Smart assessment, management and optimisation of urban geothermal resources (SmartRes)

英国使用约50千兆瓦的能源来为建筑物供暖和制冷，其中只有6%来自可再生能源。建筑供暖占英国碳排放量的近四分之一，而随着气候变暖和夏季变得更热，对制冷的需求预计将增加。英国供暖和建筑战略明确指出，现在需要采取行动减少排放，以促进遵守具有法律约束力的2050年净零排放目标。此外，当前的地缘政治不确定性突显了与进口能源相关的风险。然而，由于其极端的季节性，高温在脱碳方面具有挑战性。每天的热需求在15千兆瓦到150千兆瓦之间，因此跨季节储存的新绿色技术至关重要。地热资源提供天然热能、超大规模季节性能量储存、制冷和供暖，以及稳定的低碳能源供应。对城市地热资源的广泛开发可以提供英国供暖和制冷需求的很大一部分--在某些情况下是全部--支持英国的自给自足和能源安全。然而，地热能的吸收仍然存在障碍，特别是在城市地区的大规模吸收。地下资源的大小、城市地热部署的长期可持续性以及潜在的环境影响都存在不确定性。需要新的方法和工具来监控和管理安装，以确保负责任地使用资源。这些知识差距，加上利益攸关方和决策者缺乏认识和指导，导致了超出必要的风险，从而导致成本上升。在这个项目中，我们将通过减少地面在城市地区大规模储存和产生热量和冷却时如何表现的不确定性来消除吸收的障碍。我们将专注于相对较浅(400米深)的地热资源和开式循环系统，在这些系统中，地下水被抽入地下多孔、可渗透的含水层岩石中和从地下抽出，因为这些系统提供了巨大的存储容量，并可以输送热量和冷却量。浅层开环系统也可在英国大多数城市地区部署，投资成本低于需要更深钻探的技术。我们将在实验室实验的支持下，利用最先进的监测进行先进的野外实验，以确定含水层对热量储存和开采的反应，并利用结果来了解地下水流动在含水层内传递热量时，大范围内的温度变化。我们将比较两个不同的含水层，对比英国大部分地区可以开采的不同类型的地下水流状况。我们还将确定温度变化如何影响地下水质量和对生态环境和敏感受体造成压力，以及了解资源使用造成的地面移动的任何风险。现场数据将被用来创建校准的热流模型，我们可以将其用作模拟和探索城市地热容量以及城市内不同设施可能如何相互作用的“数值实验室”。研究结果将支持未来资源利用的规划，并评估地热资源储存工业过程和商业建筑的废热并在需要时将其归还的能力。我们将探索使用基于人工智能的模型，这些模型可以从地热运营商提供的数据中学习，以负责任和综合的方式积极管理资源。总而言之，这项研究将允许监管机构规划和允许安装，以确保公平和防止环境破坏，并确保系统设计切合实际地预测可用能源量。将在资源评估、安全和可持续的运营和管理方面提出建议，以促进低碳、地热供热和制冷城市的广泛发展。

The UK uses around 50 GW of energy to heat and cool buildings with only 6% delivered from renewable sources. Heating of buildings represents almost a quarter of UK carbon emissions, while demand for cooling is projected to increase as the climate warms and summers become hotter. The UK Heat and Buildings Strategy is clear that action to reduce emissions is required now to facilitate compliance with legally binding 2050 Net Zero targets. Moreover, the current geopolitical uncertainty has highlighted the risks associated with importing energy. However, heat is challenging to decarbonise due to its extreme seasonality. Daily heat demand ranges from around 15 to 150 GW, so new green technologies for inter-seasonal storage are essential. Geothermal resources offer natural heat energy, very large-scale seasonal energy storage, cooling as well as heating, and steady, low carbon energy supply. Widespread exploitation of urban geothermal resources could deliver a significant component - and in some cases all - of the UK's heating and cooling demand, supporting UK self-sufficiency and energy security. However, barriers remain to uptake of geothermal energy, especially at large-scale in urban areas. There is uncertainty in the size of the underground resource, the long-term sustainability of urban geothermal deployments, and potential environmental impacts. New methods and tools are required to monitor and manage installations to ensure the resource is responsibly used. These knowledge gaps, along with lack of awareness and guidance available for stakeholders and decision makers, result in higher than necessary risks and therefore costs. In this project, we will remove obstacles to uptake by reducing uncertainty about how the ground behaves when used to store and produce heat and cool at a large scale in urban areas. We will focus on relatively shallow (<400m depth) geothermal resources and open-loop systems in which groundwater is pumped into and out of porous, permeable aquifer rocks underground, because these offer large storage capacity and can deliver heat and cool. Shallow, open-loop systems are also deployable in most UK urban areas and have lower investment costs than technologies which require deeper drilling. We will conduct advanced field experiments with state-of-the-art monitoring, supported by laboratory experiments, to determine the response of aquifers to storage and exploitation of heat and use the results to understand how temperature changes over a wide area as groundwater flow transfers heat within the aquifer. We will compare two different aquifers, with contrasting types of underground flow regimes, that can be exploited across much of the UK. We will also determine how temperature changes impact groundwater quality and stress ecological environments and sensitive receptors, as well as understand any risks of ground movement caused by use of the resource. The field data will be used to create calibrated heat flow models, which we can use as a 'numerical laboratory' to simulate and explore the capacity of urban geothermal and how different installations within a city might interact. The results will support planning of future resource use and assess the capacity of geothermal resources to store waste heat from industrial processes and commercial buildings and return it later when needed. We will explore the use of AI-based models that can 'learn' from data provided by geothermal operators to actively manage the resource in a responsible and integrated way. Together, this research will permit regulators to plan and permit installations to ensure fairness and prevent environmental damage, as well as ensuring system designs realistically predict the amount of energy available. Recommendations will be made for resource assessment, safe and sustainable operation and management, to stimulate the widespread development of low carbon, geothermally heated and cooled cities