Global geothermal investment is set to grow20% a year to 2030

On a dollars-per-watt basis, Rystad estimates district heating costs at roughly US$3 per watt.

Global geothermal investment is set to expand rapidly, with capital spending projected to grow about 20% a year through 2030, according to Rystad Energy.

The firm said interest is expanding beyond traditional geothermal markets as governments and companies seek clean, reliable baseload energy.

Rystad noted that the cost structure of geothermal projects is relatively stable across regions. Slightly more than half of total spending goes to surface facilities, around 47% to subsurface work and roughly 2% to pre-FID activities.

The consultancy added that although pre-FID represents a small share of total costs, it remains an area of meaningful project risk.

Regional priorities differ. In Europe, geothermal development is led by heating applications such as district heating systems used to decarbonise building heat.

In Asia, particularly Indonesia, and in North America, investment is geared toward power generation to meet baseload needs. In the United States, Rystad said growth is also linked to emerging enhanced geothermal systems and rising demand from data centres.

Cooling is beginning to emerge as an additional use case. Early pilots include the UAE’s G2COOL geothermal cooling project for data centres.

On a dollars-per-watt basis, Rystad estimates district heating costs at roughly US$3 per watt, compared with about US$6 per watt for power generation. The latter reflects the added cost of turbines and more complex surface equipment.