Geothermal systems can raise a home’s value because buyers like to purchase properties that will save them money and help protect the environment. For a prospective buyer who intends to stay in their home for 20 years for example, that adds up to $45,000 in total savings.

Myth: We could run out of geothermal energy Geothermal energy is a renewable energy and will never deplete. Abundant geothermal energy will be available for as long as the Earth exists.

Geothermal power plants do not burn fuel to generate electricity, but they may release small amounts of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. Geothermal power plants emit 97% less acid rain-causing sulfur compounds and about 99% less carbon dioxide than fossil fuel power plants of similar size.

People around the world use geothermal energy to heat their homes and to produce electricity by digging deep wells and pumping the heated underground water or steam to the surface. Or, we can make use of the stable temperatures near the surface of the earth to heat and cool buildings.

There are three types of geothermal power plants: dry steam, flash, and binary. Dry steam, the oldest geothermal technology, takes steam out of fractures in the ground and uses it to directly drive a turbine. Flash plants pull deep, high-pressure hot water into cooler, low-pressure water.

between $18,000 to $30,000

Now, it is true that the electricity used in a ground-source unit might come from a power plant reliant on fossil fuels. The key difference in geothermal vs natural gas is that geothermal is not intrinsically reliant on the resource while natural gas definitely is.

Geothermal heat pumps are more efficient and use less electricity for cooling than even hyper-efficient central AC systems.

Hybrid heating systems combine a geothermal unit, which supplies a home’s cooling load and part of the heating, with a propane or natural gas furnace. A home with only geothermal heating would switch to costly electric resistance heat during cold weather.