this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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I think geothermal is a scam?
I remember reading somewhere that geothermic heat basically doesn't replenish (or only does so at geological timescales), and by extracting heat from underground we're basically depleting the underground heat reservoir, leading to shrinkage of the ground and therefore possible cracks in buildings.
TL;DR: It's not truly renewable, but rather renewable only on geological timescales (similar to fossil fuels).
It is highly dependent of the local geological conditions. Convection-based geothermal plants (those with hot spring flowing around) probably have less constraints on heat extraction limit. Conduction-based geothermal plants will face more problems.
In some shallow geothermal use case the ground is used as seasonal heat storage so heat renewable rate is not an issue.