This article written by Emily Smejkal and Owen Henshaw was featured in the Opinion section of Times Colonist on August 23, 2025.
A commentary by a research fellow at the Cascade Institute Ultradeep Geothermal Program and an independent consultant.
As Canada charts its path to a net-zero economy, one of its most promising clean energy resources remains largely overlooked — geothermal energy.
Beneath our feet lies a vast reservoir of heat that could power industries, strengthen the electricity grid, heat buildings, and create thousands of jobs — if we choose to harness it.
At the Victoria Forum panel, “Shaping a Geothermal Energy Strategy for Canada,” we will explore how geothermal can help Canada meet its climate goals, unlock regional development and build a globally competitive clean energy sector. This conversation is timely — and urgent.
The report The Right Move at the Right Time: A New Canadian Industrial Strategy — co-authored by the Commission on Carbon Competitiveness and Transition Accelerator — offers a framework for identifying strategic industrial opportunities for Canada based on three criteria: market potential, resource potential and innovation potential. Geothermal meets all three.
Market potential: Domestic and global demand
Geothermal energy offers a unique dual-market opportunity. It can meet domestic energy needs while positioning Canada as a global leader in clean energy services and technology.
Domestically, geothermal provides clean, reliable baseload power and heat — a critical complement to intermittent renewables like wind and solar. This is especially valuable in regions with high heating demands, such as Western Canada and the North, where geothermal district heating could reduce reliance on fossil fuels and lower energy costs for communities.
Geothermal supports industrial decarbonization, offering heat for sectors like food processing, mining and manufacturing. As Canada moves toward its 2050 net-zero targets, geothermal can play a key role in reducing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors. Internationally, the market is expanding rapidly. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that, if cost reductions are achieved, cumulative investment in geothermal could reach $2.5 trillion US by 2050.
Other countries — such as Germany, Indonesia, Kenya, and the U.S. — are already scaling up geothermal deployment. Canadian firms are already exporting expertise and technology. Companies like Streamflow and Pro-Pipe are supplying high-temperature tools originally developed for the oil sands to geothermal projects abroad. This positions Canada to become a global supplier of geothermal innovation, particularly in cold-climate and deep-well applications.
Resource potential: Natural and human capital
Canada’s geothermal resource base is vast and largely untapped. Regions like British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories have significant subsurface heat potential. While comprehensive mapping is still underway — such as the forthcoming Cascade Institute’s geothermal heat map project — existing data from Natural Resources Canada suggests that Canada’s geothermal energy potential exceeds current national energy demand by more than one million times.
Beyond natural capital, Canada has a strategic advantage in human capital. The oil and gas sector has cultivated a highly skilled workforce with expertise in drilling, subsurface mapping, reservoir engineering, and completions — all directly applicable to geothermal development.
The IEA estimates that 80% of oil and gas skills are transferable to geothermal. This creates a powerful opportunity for workforce spillovers, allowing Canada to retain and redeploy talent while accelerating the clean energy shift. Canada also benefits from existing infrastructure. Legacy oil and gas wells can be repurposed for geothermal or hybrid energy systems, reducing development costs and environmental impact.
Projects like FutEra Power are already demonstrating how this can work in practice. Additionally, rich subsurface data sets — like the Alberta Geological Survey’s geothermal atlas of Alberta — give Western provinces a head start in exploration and planning.
Innovation potential: Building a competitive advantage
Canada has the ingredients to become a global leader in geothermal innovation. Our academic institutions — such as the University of Calgary, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), University of Waterloo, and federal research bodies such as CanMET and the Geologic Survey of Canada — are advancing geothermal technologies, like enhanced geothermal systems and closed-loop geothermal for application in Canada.
Canadian firms are also making waves.
Eavor Technologies, for example, has developed a patented closed-loop system that it piloted in Canada and is now demonstrating in Germany and has raised close to $1 billion in private and public investment.
Other innovative companies, such as Meager Creek Development, Novus Earth, Eonic Energy, and DEEP Earth Energy, are exploring novel approaches to drilling, completions, and hybrid systems that combine geothermal with other renewables.
Canada also holds patent strength in well design, completions, and subsurface technologies — many of which originated in the oil sands and are now being adapted for geothermal. This positions Canada to lead in deep geothermal innovation, a niche with growing global demand.
With the right support, Canada can build a full value chain in geothermal — from exploration and drilling to technological development and export — ensuring that innovation stays in-country and drives economic growth.
But this opportunity won’t last forever. As other countries accelerate their geothermal strategies, the window for Canada to secure a leadership position is narrowing.
If we delay, we risk losing our competitive edge, our skilled workforce, and our chance to shape global markets.
What comes next?
To realize geothermal’s potential, Canada must act strategically:
• Include geothermal explicitly in the national industrial strategy.
• Launch a national geothermal innovation and deployment fund to support research and development, pilot projects, and commercialization.
• Install consistent geothermal regulations across the country in line with Cascade Institutes Groundwork report.
• Establish geothermal test centres across diverse geologies to de-risk development and foster collaboration between research and industry.