Why the slow progress in power generation?

A column of water more than a meter high gushed from a crevasses in the mountains, smelling of sulfur. Then, the hot water flows down the pipe to the hot spring pool, waiting for the visitors.

This is Tengchong Hot Sea Scenic Area in Yunnan Province, one of the regions with the most abundant medium and high temperature geothermal resources in China, and also a popular tourist place for hot spring viewing and bathing.

Hot spring bathing, ground source heat pump, geothermal heating is the most direct way to use geothermal energy in China, and the annual utilization rate has ranked first in the world for many years.

As another important form of geothermal utilization, geothermal power generation has been developed on a small scale in China.

According to Deng Zhuang, executive president of Nanjing Tianjia Energy Technology Co., LTD., by the end of 2022, China's installed geothermal power generation capacity was 53.45 megawatts, accounting for only 0.33% of the world's installed geothermal power generation capacity. Last year, the world installed about 161,300 megawatts of geothermal power, with the United States, Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey and New Zealand in the top five.

Under the background of "double carbon", China's wind power and photovoltaic power generation are surging forward, and why is geothermal power generation, which is also a green renewable energy, faltering? Under the new situation, what efforts need to be made to achieve rapid development of geothermal power generation?

From July 24 to 29, Jiemian News and other media visited Xiongan, Xi 'an, Dali and Tengchong and conducted local investigations on the current situation of geothermal development in China, and found that the domestic geothermal heating industry is relatively mature, and geothermal power generation is still in the early stage of cultivation. The lack of effective electricity price subsidy policy, the difficulty of obtaining mining rights and the unclear resources are the main reasons restricting the development of geothermal power generation.

In the future, the stepwise utilization of geothermal power generation, supplemented by geothermal heating, ecological agriculture, cultural tourism and health care will become a new model for the development and utilization of geothermal resources.

Geothermal heating project of Sinopec Luyuan Geothermal Energy (Shaanxi) Development Co., Ltd. located in Xianyang City. Photo: Hou Ruining Sinopec Luyuan Geothermal Energy (Shaanxi) Development Co., Ltd. located in Xianyang city geothermal heating project. Photograph: Hou Ruining

It dropped from 8th to 19th place

Geothermal resources refer to the energy inside the earth that can be economically utilized by human beings, including direct utilization and power generation.

According to the buried depth and temperature of geothermal energy, geothermal energy can be divided into shallow geothermal energy, hydrothermal geothermal energy and dry hot rock. Shallow geothermal resources and medium and low warm water geothermal resources are mainly used directly, while high temperature hydrothermal geothermal resources and dry hot rocks are mainly used for power generation.

High temperature geothermal resources exist in the form of steam when the temperature is higher than 150℃. The medium temperature geothermal resources are about 90℃-150℃, and exist in the form of a mixture of water and steam. The temperature of low-temperature geothermal resources is between 25℃ and 90℃, and it exists in the form of warm water, warm water and hot water.

China is rich in geothermal resources. The annual recoverable resources of shallow geothermal energy in 336 cities at or above the prefecture level are equivalent to 700 million tons of standard coal. The annual recoverable resources of hydrothermal geothermal energy in China are equivalent to 1.865 billion tons of standard coal. The 3-10 km dry hot rock resource is equivalent to 860 trillion tons of standard coal.

China has a huge potential for geothermal power generation. The geothermal power generation potential of high-temperature geothermal resources distributed in southern Tibet, western Sichuan and western Yunnan is 7,120 MW, accounting for 84.1% of the country's high-temperature geothermal resources. The power generation potential of high-temperature geothermal resources in the southeast coastal area is 700 megawatts, accounting for 8.27% of the country.

Compared with wind power and photovoltaic, geothermal power generation is not only zero emissions, no pollution, and good stability, can provide uninterrupted power supply, the average annual operation time of more than 8,000 hours, the annual utilization rate is 5-8 times that of solar and wind power.

But China's installed geothermal power capacity is small.

Liu Jinxia, chief expert of Sinopec Nova Company, said that as of 2020, there are six geothermal power stations in operation in China, respectively, two geothermal power stations in Tibet, Yangbajing and Yangyijing, with an installed capacity of 26.18 MW and 16 MW respectively. Sichuan Kangding geothermal power station installed capacity of 0.28 MW; Yunnan Ruili geothermal power station installed capacity of 1.6 MW; Fengshun Dengwu geothermal Power Station in Guangdong, with an installed capacity of 0.3 MW; Hebei Xianxian geothermal power station, installed capacity of 0.2 MW.