Exploiting the renewable energy resources of our cities’ undergrounds

This paper focuses on innovative technologies that can efficiently and economically tap renewable energy from the urban underground: energy geostructures. These innovative technologies merge geotechnical engineering with energy efficiency, offering both structural support and heating/cooling functions for buildings and infrastructures. The performance of these technologies is governed by multiphysical interactions and phenomena driven by thermal and mechanical loads. Three decades of research have explored the fundamentals of the behavior and performance of energy piles, walls, and tunnels, yielding a variety of tools that can currently serve their analysis and design. This work encompasses this knowledge and bridges the gap between research to practice, showcasing an experimental and computational study that offers valuable insights into the real-world performance of an energy infrastructure installation.