In 1980, the Federal Mining Act was introduced to govern the use of the German subsurface. By paying royalties, companies can get permission to exploit resources. Yet, there is no official report breaking down the payments for hydrocarbons and lignite, in particular regarding the effectively...

This paper contributes to the discussion on the importance of physical distance in the emergence of cross-region collaborative Research and Development (R&D) interactions. The proximity theory, and its extensions, is used as a theoretical framework. A spatial interaction model for count data was...

Shallow geothermal energy is a renewable energy resource that has become increasingly important. However, the use has environmental, technical and social consequences. Biological, chemical, and physical characteristics of groundwater and subsurface are influenced by the development of this...

A comprehensive overview of potential environmental effects during the life cycle of geothermal power plants is presented using widely scattered available information from diverse literature sources. It is shown that so far only few studies provide quantitative estimates on both direct and...

An overview is presented on the last decade of geothermal heating by ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) in Europe. Significant growth rates can be observed and today's total number of GSHP systems is above 1 million, with an estimate of about 1.25 million mainly used for residential space heating...

Thermal conductivity and thermal borehole resistance are basic parameters for the technical and sustainable design of closed ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems. One of the most common methods to determine these parameters is the thermal response test (TRT). The response data measured are...

The objective of the current study was to assess the technical and economic factors that influence the design and performance of vertical GSHP (ground source heat pump) systems and to evaluate the spatial correlation that these factors have with geographic components such as geology and climatic...