[yanslookup]

My dream is that municipal ground source heat pumps become popular. Let the municipal put and maintain wells (the major contributor to adopting ground source heat pumps) along streets and allow homeowners to tie in to the wells. Ground source is much more efficient, requires less space, creates less noise pollution, and is equally decentralized compared to air source.

[supertrope]

Digging is fundamentally expensive. This is why above ground power lines are not buried, and fiber optic home broadband is not more common than reusing existing cable TV and phone lines. If utilities are buried from initial construction the cost is reasonable. Dig once. Retrofitting a neighborhood after the fact is too expensive. Geothermal has very long ROI like 50 years so usually only institutional building owners who will be around in 50 years bother to buy it.

[yanslookup]

Digging is expensive the way it is done today, which is essentially artisanal scale. We get economies of scale at the municipal level. At least 2 neighborhoods in neighboring cities are doing it locally, more as tests but still doing it.

Also, I can get ground source heat pumps installed including vertical wells for about 50k out of pocket, at current energy rates I'd recoup in about 12 years. Not sure where 50 years comes from, unless you are talking about geothermal and not ground source, in which case I have no insights in to as it's not a reasonable option around here.