The assessment of geothermal resources potential of China

Abstract：Based on expounding the characteristics of geothermal resources in China and taking into account the existence of different types of geothermal resources in China, the authors adopted different calculation methods to conduct the potential assessment of shallow geothermal resources, conductive geothermal resources, convective geothermal resources and hot dry rock resources. The results show that the shallow geothermal resources of key cities are 2.78×1020 J with the annual approved yield being 2.89×1012 kWh, the conductive geothermal resources of main planes (basins) reach 2.5×1022 J with the approved yield being 7.5×1021 J, the discharge energy of hot springs is 1.32×1017 J in total with the annual approved yield being 6.6×1017 J, and the hot dry rock resources of China in the depth 3.0-5.0 km come to 2.5×1025 J in total, and this amount is 2.6×105 times that the annual total consumption of energy resources at present.