Geothermal energy to address energy performance strategies in residential and industrial buildings
Geothermal Energy (the energy extracted from heat stored in the earth) is one of the most environmental-friendly and cost-effective energy resources in use and has the potential to help mitigate global warming if widely deployed in place of fossil fuel. Recent technological progress, the variability of the cost, the difficult of oil and gas supply, the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels to cut pollution have made the exploitation of geothermal energy, especially low-enthalpy power generation utilizing GCHP (Ground Coupled Heat Pumps) an attractive and viable alternative. Give these premises, the general objective of GEO.POWER project, 2 years long, is exchange best practices related to low enthalpy energy supply and - after a technical and cost/benefit assessment to evaluate the potential of reproducibility - to prepare the ground to the transfer some of the selected best practices within the Mainstreaming Programmes of the regions participating into the project
during the current programming period 07-13 as well as in the future regional framework instruments.
The main results of the project are the development of one action plan per each involved region, that provides an organized set of legal/regulatory, economical and technical / technical and best-technological proposals that–through the inclusion into the regional operation programmes, address long-term investments strategy for GCHP application at wide scale. The partnership, coordinated by the Province of Ferrara (Italy) is composed by Ministries, Regions, Local Authorities, Universities and R&D agencies of 8 Countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Estonia, UK and Belgium) that are dealing–at different level-with the attainment of  European policy objectives in relation to 20/20/20 Kyoto targets and the EU Building Performance Directive. The partnership benefits of a strong technical background, as it capitalize experiences coming from the major EU projects
in the field of low enthalpy geothermal & technological applications, like  Ground-Reach, GROUNDHIT, Ground-Med and LOW-BIN.On the basis of a pool of best practices on GCHP application developed in urban, rural and industrial sector, all partners and local delegation of experts & stakeholders go through an evaluation of the best practices reproducibility potential in each recipients region, according to technical, economical and environmental parameters, in order to design the optimum performance conditions for GCHP systems and the capacity to fit with the territorial context. The consequent preparation of the action plans and its inclusion into the Regional Operational Programmes cold represent a milestone for the future introduction of massive GCHP investments in the concerned regions. A strong communication strategy aims at increasing awareness, improving knowledge & better understanding of the GCHP merit and benefits and push investments towards such green-economy