Geothermal Energy: India's First Wells Open in Puga Valley

Heat stored inside the Earth is the basis of geothermal energy, and a government backgrounder issued on 2 November 2026 sets out how India plans to use it. Unlike sunlight or wind, this heat does not change with the weather, so geothermal plants can run round the clock. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is the nodal ministry, and the National Policy on Geothermal Energy was notified in September 2025 to guide exploration and development as the country works towards its net zero goal for 2070.

The first wells

In July 2026 the ONGC Energy Centre commissioned the country's first two geothermal wells in the Puga Valley of Ladakh, a site known for hot springs and underground heat and lying more than 14,000 feet above sea level. Each well goes down 1,000 metres and will be used to assess the reservoir. They also clear the path for a planned 1-megawatt demonstration power project, which would be India's first geothermal generation.

Where the heat comes from

The Earth has four layers. At the centre is a solid inner core of iron and nickel about 2,400 km across, around it a liquid outer core roughly 2,400 km thick, then the mantle of hot dense rock running nearly 2,900 km, and finally the thin crust. The crust measures about 5 to 8 kilometres under the oceans and 24 to 56 kilometres under the continents. Temperature climbs with depth, reaching about 3,700 degrees Celsius where the mantle meets the core and 5,000 to 6,000 degrees in the core itself. Radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium, along with heat left from the planet's formation, keeps this furnace going; convection currents then carry hot material upwards, and where faults and fractures exist it approaches the surface to form reservoirs of hot water and steam.

India's resource base

• The Geological Survey of India has mapped 381 hot springs and identified 10 geothermal provinces
• India's theoretical geothermal prospect is nearly 10.6 GW, or about 10,600 MW, with 42 sites held promising for power or direct heat use
• The provinces include the Himalayan belt, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Naga-Lusai, the West Coast, Cambay Graben and the Son-Narmada-Tapi or SONATA zone, besides Aravalli, Mahanadi, Godavari and the South Indian cratonic region
• Worldwide installed geothermal capacity touched 15.67 GW by the end of 2025, with Indonesia, the United States, the Philippines, Turkiye and New Zealand holding roughly 67 per cent of it

Projects and partnerships

Five research and development projects were sanctioned by the ministry between July and August 2025. A pilot at Ankleshwar in Gujarat is testing power generation from unproductive oil and gas wells; a demonstration at Gandhinagar has drilled three wells yielding fluid at 70 to 80 degrees Celsius and shown 50 to 90 kilowatts of generation; five sites near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh are under study; and a Hyderabad project is developing geothermal cooling for air conditioning. Abandoned oil and gas wells can be repurposed, which lets the sector use existing drilling skills and data. India has named geothermal energy a field of cooperation with Australia and Iceland, and a memorandum with Saudi Arabia treats it as a focus area.