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From Opinions Desk

Project InnerSpace, in partnership with the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), has released The Future of Geothermal in India, finding that India holds significant technical potential for geothermal. This my include 11,000 gigawatts (GW) of industrial heat, more than 1,500 GW of cooling and 450 GW of electricity, nearly equal to India’s current installed capacity. Even partial deployment could significantly reduce pressure on India’s power system and diversify how industry meets its growing energy demand. The report identifies geothermal as a critical resource for the sectors driving demand. This includes datacentres, cities and industry, while strengthening energy security, enhancing resilience, cutting emissions and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. In India, where cooling demand is rising rapidly and industrial energy use remains heavily fuel-based, it offers a practical pathway to deliver reliable energy while easing pressure on the grid.

Geothermal energy, the heat naturally occurring in the Earth’s crust, is an abundant, always-available domestic resource. The report outlines a pathway to scale geothermal through pilot projects, policy implementation, and targeted incentives—moving from early-stage development to deployment this decade. Although India began exploring geothermal resources decades ago, deployment remained limited to pilot projects due to high exploration risks, uncertain drilling returns and the absence of enabling policy frameworks. The report notes that advances in drilling technologies, improved subsurface data, and India’s recent National Policy on Geothermal Energy now make large-scale deployment significantly more viable. Geothermal projects are already underway, including the Tapri Geothermal Cold Storage Project in Himachal Pradesh, a project supported by Project Innerspace’s GeoFund initiative.

“Diversity is an essential attribute of every energy system,” said Karthik Ganesan, Fellow and Director, Strategic Partnerships of CEEW. “As India’s energy supply shifts towards clean sources, this diversity will have to be met through newer technologies and geothermal is that ubiquitous source that guarantees energy security, with little environmental footprint and not affected by the vagaries of short-term weather and long-term climatic changes.”