We think Project InnerSpace's core activities—GeoMap and GeoFund—can lower financial risks for companies and boost geothermal deployment relative to the counterfactual; we develop a theory of change to describe the effects of its activities in Figure 1 . We also think Project InnerSpace’s efforts to promote geothermal energy can have secondary effects that raise the odds of supportive U.S. policies being passed. Additionally, we believe Project InnerSpace’s mapping efforts in particular can be a useful tool for policy development and advocacy in its mapped areas, making it more likely that supportive policies will be passed. We think these inputs can increase the speed of geothermal innovation, enhance global spillover effects, and accelerate emissions reductions compared to the counterfactual.
We examine the evidence for how well Project InnerSpace executes its inputs in the sections below.
Figure 1: Project InnerSpace’s theory of change
Assessment of Project InnerSpace’s Ability to Execute Its Activities GeoMap: Mapping Next-Gen Geothermal’s Global Potential In general, we have a positive impression of Project InnerSpace’s ability to make the connections needed for GeoMap, in terms of finding the requisite data, recruiting talent, and communicating its findings.
We are optimistic about Project InnerSpace’s ability to connect GeoMap with users because—according to numerous researchers and funders we interviewed—Project InnerSpace is a highly engaged convener of research universities, as well as both geothermal and oil and gas companies. We think it is especially promising that Project InnerSpace is leading the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Geothermal Energy from Oil and Gas Demonstrated Engineering (GEODE) Initiative. GEODE connects geothermal experts with oil and gas experts, who we think would bring useful knowledge to expanding geothermal energy; we think there are potential synergies between GEODE and GeoMap.17 Since GeoMap’s launch in 2023, it has grown to 2,600 users across 100 countries. Users include individuals from academia, industry, finance, government, and media. According to Project InnerSpace, around 1,800 unique organizations actively engage with the platform (Figure 2 ).
Figure 2: GeoMap user queries shown by location and by sectors.18We think it is plausible that Project InnerSpace’s work could help facilitate deals for further next-gen geothermal projects, leading to faster learning and cost decreases relative to the counterfactual. As an example of GeoMap’s usefulness to industry, Project InnerSpace shared the following testimonial from Sage Geosystems, a next-gen geothermal start-up:
Sage Geosystems uses Project InnerSpace’s GeoMap tool to rapidly derisk prospectivity for geothermal resources in terms of heat, presence of faults, regional stress states, and lithologies at targeted depths.19 Additionally, Project InnerSpace’s North America module has identified multiple U.S. sites with the potential for future geothermal exploitation.20 We think some of these locations could be low-hanging fruit for building next-gen geothermal systems, such as military bases and data centers that could be willing to pay a premium for clean firm power.21 Indeed, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has expressed interest in building its military installations’ energy resilience, and as of April 2024, there are now seven DoD installations with ongoing geothermal projects.22
We also think it is a positive sign that Project InnerSpace is collaborating with Google on GeoMap because we think Google’s data and software capabilities can increase GeoMap’s likelihood of success.23
GeoFund: Financing First-of-a-Kind Geothermal Projects GeoFund has successfully funded its first community-scale geothermal project. We think its feasibility is likely high because our understanding is that it faces financing barriers and not technical barriers. We think it is too early to assess how catalytic this grant will be because Project InnerSpace funded its first project in 2025. We are not yet sure how well its funding model will translate to first-of-a-kind next-gen geothermal technologies, as these projects have a riskier profile. However, we see this early financing as critical to the future commercialization of next-generation geothermal systems, and are cautiously optimistic that Project Innerspace can find a niche in which to provide catalytic capital.
Building Momentum for Geothermal Energy in the Public and Private Sectors We have a positive impression of Project InnerSpace’s ability to build momentum for geothermal energy in the public and private sectors. For example, before Project InnerSpace’s inception, Jamie Beard played a significant role in promoting geothermal energy in Texas. Her collaboration with several Texas academics culminated in The Future of Geothermal in Texas report24 The GEODE consortium includes over 100 entities across the oil and gas and geothermal sectors. Beyond direct technology transfer, we believe the GEODE initiative could also assist fossil fuel workers in transitioning to new jobs and make a strong case for the geothermal industry's job-creating potential.
