Status and Outlook of World Geothermal Energy Utilization

세계 지열에너지 활용 현황 및 전망

World geothermal resources potential is estimated to supply 189 EJ annually, which can take charge approximately a half of annual world energy consumpt ion, from considering identified resources and supplies in USA and Iceland. Present annual use of geothermal energy, on the other hand, is only $0.1\%$ of its potential, but still has $70\%$ share among total new renewables. World-wide installed capacity of geothermal power generation reaches 8,900 MWe and 27,825 MWt for direct uses in 2005 which is almost two-fold increase over 2000. This increase is mainly due to exploding expansion of geothermal heat pump utilization: USA and western European countries lead these trends. Although geothermal heat pump distribution in Korea is still in its starting phase, comparing to Swiss achievement in terms of areal utilization sense, we expect to come up with national supply of over 600,000 toe in near future.