Explainer: This is how geothermal energy works

Jan 4, 2023

Many countries around the world are beginning to use more geothermal energy. Image: Viktor Kiryanov/Unsplash

Marcus Lu

Financial Writer, Visual Capitalist

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Energy Transition is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Energy Transition

Visualisation showing how geothermal energy works and is used. Image: Visual Capitalist/Think GeoEnergy Research, US Department of Energy, National Geographic, Renewable Energy Agency

Have you read?

The US used the most geothermal energy in 2021. Image: Visual Capitalist

Geothermal energy’s total capacity in this dataset differs from the previous value of 16GW. This is due to differing sources and rounding. Image: Visual Capitalist

Forecasted growth of geothermal energy capacity by region. Image: Visual Capitalist/EIA, IRENA, Local sources, Fitch Solutions

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.