From district heating and data center cooling to firm power and long-duration energy storage, Europe's geothermal opportunity is an unlock to near term energy independence
BOSTON, Nov. 19, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Project InnerSpace today announced the launch of GeoMap Europe, a continent-wide geothermal mapping and prospecting platform that unifies decades of subsurface data to reveal Europe's vast potential for this reliable, renewable, and locally produced form of energy.
Geothermal energy, the heat naturally occurring in the Earth's crust, is an abundant and ubiquitous source of energy. Advances in drilling and subsurface technologies are making geothermal affordable and scalable in regions once thought inaccessible.
Europe's geothermal landscape is unique, combining one of the world's longest geothermal operational histories with some of its most advanced policy and technology frameworks. From Iceland's legacy utilization of geothermal energy for heating and electricity, to the geothermal district heating networks of France, Hungary, and the Netherlands, the continent demonstrates that geothermal can be successfully developed across a wide range of applications and geographies. GeoMap Europe now provides the tools necessary to accelerate and expand on that legacy.
Leveraging millions of thermal, geological, and structural data points, GeoMap Europe hosts the world's most comprehensive and freely accessible visualization of subsurface heat across the region, as well as key surface data, identifying where geothermal energy can power cities, cool digital infrastructure, and store renewable energy underground.
GeoMap Europe highlights include:
- High-temperature resources for power generation: across Iceland; Italy's Tuscany and Mount Amiata regions; Greece's Aegean volcanic arc; western Turkey; Hungary's Pannonian Basin; and France's Massif Central and Alsace regions-supporting Europe's growing demand for firm, renewable electricity.
- Significant district heating potential: key cities across Europe can either expand current geothermal heating systems or create new ones, significantly increasing supplies of firm and domestic heat, including Paris, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, as well as Berlin, Warsaw, Hanover, Zurich, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Madrid.
- Industrial clusters co-located with areas of geothermal heat: in key areas, including Northern Italy, Northern France, and Nordrhein-Westfalen Germany, where geothermal can deliver direct process heat, hybrid heat-pump integration, and steam for chemicals, paper, food & beverage, and fuel production, enabling rapid decarbonization via geothermal heat networks.
- Data center cooling and subsurface energy storage via geothermal: opportunities for geothermal-powered cooling and waste-heat reuse in Germany's Upper Rhine Graben, northern France's Paris Basin, the Netherlands North Permian Basin, and Hungary's Pannonia Basin. Subsurface energy storage can balance wind/solar using thick sedimentary basins in northern Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
"Geothermal is the sleeping clean energy giant that the world has consistently overlooked, while collectively handwringing about the future of energy," said Jamie Beard, Executive Director of Project InnerSpace. "If Europe moves quickly to launch its next chapter of geothermal development, energy independence and decarbonization are the dual prize. GeoMap Europe is the tool that will give developers, researchers, and governments a clear picture of where to get started."
GeoMap Europe builds on earlier regional GeoMap releases across Africa, Asia, North America, India, the Middle East, Oceania, and South America, advancing Project InnerSpace's mission to democratize the geothermal opportunity. With this release-the final milestone in GeoMap's first phase-a freely accessible, state of the art geothermal resources map has now been published for every region of the world.
About Project InnerSpace
Project InnerSpace is the leading independent non-profit organization dedicated to the global development of geothermal energy. We are a focused research organization, on a mission to remove the major barriers standing in the way of 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 is Project InnerSpace's global geothermal exploration platform, developed in collaboration with more than 100 scientists worldwide. It integrates millions of subsurface and surface data points into a freely accessible, interactive map, helping governments, businesses, and communities identify and advance geothermal opportunities. Since its launch, GeoMap has provided the foundational analysis for multiple major international studies, including the International Energy Agency's Future of Geothermal report, and is freely available to the public at geomap.projectinnerspace.org/geomap/.
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