China promotes geothermal pilot programs for 2026-2030 period
Xiongan new industrial zone, China (source: flickr/ GIZ-SGUP, creative commons)
Carlo Cariaga
16 Jun 2026
China's National Energy Administration has released a notice seeking to diversify geothermal applications and technologies to further displace natural gas use.
The National Energy Administration of China has released a notice calling for the construction of pilot geothermal projects during the “15th Five-Year Plan,” or the period covering 2026 to 2030. The plan encompasses a wide range of geothermal technologies and utilization models with the aim of further expanding geothermal energy use in China.
The notice explicitly encourages the large-scale development and utilization of medium-depth geothermal energy, expanding its use both for urban heating to replace natural gas heating. The plan also encourages the construction of long-distance heat transmission systems to address the mismatch between geothermal resource distribution and spatial heating demand. The notice also promotes the use of downhole heat exchanger technology by imposing simplified pre-approval procedures.
In the field of shallow geothermal, the notice proposes exploring technological routes and investment models to promote shallow geothermal heating in rural areas. It also calls for the creation of clustered shallow geothermal energy utilization projects in urban areas to optimize project construction and management processes.
The cultivation of related industries is also promoted in the notice. This includes the use of abandoned oil and gas fields for conversion to geothermal wells, the use of geothermal energy in industrial production, and the combination of the extraction of critical minerals such as lithium, helium, and boron with geothermal heating.
As of the end of 2025, the total area for geothermal heating and cooling in China has reached approximately 1.65 billion square meters. China leads globally in geothermal heating by a huge margin, and the recent notice from the National Energy Administration seeks to open up further new possibilities for geothermal energy application scenarios.
Source: 21 Jingji
