Kootenay Lake, Canada geothermal project receives funding for geophysical surveys
Kootenay Lake at dawn, British Columbia, Canada (source: Damon daMeno, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Carlo Cariaga
28 May 2025
The Kootenay Lake geothermal exploration project in BC, Canada is moving forward with a resistivity survey after securing a rural development grant.
The South Kootenay Lake Community Services Society has received almost $100,000 in funding from the Rural Economic Diversification and Infrastructure Program (REDIP) to conduct electrical resistivity tomography surveys as part of exploration for geothermal energy in Kootenay Lake in British Columbia, Canada.
The survey will be part of Phase 5 of the project, which will also include economic modeling and business planning for direct use applications.
Earnest efforts to understand the potential geothermal system in Kootenay Lake have been ongoing for a few years. In 2022, a study done by Geoscience BC identified the most viable area for geothermal development in Kootenay Lake. This was determined to be on the east side of Kootenay Lake, in the area around Crawford Bay and in the territory of the Ktunaxa Nation.
Further studies were done in the following years, with a focus on the Crawford Creek Warm Spring in 2024 and detailed geological mapping and geochemical sampling (as part of Phase 4 of the project) done later in the same year. The findings from this phase point to a low temperature (40 °C) resource at shallow depths (2 to 3 km) hosted by a quartzite formation. The modeled recharge area combined with the projected depth of the quartzite suggest that there may be temperatures of 75 °C or higher at deeper sections.
The results of the Phase 4 study were instrumental in pursuing plans for drilling a well in the Kootenay Lake study area to determine if there is sufficient temperature and flow rates for commercial use.
The project aims to better understand the potential in the geothermal regions of the province of British Columbia, and possibly develop these assets for heat supply. It began as idea in 2019 and officially started in 2021.
Source: Castanet
