Aquifer thermal energy storage for decarbonisation of heating and cooling: Overcoming technical, economic and societal barriers to UK deployment

英国使用约50吉瓦的能源来加热和冷却建筑物，其中只有6%来自可再生能源。减少建筑行业的排放是英国到2050年实现净零碳排放的脱碳战略的重要组成部分。然而，由于其极端的季节性，热量对脱碳具有挑战性。每天的热需求约为15至150吉瓦，因此跨季节储存的新技术至关重要。冬季加热建筑物，夏季冷却建筑物，产生目前损失的废热或冷量。我们提出了一种技术，通过加热或冷却地下抽取并储存在含水层（多孔岩体）中的地下水，来代替储存并在需要时重新使用。在夏季，储存温水以在冬季提供供暖;在冬季，储存冷水以在夏季提供制冷。这种技术被称为含水层热能储存（ATES），并已广泛应用于其他国家，特别是荷兰，那里有超过2500个ATES装置。这些都表明，该技术是高效的，回收高达90%的能源，否则将被浪费。ATES可以与可再生能源一起部署，储存多余的输出，以帮助缓解整合>40 GW间歇性海上风能的挑战。英国只有少数几个项目，主要位于伦敦，供应不到英国需求的0.025%。然而，它有很大的潜力为ATES：有季节性变化的温度和广泛的含水层，其中热和冷可以储存。此外，随着夏季变得越来越热、越来越长，人们对制冷和供暖的需求也越来越大。其他国家的经验表明，技术、经济和社会障碍可能会阻碍ATES的广泛部署，例如含水层对储能的反应不确定，对该技术的经济价值和脱碳潜力缺乏了解，以及公众缺乏理解或接受。该项目汇集了地球科学家，地球工程师，经济学家和社会科学家，以解决在英国部署ATES的关键障碍，提出解决方案，为政府政策，监管框架，规划当局以及能源和基础设施公司提供信息。该项目包括四个主要方面，将技术地球科学和地球工程研究与经济和社会科学研究相结合。这种集成方法对于解决部署障碍至关重要。我们的总体目标是提供解决方案和建议，促进英国ATES的容量增加到几GW（目前容量的千倍），并在英国各地广泛部署项目。我们的研究将确定英国的ATES能力，将供应和需求联系起来，并为政策制定者和规划者创建地图。我们将通过进行现场试验和实验室实验来了解英国主要含水层对ATES的反应。我们将确定部署和运营ATES系统的策略，以最大限度地提高存储容量和效率，同时考虑自然系统工程中不可避免的含水层行为的不确定性。我们的经济研究将量化ATES的经济价值，考虑安装和运营的生命周期成本，以及ATES可以为更广泛的能源系统提供的附加值，该系统在需求较低的时候存储来自风能和太阳能的多余可再生能源。我们将在生命周期的背景下量化ATES的脱碳潜力，因此可以客观地与其他低碳加热和冷却选项进行比较。我们的社会科学研究将确保负责任地部署ATES，促进ATES项目的共同设计符合社会优先事项和价值观。它将利用国际范例来确定最佳做法，并确定和量化更广泛的社会效益，例如开发对技术工作需求的潜力。

The UK uses around 50 GW of energy to heat and cool buildings, only 6% of which comes from renewable sources. Reducing building sector emissions is an essential part of the UK's decarbonisation strategy for achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. However, heat is challenging to decarbonise due to its extreme seasonality. Daily heat demand ranges from around 15 to 150 GW, so new technologies with inter-seasonal storage are essential.Heating buildings in winter and cooling them in summer produces waste heat or cool that is currently lost. We propose a technology to instead store this and re-use when required, by warming or cooling groundwater that is pumped underground and stored in an aquifer (porous rock mass). In summer, warm water is stored to provide heating in winter; in winter, cool water is stored to provide cooling in summer. This technology is termed aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) and has been widely applied in other countries, notably the Netherlands where there are over 2500 ATES installations. These have shown that the technology is highly efficient, recycling up to 90% of the energy that would otherwise be wasted. ATES can be deployed with renewable electricity sources, storing excess output to help ease the challenges of integrating >40 GW of intermittent offshore wind energy.The UK has only a handful of projects, mainly located in London and supplying less than 0.025% of UK demand. Yet it has high potential for ATES: there are seasonal variations in temperature and widespread aquifers where heat and cool can be stored. Moreover, there is increasing demand for cooling as well as heating, as summers become hotter and longer.Experience in other countries has shown that widespread deployment of ATES can be prevented by technical, economic and societal barriers, such as uncertainty in the response of aquifers to energy storage, a lack of knowledge of the economic value and decarbonisation potential of the technology, and lack of public understanding or acceptance. This project brings together geoscientists, geoengineers, economists and social scientists to address key barriers to deployment of ATES in the UK, proposing solutions that inform government policy, the regulatory framework, planning authorities, and energy and infrastructure companies. The project integrates four key strands, combining technical geoscience and geoengineering research with economics and social science research. This integrated approach is essential to address deployment barriers. Our overall goal is to deliver solutions and recommendations that facilitate an increase the capacity of ATES in the UK to several GW (a thousand-fold increase on current capacity) with projects widely deployed across the UK. Our research will determine the UK capacity for ATES, linking supply and demand and creating maps for policy makers and planners. We will understand how a key UK aquifer responds to ATES by conducting field trials and laboratory experiments. We will identify strategies to deploy and operate ATES systems that maximize storage capacity and efficiency, while accounting for uncertainties in aquifer behaviour that are inevitable when engineering natural systems.Our economic research will quantify the economic value of ATES, accounting for the lifecycle costs of installation and operation, and the added value that ATES can deliver to the wider energy system storing excess renewable energy from wind and solar in times of low demand. We will quantify the decarbonisation potential of ATES in a lifecycle context, so it can be objectively compared against other low carbon heating and cooling options. Our social science research will ensure responsible deployment of ATES, promoting the co-design of ATES projects in line with societal priorities and values. It will use international examples to identify best practice, and identify and quantify broader societal benefits, such as the potential to develop a demand for skilled jobs.