Additionally, we have heard from numerous geothermal stakeholders that Project InnerSpace has played an important role in generating excitement about geothermal energy. We believe this is reflected in Project InnerSpace’s press coverage throughout the years, which includes mentions and profiles in major media outlets.25
In September 2024, Project InnerSpace hosted its first Geothermal House event during Climate Week NYC to showcase technologies, foster networking, and bring stakeholders together. In 2025, we heard from one next-gen geothermal company that Geothermal House has helped it facilitate at least three of its investment deals. We see this as promising evidence of Project InnerSpace’s role as an ecosystem builder. Overall, we believe Project InnerSpace and its events are well-positioned to generate leads for a couple of reasons. First, we think Project InnerSpace has expansive ties to the next-gen geothermal industry and can bring the right people in the room with its connections. Secondly, there is currently excitement over geothermal technologies, such as growing interest in using clean power for data centers.26
Examining the Assumptions Behind Project InnerSpace’s Theory of Change Below, we discuss and evaluate the main assumptions related to our understanding of Project InnerSpace’s theory of change. For each assumption, we rank whether we have low, medium, or high certainty about the assumption.27 Our assessment is based on both primary and secondary evidence, as well as our general impression of the plausibility of the assumption. Importantly, a number of the stages of Project InnerSpace’s theory of change may not be amenable to easy measurement or quantification, are not supported by a robust evidence base, or are expected to occur in the future but have not occurred as of yet. Additional assumptions related to next-gen geothermal technologies, but not specific to Project InnerSpace, can be found in our strategy report on advancing next-gen geothermal energy .
Financing and de-risking next-gen geothermal addresses a key barrier to commercialization and deployment (high certainty) Most of Project InnerSpace’s inputs aim to derisk next-gen geothermal, whether by decreasing exploration risks through GeoMap or crowding in additional finance. We have high certainty that these are the right levers to pull to get next-gen geothermal to commercialization because they help address a key challenge outlined by DOE in its Pathways to Commercial Lift-off report: high up-front costs and risks.28 According to DOE, “the fastest path to enable next-generation scale-up is early capital to finance new demonstration projects.”29 We think Project InnerSpace’s work on building momentum for next-gen geothermal has helped connect the industry to strategic investors and investor-offtakers, and has built interest among oil and gas majors. GeoFund, once expanded to first-of-a-kind next-gen geothermal projects, could further crowd in funding.
Resource characterization mapping addresses a substantial obstacle to increased geothermal deployment. (high certainty) We have high certainty that resource characterization mapping, such as GeoMap, addresses a substantial obstacle to increased geothermal deployment.
Pre-drilling and exploratory activities account for a small portion of project costs, but are critical to project success.30 Specifically, before drilling and testing, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the quality of geothermal resources at a given site. During the exploration stage, developers can fail to find resources suitable for commercially viable production.31 (See Figure 3 for a conceptual model of risks and costs in geothermal projects.) Consequently, this high risk can hinder developers’ ability to secure funding for exploration and initial drilling, leading to delays or stalled projects.32
Figure 3: Conceptual model of risk and cumulative costs for geothermal projects.33Therefore, we believe that geothermal resource mapping can enhance the likelihood of project success by mitigating risks, shortening development timelines (and therefore reducing costs), and attracting more investors. We think this perspective aligns with some of the findings in DOE’s GeoVision report, which advocates for increased resource assessments and improved site characterizations.34
We also think Project InnerSpace’s mapping could help address some issues related to data scarcity and developing effective policies. For example, the absence of accessible and relevant data has hindered the development of renewable energy in Nigeria.35 Indeed, geothermal’s potential in Nigeria is not yet quantified and geothermal was excluded from the International Renewable Energy Agency’s roadmap for transitioning Nigeria away from fossil fuels.36 We are under the impression that improving the quality and quantity of geothermal-related data in data-scarce areas could help advocates develop policy recommendations and build momentum for geothermal energy, increasing the likelihood that supportive policies are passed and investments are made.
As a caveat, we think the usefulness of geothermal resource mapping will depend on data quality and representativeness and whether it is actually used by relevant stakeholders. We are concerned that legacy subsurface data will be location-biased and exhibit clustering (e.g., boreholes located close to other boreholes), which increases model uncertainty.37 We believe Project InnerSpace is aware of potential data quality issues and has plans to ensure quality control.
Project InnerSpace is increasing the speed of resource characterization mapping in LMICs relative to the counterfactual. (high certainty) We have high certainty that Project InnerSpace is increasing the speed of resource characterization mapping in LMICs relative to the counterfactual.
