No scam at all. The old Mount Wellington mine site here in Cornwall heats its workshops and its offices with ground-source heat from the water in the mineshaft, with startlingly good efficiency.
You don't always need to go underground though. The National Trust are looking into heating Plas Newydd on Anglesey using a seawater from the Menai Strait in a similar way.
On the scam front, I drove past Chivvy and Carland cross wind farms yesterday. Not an atom of air moving, stationary anemometer and stationary smaller wind turbines and the big ones were all in full swing....
As I've said before, it's all a conspiracy thought up by surfers who have infiltrated these forward thinking businesses.
"Hey Brad, how come it's always flat and onshore here maaaaaannnn?"
"Well dude, I've had this idea maaaan, everyone's on the green bandwagon and I reckon it can sort us out".
"What we need is a wavehub and a couple of wind turbines. We can tell everyone that it's generating electricity for our low carbon footprint sustainable future and when they're all watching Eastenders, we'll switch the surf on and the offshore wind maaaaaan"
I didn't drive past Porthtowan, but if I had done, I wonder if I would have seen headhigh tubing surf.....
Like the RDA's and the EU, anything "green" is often surrounded by people who have the "If you disagree with us, you're as bad as Hitler" course of argument and their calculations/workings/assumptions are often a bit suspect to say the least.
Ground Source Heat Pumps make sense, the maths is clear and adds up correctly.
I would doubt the feasibility of it....anything "communal" needs a big body of people feasting off it and a huge gravytrain of consultants and people celebrating diversity around it, etc, etc. This all sounds far too simple to me, ergo it will never happen :D
To recap:- When you see a windfarm in full chat on a still day, just remember that there are surfers out there enjoying nuclear powered, perfect surf!