<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-comfortable-advantage-in-geothermal-heating-and-cooling/>
"Australia has always been defined by its surface extremes. The country builds
cities in hot coastal belts and then complains about the cost of keeping them
cool.
Every summer the same pattern repeats itself. Air conditioners hum across
Sydney, Perth and Melbourne, grid peaks rise, and operators scramble to cover
the load.
Yet just a few dozen metres below the pavement lies an energy resource that
stays steady year-round.
It is not a volcanic heat source or a deep geothermal reservoir. It is the
ordinary thermal stability of the ground and the shallow aquifers under almost
every city. In most of Australia, that temperature is around 18–25 °C, which
happens to be ideal for heating and cooling buildings with heat pumps.
Australia’s emerging conversation about geothermal heating and cooling sits
squarely within the frame established by
Beyond the Hype: Geothermal in
Context, the 2025 report I published through TFIE Strategy Inc.
That report separated what actually works in geothermal from what only looks
good on slides. It concluded that the real opportunity lies not in chasing
ultra-deep, high-enthalpy wells or speculative enhanced geothermal systems, but
in the practical and scalable domain of heat: district heating, aquifer thermal
energy storage, and low-to-medium temperature geothermal paired with heat
pumps.
In the report, I argued that geothermal’s future will not be measured in
gigawatts of electricity but in gigawatts of heat displaced from fossil fuels.
The message was simple. When geothermal plays to its strengths – steady
subsurface temperatures, mature drilling methods, and long-lived infrastructure
– it quietly delivers."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