The U.S. Geological Survey and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are among the U.S. entities working on geothermal resource characterization.38 Our understanding is that even with both of these major entities working on resource characterization, the U.S. still needs more data to reduce uncertainty and identify more resources.39 We think that, if there is a need for more data in a wealthy country such as the U.S., there is probably a similar need in LMICs, where funding is likely scarcer. Additionally, we believe private companies are not motivated to make global maps public since public data would benefit their competitors. According to Project InnerSpace, if it did not exist, some of the mapping it plans on doing could be funded by governments, but this would probably occur on a piecemeal basis with varying quality and consistency.
Improved geothermal resource characterization will lead to more projects being developed, and an increased number of projects developed will lead to lower costs (medium certainty) We have medium certainty that improved geothermal resource characterization will lead to more projects being developed and that an increased number of projects developed will lead to lower costs.
As described earlier, we think GeoMap will decrease project risks and help projects attract more investments. In turn, we think that removing these obstacles will increase the number of developed geothermal projects. However, we are unsure of the extent to which mapping will increase the number of projects developed because exploration risks are not the only challenge that geothermal projects face. Geothermal projects face a mix of technical and non-technical barriers, and we do not think mapping is the sole solution for pushing next-gen geothermal technologies forward.
We think increasing the number of projects developed will lead to lower costs because some next-gen geothermal technologies will follow a learning curve. For example, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), which create man-made reservoirs by injecting water underground, have become cheaper over time. Iterative improvements and technical advancements have helped EGS drop from an Overnight Capital Cost estimate of $27,800 per kW in 2021 to a 2023 estimate of about $14,700 per kW.40 However, there is always considerable uncertainty over what kind of learning curve a new technology will follow. For more information, see our strategy report on advancing next-gen geothermal energy .
17 “On September 10, 2024, an exciting collaboration kicked off to expand geothermal energy deployment and shape the nation’s future energy landscape. The Geothermal Technologies Office’s (GTO) GEODE initiative, short for Geothermal Energy from Oil and Gas Demonstrated Engineering, will leverage the expertise and experience of the oil and gas sector to boost geothermal energy nationwide. Backed by $10 million from GTO, the project's phase will lay the groundwork for a comprehensive roadmap to unlock geothermal energy’s potential. Led by Project InnerSpace, GEODE is convening experts from both industries to leverage oil and gas industry know-how for geothermal innovation and identify areas for future GEODE research, pending appropriations.” Geothermal Technologies Office, 2024 .
18 Email correspondence with Project InnerSpace, 2025-10-30.
19 Email correspondence with Project InnerSpace, 2025-10-30.
20 “The GeoMap data shows that virtually every military base in the West, and most of those in Texas, sits atop geothermal resources suitable to generate electric power — a fact that has not been lost on the Department of Defense, which is funding pilot projects at six military bases across the West. The data also shows that most of the active coal plants in the West — plants that rely on using heat from fossil fuels to generate electricity — sit atop hot rock within a mile of the surface. That includes active coal plants like North Valmy in Nevada, Fayette in Texas or the California-supplying Intermountain power plant in Utah — plants where an active planet-heating resource could potentially be replaced with carbon-free heat from below. But it also includes a broad array of decommissioned coal plants — sites that still sit in the center of webs of power lines that could onboard future clean power onto the grid while avoiding the roadblocks around permitting new transmission corridors. The Geomap researchers found that many of the West’s other sites — greenhouses, meatpacking facilities, chemical plants and data centers — sit atop heat that could be tapped directly, without needing to generate electricity, which is a cheaper proposition.” Elbein, 2024 .
21 “Military bases and data centers offer one particular benefit for the geothermal industry as it seeks to get its legs under it: They are facilities that are willing to pay a premium for power that is both clean and always on, even if it is substantially more expensive than more intermittent sources like wind or solar. “ Elbein, 2024
22 Energy resilience: “The Department of Defense (DoD) is expanding efforts to enhance installation energy resilience using geothermal energy. Next-generation geothermal technologies show potential to produce onsite round-the-clock carbon-free energy year-after-year increasing resilience and eliminating the need for fuel deliveries during long-term power disruptions. Threats from wildfires, extreme weather, cybersecurity attacks are increasing, and geothermal energy is an ideal solution to support DoD missions and communities with power.” Defense Innovation Unit, 2024. Seven installations: “There are now seven installations with ongoing projects under this geothermal initiative.” Defense Innovation Unit, 2024 .
