For this year’s winter, Sinopec reports that geothermal heating service covers 95 million square meters, representing a 15% year-on-year increase. Sinopec has steadily grown their geothermal heating capacity from a coverage of 50 million square meters in 2019 and nearly 85 million square meters in 2022. At the current capacity, the use of geothermal for heating saves on CO2 emission by approximately 4.7 million tons annually.
This year’s heating season also sees the focus on digital intelligence for heating production. Sinopec has continued to upgrade the heating system and geothermal stations with new energy-intelligent production, operation, and maintenance management platforms. This is in place for more than 80% of the company’s geothermal sites, thus providing integrated control and automatic optimization of operational parameters.
In addition, Sinopec has established 52 heating customer service centers to provide 24-hour customer service so that issues encountered by the end-users are resolved as soon as possible.
Sinopec is China’s largest enterprise in the development and utilization of mid- to deep-level geothermal energy. Relying on policy support and technological development, Sinopec has formulated six core technology systems integrating geothermal exploration and heat storage evaluation technology, geothermal drilling technology, and cascade utilization technology. At present, Sinopec’s geothermal business covers 62 cities and counties across the country, including 22 cities with geothermal heating capacity exceeding 1 million square meters.
Earlier this year, Sinopec hosted the 7th World Geothermal Congress (WGC 2023) in Beijing, China. The event showcased Sinopec and China’s achievements in developing geothermal heating, catapulting the country the top spot in terms of installed geothermal heating capacity. With abundant geothermal resources that account for about one-sixth of the global total and present great potential for development and utilization, China’s direct utilization of geothermal heating has ranked first in the world for many years.
