An assessment of prospects of geothermal energy in India for energy sustainability

Susmita Goswami and Abhishek Kumar Rai

Renewable Energy, 2024, vol. 233, issue C

Abstract: The search for indigenous, renewable, environment-friendly, and sustainable energy resources has increased globally during the past few decades. Geothermal energy is one such ubiquitous source of energy, having the potential to become an alternate energy resource with a reduced carbon footprint. In this study, eight crucial characteristic parameters, i.e., heat flow, thermal gradient, Curie point depth, lithology, basement depth, crustal thickness, and seismicity, were integrated into a multi-criteria decision model framework to identify areas that may have the potential for geothermal energy in India. The weights of various parameters estimated using AHP are in the order of heat flow (∼ 0.252), followed by the Curie point depth (∼ 0.195), thermal gradient (∼ 0.173), and crustal thickness. Our analysis indicates that the geothermal province in the Himalayas (including the NW and NE regions), SONATA lineaments, central parts, and some parts of the west coasts and Mahanadi graben may have better prospects of geothermal energy compared to other tectonic provinces. We find that ∼14.86%, and ∼21.98 % of the study region have extremely high to high geothermal potential. About ∼ 27.18 % of the region have medium geothermal prospects, whereas ∼ 11.78 % and 24.20 % of the region have very low to low potential for geothermal energy.

Keywords: Geothermal energy; Hot-springs; AHP; MCDM; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148124011868
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:233:y:2024:i:c:s0960148124011868

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2024.121118

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().