23 “Project InnerSpace has announced a partnership with Google focused on expanding the use and adoption of geothermal energy worldwide. The collaboration unites the subsurface expertise and resources of Project InnerSpace, a non-profit organization focused on removing barriers to the growth and development of geothermal energy globally, and the data and software capabilities of Google, a global technology leader working to run its operations on 24/7 carbon-free energy and contribute to the decarbonization of global energy systems. Project InnerSpace and Google intend to leverage their respective strengths to address critical challenges facing geothermal development, including the development of a global geothermal resource mapping and assessment tool.” Cariaga, 2023 .
24 “Fueled by $10 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), this initial roadmapping phase sets the foundation for a comprehensive plan to harness geothermal energy's vast potential, leveraging the extensive experience and technologies from the oil and gas industry. The GEODE consortium brings together experts from over 100 partner entities across the energy industry, led by Project InnerSpace and the Society of Petroleum Engineers. DOE expects GEODE will be a 5-year effort, with the consortium issuing competitive solicitations of up to $155 million for research activities over the latter four years, pending appropriations.” GEODE, 2024 .
25 New York Times: ““It’s been hard for geothermal to fight its way into the conversation,” said Jamie Beard, founder of Project InnerSpace, a Texas-based nonprofit that promotes geothermal.” Plumer, 2023 . WIRED: Streshinsky, 2023 . National Public Radio: Zomorodi and Delahoussaye, 2022 .
26 AI and data centers: “During a “fireside chat” at Geothermal House, a day-long summit on geothermal energy sponsored by Project InnerSpace, a geothermal nonprofit, Mike Schroepfer, the former CTO of Meta who is now a climate venture investor, said the demand for power from AI was “the best news ever.” He argued that having companies with big power needs and deep pockets was much better for clean energy development than having a stagnant grid that’s just trying to replace dirty power plants.” Zeitlin, 2024 . Tech interest in next-gen geothermal: “Google is partnering with startup Fervo, which has developed new technology for harnessing geothermal power. Since they’re using different tactics than traditional geothermal plants, it is a relatively small project with the capacity to generate 3.5 MW. For context, one megawatt is enough to meet the demand of roughly 750 homes. The project will feed electricity into the local grid that serves two of Google’s data centers outside of Las Vegas and Reno. It’s part of Google’s plan to run on carbon pollution-free electricity around the clock by 2030. To reach that goal, it’ll have to get more sources of clean energy online. And it sees geothermal as a key part of the future electricity mix that can fill in whenever wind and solar energy wane.” Calma, 2023 .
27 We describe our certainty as low/medium/high to increase readability and avoid false precision. Since these terms can be interpreted differently, we use rough heuristics to define them as percentage likelihoods the assumption is, on average, correct. Low = 0-60%, medium = 70-80%, high = 80-100%.
28 See Table 2: Challenges confronting the pathway to commercial scale for next-generation geothermal liftoff and potential solutions as determined from analysis and interviews. DOE, 2025 .
29 “The fastest path to enable next-generation scale-up is early capital to finance new demonstration projects. This will reduce developer time spent raising equity and increase the asset base, triggering a positive feedback loop in which future projects benefit from the drilling improvements demonstrated from past projects, have lower costs, and require less equity. It will also increase the incentive for developers to expand to new sites.” DOE, 2025 .
30 Small share of project costs: “The costs of pre-drilling and exploration drilling activities are comparatively small with respect to overall development costs; however, they directly influence subsequent drilling success rates and thus have a major financial impact on projects. In a 2016 analysis, Wall and Dobson found that exploration drilling results led to drilling full-sized development wells less than one third of the time. Exploration, confirmation, and development-well drilling collectively account for 30%–50% of the costs of geothermal development (Bromley et al. 2010). The cascading effects of exploration activities—from pre-drilling geotechnical studies through exploration, confirmation, and development drilling—have a collective impact on overall project costs and success.” U.S. Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019. Percentage of project costs: The Future of Geothermal in Texas , a report that includes various Project InnerSpace staff as lead authors, estimated that pre-development surveys, exploration, and appraisal constitute approximately 10 percent of total expenses for geothermal projects. See Table 5.3. Project cost phasing by geothermal technology. University of Texas, Austin, 2023 .
