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Newly published map highlights massive opportunities for geothermal power generation, industrial heat, and district cooling in Australia and New Zealand
BOSTON, Aug. 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Project InnerSpace, an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to removing barriers to the global scaling of geothermal energy, has launched GeoMap™ Oceania, a first-of-its-kind, interactive mapping tool that uncovers massive geothermal potential across the region. An analysis by Project InnerSpace utilizing the tool estimates a recoverable geothermal resource potential of 1,596 GW in Australia and 100 GW in New Zealand, nearly 10 times each country’s current installed power capacity.
GeoMap™ Oceania, an interactive mapping tool uncovers massive geothermal potential across the region. The tool integrates millions of the Earth’s surface & subsurface data points to identify where drilling technologies can access geothermal heat for electricity, industrial heat & district cooling. An analysis by Project InnerSpace estimates a recoverable geothermal resource potential of 1,596 GW in Australia; 100 GW in New Zealand-nearly 10 times each country’s current installed power capacity.
GeoMap™ Oceania integrates millions of the Earth’s surface and subsurface data points: heat flow, thermal gradients, temperature at depth, and heat-in-place volumes, alongside surface characteristics such as demand centers, industrial clusters, and access to transmission and other infrastructure, to identify where today’s drilling technologies can access geothermal heat for electricity, industrial heat, and district cooling.
Geothermal energy, the heat naturally occurring in the Earth’s crust, is an abundant, low/no-carbon, baseload source of power and heat with a surface footprint that is amongst the smallest of all sources of energy. Advances in drilling and technology development over the last two decades in the oil and gas sector are unlocking geothermal’s global potential, making it affordable and scalable in many locations in the world where it was not before feasible to develop.
In New Zealand, conventional geothermal is already a major energy source given its position on a tectonic boundary, and GeoMap™ identifies significant additional opportunities for next-generation geothermal development there. Australia is a vast and untapped frontier for geothermal, with GeoMap™ showing opportunities for next-generation geothermal electricity and industrial heat despite the fact that it lacks New Zealand’s volcanic resources. Australia is also home to some of the world’s largest and hottest sedimentary basins, which are an excellent resource for district cooling in major cities like Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
GeoMap also highlights locations for geothermal powered and cooled data centers, industrial clusters that are candidates for geothermal heat conversion, coal plants that are candidates for geothermal power conversion, and locations that have subsurface energy storage potential, providing actionable insights for policymakers and project developers. As a follow on to this data release, a “Future of Geothermal in Oceania” report is in the early stages of development, which will function as a roadmap for tapping the region’s full geothermal potential, and consider topics such as investment pathways, supportive policy recommendations, strategies to accelerate development, and high impact pilot projects. The report will build on early momentum in the region, and increasing interest from industry in developing this massive resource. For example, earlier this year, Google Australia partnered with experts at the University of Newcastle’s Institute for Energy and Resources and Project InnerSpace to assess the feasibility of tapping geothermal resources.
“Until GeoMap, there was no easily accessible tool to help stakeholders understand and quantify the geothermal resources beneath them, and thus this ubiquitous resource has been overlooked,” said Jamie Beard, Executive Director of Project InnerSpace. “Australia is an excellent example of untapped potential – with 10X total energy demand hidden beneath the surface, and few indications on the surface that it is there. It is our hope that GeoMap will support stakeholders in advancing this massive but invisible potential into ‘wells in the ground’ development.”
About Project InnerSpace: Project InnerSpace is the leading independent non-profit organization dedicated to the global development of geothermal energy. Our mission is to remove the barriers to the exponential growth and development of geothermal energy worldwide by 2030. To learn more about Project InnerSpace please visit www.projectinnerspace.org.
About GeoMap™: GeoMap™, built in collaboration with more than 100 scientists around the globe, debuted with the launch of GeoMap Africa at the 28th Conference of the Parties in November 2023, and a full global rollout has proceeded through 2024 and 2025. Since its launch, GeoMap™ has provided the foundational dataset and analysis for six major reports, including the International Energy Agency’s recent Future of Geothermal Report. This Oceania release builds on previous GeoMap™ releases in Africa, Asia, India and North America. GeoMap™ is freely available to the public, and can be accessed at www.projectinnerspace.org by clicking on GeoMap.
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