India’s geothermal story has moved beyond theoretical potential. As field evidence begins to emerge, the harder task is helping investors, policymakers, businesses, and communities understand what that evidence actually means.
- By Mayuri Singh and Nishant Saxena
For years, geothermal energy in India has been largely a story of potential. The Geological Survey of India has mapped 381 hot springs across 10 geothermal provinces, with theoretical potential estimated at around 10.6 GW. Forty-two sites have been identified as promising for power generation and direct heat applications.
Those figures establish the scale of the resource. They do not tell us how much can eventually be developed, at what cost, or for which applications.
India now has something more useful than another resource estimate: evidence from the field.
In July 2026, ONGC Energy Centre commissioned the country’s first two geothermal wells at Puga Valley in Ladakh. The wells, each 1,000 metres deep and located at an altitude of more than 14,000 feet, are being used for reservoir evaluation and could support India’s first 1 MW demonstration geothermal power project.
The National Policy on Geothermal Energy, notified in September 2025, provides the broader policy framework, covering exploration, research, drilling, reservoir management and applications ranging from electricity to heating, cooling, agriculture and aquaculture.
The story has therefore moved from resource potential towards field testing. How that transition is understood could influence what happens next.
Potential makes a good headline. Evidence makes a credible story.
Emerging energy technologies often enter public discussion through a single number. For geothermal, 10.6 GW is likely to be that number.
It is a useful measure of India’s theoretical resource base, but it is not a project pipeline or a forecast of installed capacity. Once a large number becomes familiar, however, the qualification attached to it can easily disappear as the story moves from technical documents into policy discussions, investor conversations, and media coverage.
This is where strategic communication becomes part of the sector-building process.
The task is not to make geothermal sound more attractive. It is to help stakeholders interpret evidence at the right level of maturity.
An investor looking at Puga will ask about resource risk, drilling costs, scalability and returns. A regulator may be more concerned with the framework that would eventually govern a new technology. An industrial user may care primarily about whether geothermal heat can provide a reliable and economic alternative to its existing energy source. For a local community, land, water, environmental effects and local economic benefits may matter more.
The underlying evidence does not change for each audience. What changes is the question that audience needs the evidence to answer.
A credible sector narrative has to accommodate those differences without changing the facts.
Puga gives the story something to test
The Puga wells matter because they move geothermal from the territory of possibility into a process of field testing. The wells will support reservoir evaluation, while research on the Puga field is examining the behaviour of its fractured geothermal reservoir and the conditions affecting heat extraction.
This is where the distinction between evidence and conclusion becomes important.
A resource assessment can indicate where geothermal prospects may exist. A drilled well provides information about actual subsurface conditions. A demonstration project can generate operating experience. Commercial deployment eventually has to answer questions of cost, reliability, scalability and long-term resource performance.
Each stage adds a different kind of evidence.
The way that progression is communicated matters because expectations can easily move faster than the technology. A demonstration project presented as proof of commercial viability creates one set of expectations. A project described accurately as a step towards establishing technical and economic feasibility creates another.
The more useful question at each stage is simple: what has the evidence established, what remains under evaluation, and what decision can reasonably be taken on its basis?
That discipline becomes increasingly important as geothermal moves beyond specialist circles.
The first story can shape how the sector is understood
The first few stories told about a new technology tend to have unusual staying power.
Someone encountering geothermal for the first time may remember “10.6 GW potential”. Another may remember “India’s first geothermal wells”. A third may come away thinking of geothermal primarily as a source of electricity. Each is incomplete.
The policy framework itself points to a wider set of applications, including direct heat, district heating, agriculture, aquaculture and ground-source heat pumps. India is also examining the potential to repurpose abandoned or unproductive oil and gas wells, subject to technical and operational feasibility, drawing on existing drilling expertise, well data and infrastructure.
This creates a subtle communications challenge. The sector needs a clear proposition that people can understand, without allowing the first impression of geothermal to become too narrow for the technology’s eventual development.
If geothermal is introduced only as another source of electricity, some of its potentially important applications may remain outside the conversation.
For an industrial consumer, the relevant proposition could eventually be dependable heat. For a building, it could be heating or cooling. For an oil and gas operator, existing wells and subsurface data could form part of a different proposition altogether.
The technology is the same. The value proposition is not.
When evidence leaves the project site
Technical evidence rarely travels intact. It moves through reports, policy documents, presentations, news stories, investor discussions and stakeholder meetings. Each translation makes the information more accessible, but also creates the possibility that an important qualification will be lost.
Geothermal is particularly susceptible to this because many of the factors that determine project viability sit beneath the surface, literally and commercially: resource temperature, reservoir characteristics, permeability, drilling requirements, reinjection, and long-term reservoir behaviour.
A technically accurate statement can therefore leave a non-technical audience with an inaccurate impression of maturity.
Good communication in this setting is less about simplifying the science than about preserving the decision-relevant meaning while making the science understandable.
A stakeholder should be able to distinguish between what is known, what is being tested, and what could follow if the evidence is favourable.
That is a very different objective from generating attention.
India may have several geothermal stories
India is already accumulating evidence beyond Puga.
MNRE sanctioned five R&D projects between July and August 2025 covering resource assessment, indigenous technology development and field demonstration, including electricity generation and heating and cooling applications.
The policy framework also supports a national geothermal data repository, pilot projects, and Centres of Excellence, while international cooperation with countries including Australia, Iceland and Saudi Arabia is intended to support research, technology development and knowledge exchange.
As this evidence base expands, the sector will have to become more specific in how it presents itself.
The useful questions will gradually shift from “How much geothermal potential does India have?” to “Where does it work, for which application, at what cost, and under what conditions?”
Those questions are harder to answer, but they are also the questions that allow markets to form around an emerging technology.
Let the evidence set the pace
India’s geothermal story has reached an interesting stage. There is now a national policy, active field work at Puga, R&D activity and a growing body of technical evidence. At the same time, commercial-scale geothermal power generation has yet to be established.
That makes the way the sector communicates its progress unusually important.
The most credible narrative may be one that allows the story to develop at the same pace as the evidence. Potential can remain potential. A successful well can be recognised as field evidence. A demonstration can be judged for what it demonstrates. Commercial viability can be discussed when the evidence supports that conclusion.
This may produce a less spectacular story in the short term. But it can also produce a more useful one for the people who have to decide whether to regulate, invest, adopt, partner or wait.
India has begun converting its geothermal potential into field evidence. The next stage will test the resource, the technology, and the economics. It will also test whether investors, policymakers, businesses and communities can see enough in that evidence to decide what they are prepared to do with it.
After all, confidence in an emerging energy technology grows when the story keeps pace with what the evidence can actually support.
As geothermal moves from potential to field evidence, what should the sector be communicating differently?
_________________________
Want more insights like this?
Click here to join our WhatsApp Channel for strategic communications insights, leadership perspectives, industry observations, in-depth analysis, and practical communications tips.
________________________
Also read: When Does a Stakeholder Argument Influence Regulation?
When a Clear Decision Becomes an Unclear Email