Heating & Cooling with Geothermal Energy
The sun delivers energy as light to the earth in eight minutes, helping plants and animals on the surface to live in a plush oxygenated environment. At the same time, 50% of the sunlight that reaches the earth is captured by the earth as energy and totals 500 times more energy than is used by the world yearly.
Now companies like Bosch are developing “ground source heat pumps” that create 3 to 5 times the energy they consume. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that geothermal energy is one of the most energy-efficient, environmentally clean and cost-effective renewable sources available.
How to Get Energy from Geothermal: The Ground Loop
The technology already exists for harnessing energy from the ground to heat homes in the winter and return it to the earth in the summer to do the opposite. The temperature of the earth from 4 to 6 feet below the surface remains a stable 40 to 75° year-round. Pipes, also known as the “ground loop,” are buried in the earth and circulate a special liquid combining water and an inert fluid, which transmit heated liquids into the building above to heat it.
Geothermal makes a great case for itself in the following video which shows what happens to sunlight when it reaches earth and the surface of the ground.
