GeoVision Analysis Supporting Task Force Report: Impacts. The Employment Opportunities, Water Impacts, Emission Reductions, and Air Quality Improvements of Achieving High Penetrations of Geothermal Power in the United States

This report focuses on the creation of new job opportunities within the geothermal sectors, along with a suite of environmental benefits linked to water usage, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, that may occur under expanded geothermal deployment scenarios. These expanded deployment scenarios could be achieved if technological targets and barrier reduction targets are met, thus the benefits described here represent the benefits of achieving the GeoVision. The primary expanded deployment scenario for electric sector geothermal technology is called the 'Technical Improvement' Scenario and the primary expanded scenario for the GHP sector is called the 'Breakthrough' Scenario. Deployment of new geothermal resources, and the impact of such deployment on the rest of the power sector and on heating and air conditioning demand within buildings is determined through the use of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) electric sector capacity-expansion model and the Distributed Generation Market Demand GHP model (dGeo). For each of the benefit categories, we take the modeled output from ReEDS and dGeo and then apply additional tools - as necessary - to assess potential benefits in physical and, where feasible, monetary terms. We qualify the study results where appropriate, and highlight areas of uncertainty not otherwise explicitly addressed in our analysis.