capacity was in the USA, followed by the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico and Italy.
Growing national energy consumption and increasing fossil fuel prices may make the use of geothermal energy more important in future in countries with high geothermal potential. Besides the particularly excellent potential for utilising this form of energy along the “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean, there is also considerable potential on the islands on the mid-Atlantic ridge (e.g. Iceland). Further “hot spots” can be found in East Africa along the Great African Rift Valley and in parts of the Middle East.
In Germany, deep geothermal power plants are used to produce heat as well as for combined heat and power generation. For example, in Unterhaching near Munich, a geothermal power station with a thermal capacity of 30.4 MW has been in operation since 2007. Since 2009, the same plant has been generating an additional average electrical capacity of 3.4 MW, providing power to around 6,000 households while covering the heating needs of some 3,000 homes. As of December 2010, 12 projects were in operation throughout Germany, with another 13 projects under construction and 81 additional projects in the planning phase.
Geothermal plants produced 27.2 GWh of electricity in Germany in 2010. Generating around 5,600 GWh of thermal energy, geothermal energy covers 0.4 % of the final energy consumption for heat. The majority of the heat (approx. 95 %) is generated using shallow geothermal energy systems. The market in Germany for shallow geothermal energy shrank in 2010. Due to the falling prices of fossil fuels and the termination or reduction of subsidies and incentive programmes, the sales of heat pumps in 2010 dropped by approximately 7 % to 51,000 units in comparison to the previous year. With 24,500 units sold, grounded heating pumps accounted for almost 48 % of total heat pump sales. The German geothermal energy industry employed around 13,300 people at the end of 2010.
