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

英国用于建筑物供暖和制冷的能源约为50吉瓦，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热，预计制冷需求将增加。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年净零目标。此外，当前地缘政治的不确定性凸显了与进口能源相关的风险。然而，由于其极端的季节性，热量的脱碳具有挑战性。日热需求在15至150吉瓦之间，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，具有非常大规模的季节性蓄能、制冷和供暖，以及稳定的低碳能源供应。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重要组成部分——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，在利用地热能方面仍然存在障碍，特别是在城市地区大规模利用地热能。地下资源的规模、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视和管理安装，以确保负责任地使用资源。这些知识差距，加上对利益攸关方和决策者缺乏认识和指导，导致超出必要的风险和成本。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的行为的不确定性来消除吸收的障碍。我们将重点关注相对较浅（<400米深）的地热资源和开环系统，在这些系统中，地下水可以从地下多孔、渗透性的含水层岩石中抽入和抽出，因为这些系统提供了大的存储容量，可以提供热量和冷却。浅层开环系统也可部署在英国大多数城市地区，与需要更深钻探的技术相比，投资成本更低。我们将在实验室实验的支持下，利用最先进的监测技术进行先进的实地实验，以确定含水层对热量储存和开采的反应，并利用这些结果来了解地下水在含水层内传递热量时，大范围内的温度变化情况。我们将比较两种不同的含水层，具有不同类型的地下流动机制，可以在英国大部分地区开发。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的压力，以及了解因使用资源而引起的地面移动的任何风险。现场数据将用于创建校准的热流模型，我们可以将其用作“数值实验室”来模拟和探索城市地热的容量以及城市内不同装置如何相互作用。研究结果将支持规划未来的资源利用，并评估地热资源储存工业过程和商业建筑产生的废热的能力，并在需要时将其回收。我们将探索使用基于人工智能的模型，该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。总之，这项研究将允许监管机构计划和允许安装，以确保公平和防止环境破坏，以及确保系统设计现实地预测可用的能源量。提出资源评估、安全和可持续运营管理建议，促进低碳地热能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.