In the current mission to fight climate change with renewable energy, the UN says geothermal energy “creates far lower emissions than burning fossil fuels.”
What if you could save anywhere from 30% to 70% on the costs of heating or cooling your home by using the temperature deep in the ground?
That’s what people using geothermal energy are doing. Geothermal energy is drawn from heat that naturally occurs in the Earth’s interior.
This may sound like new technology, but according to the United Nations, geothermal energy has been in use commercially for more than 100 years.
New legislation in the U.S. may make this kind of renewable energy more popular. States like New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts offer either tax credits or rebates for homeowners who embrace geothermal energy, though it still is not common practice.
“The goal is to take advantage of the fact that the soil has a lot of heat capacity, a lot of availability of heat," Forrest Meggers from the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment told CBS News.
Underground temperatures tend to linger around 56 degrees year round.
During frigid winter months, fluid is sent below ground to warm and is then pumped back up through a device that heats the fluid even more, releasing warm air into the house.
In the summertime, geothermal units do the opposite as hot air is pumped out of the home and then sent below ground to cool.
In the current mission to fight climate change with renewable energy, the UN says geothermal energy “creates far lower emissions than burning fossil fuels.”
Related Stories
