China plans ‘smokeless cities’ by tapping geothermal reserves

BAODING: China’s state-run energy giant Sinopec has drilled hundreds of wells across the country without finding a single drop of oil. But that was precisely the point: Instead of black gold, the almost mile deep holes are providing clean heat for local homes.

While two-thirds of China’s electricity is generated by coal, almost all of the homes in northern Hebei province’s Xiong district — home to 400,000 people — are heated by wells as deep as 1,500 meters (5,000 feet).

In a new apartment in the district, a 60-yearold retiree watched his granddaughters hop about in bare feet, impervious to the frost outside.

“This floor heating works like a dream,” said Li Fuzeng. “And they say it is clean energy.”

Chen Menghui, director of Sinopec’s geothermal branch in Hebei, said the process depends on a cycle of running water.

“These underground wells are pumped with water, which comes out at a temperature of around 70 degrees Celsius before flowing into the heating system,” he said.

Though experts say there is immense potential in China’s subterranean heat reserves, they remain largely unexploited, accounting for less than 0.5 percent of the Asian giant’s energy consumption. Sinopec’s geothermal projects in China make up for more than 40 percent of the total number of homes heated by geothermal energy in the country, making them a potential model for how it can tap this resource.

Before launching itself into the geothermal industry, Sinopec found an unusual partner in the Icelandic company Arctic Green Energy.

Sinopec needed technical support and Iceland is regarded as the leader in extracting energy from the ground.

In a joint venture beginning in 2009, they invested 400 million yuan ($58 million) into the Xiong project, where they drilled almost 70 wells.

The idea was to apply the technology that had already been tested in the Nordic country to northern China.

“Iceland, on the mid-Atlantic ridge, has exceptional resources, with temperatures exceeding 250 degrees Celsius — hot enough to supply power plants,” said Wang Yanxin, a geological research officer at Sinopec.

“In China, with the exception of Sichuan and Tibet, there are hardly any temperatures exceeding 150 degrees Celsius, which forces us to concentrate on heating systems,” he added.

Sinopec, which has suffered in recent years from the tumble in oil prices and the slowdown of the Chinese economy, appears to be investing further in renewable energy, including solar and wind, as well as geothermal.

According to Sinopec, Xiong has become China’s first “smokeless town” by eliminating the coal-fired heating systems common throughout other parts of the country.

Sinopec aims to develop 20 such “smokeless cities” nationwide by 2020.