India Notifies National Geothermal Energy Policy 2025
- 18 Sep 2025
On 15th September 2025, the Government of India notified the National Policy on Geothermal Energy (2025), aiming to diversify the renewable energy portfolio and support the country’s Net Zero 2070 target by harnessing untapped geothermal resources.
Key Points
- Objective: The policy seeks to position geothermal energy as a clean, dependable, and sustainable pillar of India’s energy transition.
- Diverse Applications: Geothermal energy can be used not only for power generation but also for direct applications such as district heating, agriculture, aquaculture, desalination, space heating and cooling through Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs).
- Framework and Strategy:The framework emphasizes promoting research, fostering inter-ministerial collaboration, and adopting global best practices for exploration, development, and utilization of geothermal resources.
- Alignment with Net Zero Goals: The policy aligns geothermal deployment with India’s broader renewable energy and Net Zero 2070 objectives, encouraging diverse applications such as greenhouse farming, cold storage, and tourism.
- Focus on Innovation: To encourage innovation, the policy promotes hybrid geothermal-solar plants, retrofitting of abandoned oil wells, and the deployment of Enhanced and Advanced Geothermal Systems (EGS/AGS).
- Collaboration for Growth: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) will work in collaboration with state governments, oil and gas companies, international geothermal bodies, and research institutions to create a strong ecosystem for growth.
- Pilot Projects: In its first phase, MNRE has sanctioned five projects focused on pilot demonstrations and geothermal resource assessment to evaluate potential and pave the way for future commercial-scale deployment.