31 “In new (“green field”) geothermal projects, the highest risks are faced during the early stages of surface reconnaissance and exploration drilling (Stages I & II). During these early stages of development, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the flow capacity and temperature of the resource, namely, the ability to drill commercially productive wells that will supply a specified generation capacity for a specified length of time is poorly known. This leads to uncertainty in the likely overall cost to extract the geothermal fluids and reinjected the heat-depleted brine to replenish the reservoir. This uncertainty is considerably reduced after drilling and testing have confirmed the resource availability (following the completion of Stage II), which in turn allows the financial feasibility of proceeding with investment in subsequent development stages (Stages III and IV) to be ascertained.” Sanyal et al, 2016 .
32 “While modest in comparison to the total cost of developing all of the stages of a geothermal project, the inability to raise funds for exploration and initial drilling can delay or sometimes even stall geothermal projects. Raising this risk capital can be particularly challenging for private-sector geothermal developers, since exploration drilling is typically funded with owner equity, which can be lost if the project turns out not to be feasible. Therefore, real or perceived “resource risk” has become a common barrier to advancing geothermal development around the world.” Sanyal et al, 2016 .
33 Figure, Sanyal et al, 2016 .
34 "Variables such as market, transmission, and stakeholder support for a project cannot be determined without first understanding the resource potential— that is, where is the resource and what is its grade or quality? As such, the resulting economic determinations are only as accurate as the quality of the resource assessment data on which they are based. Mitigating uncertainty in resource assessments lowers the risk of unproductive exploration, thus reducing development costs.” DOE, 2019 .
35 “Poor access to accurate and timely data or information on renewable energy has been a major barrier for effective policy and decision making in Nigeria. For example, it is difficult to ascertain the total wattage number of solar PV installations operational across the country. This is consistent with Sen and Ganguly [50] assertion that there is a lack of reliable data without which the generated output is likely impossible to be calculated. The absence of data recording stations constitutes a major barrier to the development of renewable energy, such as solar energy in Nigeria. Arguably, a lack of access to relevant data and inaccurate statistics remain a major barrier for renewable energy development in Nigeria.” Adejanyu et al. 2020 .
36 “Apart from solar and hydro, there is a considerable dearth of information regarding the potential of renewable resources in the country. There is a need for comprehensive assessment of wind energy potential in the country for both on- and offshore wind. As observed from the analysis, the potential for geothermal, wave and tidal energy is yet to be quantified and thus, no plans yet to develop these renewable energy resources in the country. It is recommended that the federal government perform a detailed assessment to have a robust database of Nigeria’s renewable energy potential. This will help to support planning for renewable energy development and also show the possible locations for renewables deployment.” IRENA, 2023 .
37 “Both borehole and seismic reflection data show significant clustering, with the borehole data also exhibiting a clustering and sampling bias with respect to depth. Non-representative sampling is an unavoidable consequence of collecting data to delineate resources for the exploration and production of geological resources (see Pyrcz and Deutsch, 2003). In the case of restricted depth of investigations during drilling this can also result in the underlying geological intervals not being sufficiently sampled to have a representative dataset, (e.g. Pyrcz and Deutsch, 2003). The ability to predict subsurface properties, such as temperature, relies on calibrating models against existing data. If the existing data are clustered, and there is a significant sampling bias then making predictions, based on models, away from data rich areas inevitably comes with an increased uncertainty. Representative datasets and associated statistics are vital for uncertainty modeling as sampling bias will bias any analysis of the uncertainties (Pyrcz and White., 2015).” Ireland et al. 2021 .
38 “The U.S. Geological Survey and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory developed national-scale assessments of conventional hydrothermal resources and EGS resources. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates more than 30 GWe of undiscovered conventional hydrothermal resource potential in the United States (Williams et al. 2008), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Augustine 2016) estimates more than 5,000 GWe of EGS potential at depths between 3 and 7 kilometers (about 2 to 4 miles) across the country.” DOE, 2019 .
39 “ Improving the quantity and spatial resolution of national-scale assessment data will reduce uncertainty and can potentially identify more resources (in terms of quantity and geographic distribution) than estimated as of 2017. As an example, the GeoVision analysis considered sensitivity runs comparing regional, high-resolution EGS resource assessments with broader national-scale data assessments based on EGS resource data from Southern Methodist University. The result was the identification of more than 84 GWe of additional resources in the Great Basin area alone (Augustine et al. 2019).” DOE, 2019 .
40 "Field evidence resulted in a reduction of the Overnight Capital Cost (OCC) estimate of $27,800 per kW in 2021 to a 2023 estimate of ~$14,700 per kW.” DOE, 2025 .
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