Sustainability Evaluation of Ground Source Heat Pump System

Ground source heat pump (GSHP) technology is regarded as an effective technology for energy saving in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, which is being boosted greatly in China. The sustainable development of GSHP system requires to quantitatively analyze from the aspects such as economic, social and environmental benefits. In this paper, as the cases of 3 different cooling and heating systems such as GSHP, air source heat pump (ASHP) and air-cooled chiller for cooling and boiler for heating for an office building in Guangzhou, China. The emergy analysis of the each case was conducted and its emergy sustainability indices were established. The results show that the competitiveness of the GSHP system is no advantage to the air-cooled chiller for cooling and boiler for heating system and ASHP system, but its pressure to the environment is obviously smaller. The GSHP system has more sustainable performance than the other two systems due to make use of the renewable energy of geothermal heat.