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Cutting-edge technologies to tap the Earth’s sub-surface heat could supply as much as 8% of global electricity by 2050. Achieving that goal will require favorable policies and significant cost declines, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest report.

Geothermal, or the heat energy beneath the Earth’s surface, has long been used as a heat and power source in a small handful of countries, including Iceland, the United States and Turkiye. But the resource is otherwise largely untapped, IEA said, supplying just 1% of global power demand.

However, extraction methods and skills borrowed from the oil and natural gas sector, like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), along with major cost cuts arising from favorable policies and streamlined permitting, could change the game for this emerging technology.

Using these newest techniques, geothermal could meet up to 15% of the expected growth in global electricity demand to 2050, IEA said, which is roughly the amount currently needed to power the U.S. and India combined.

The global market potential of this renewable resource is concentrated in a handful of countries that possess the technological know-how and investment dollars. They also happen to be the biggest greenhouse gas emitters.

As the chart above depicts, China has the most global potential for geothermal growth as it continues to electrify its economy and tries to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. In 2023, China alone registered more than 70% of all the investments into geothermal. The U.S. is next in line as a leading innovator in harnessing heat from the Earth, with readily accessible geothermal resources, an experienced oil and gas industry and an energy transition already underway.

The prospects for geothermal could be promising in the U.S. under the incoming Trump administration. To lead the U.S. Energy Department, President-elect Trump has tapped Chris Wright, the current chief executive of Denver-based Liberty Energy, a company specializing in fracking techniques. Wright is also an investor in Fervo Energy, a geothermal startup employing an approach based on fracking.

Fervo Energy has already inked a deal to supply 115 megawatts of electricity to Google’s data centers in Nevada, but its officials say permitting remains the largest obstacle to their plans in the United States.

Editor’s note: Fervo Energy’s investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a program of Breakthrough Energy, which also supports Cipher.