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India's first two deep geothermal wells, each 1,000 metres deep, were commissioned at Puga Valley in Ladakh at an altitude of over 14,000 feet.
They were drilled by the ONGC Energy Centre with the Ladakh administration and LAHDC Leh, and are the first tangible output of the National Policy on Geothermal Energy notified in September 2025.
One well was spudded on 3 June 2026 and completed to 1,000 metres on 8 July 2026; a maximum temperature of 135 degrees Celsius was recorded at 400 metres.
The wells will support reservoir evaluation for India's first 1 MW demonstration-scale geothermal power plant, advancing the Carbon-Neutral Ladakh vision.
The Geological Survey of India puts India's theoretical geothermal potential at about 10.6 GW, across 381 mapped hot springs in 10 geothermal provinces.
Earth's interior heat comes from the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium plus primordial heat from planet formation. In tectonically active zones, mantle convection pushes hot fluids up into permeable rocks, trapping steam and superheated water.
Simple Analogy: A kettle buried underground, with rock as the lid.
Create a regulatory and investment framework to turn India's mapped geothermal resource into installed capacity, notified in September 2025 under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
Key: Empowers States and UTs to award exploration permits of 3-5 years and development leases of up to 30 years through State Nodal Agencies with single-window clearance, and sets out guidelines to repurpose abandoned, depleted or sub-commercial oil and gas wells for geothermal heat and power using ONGC and OIL subsurface data.
Drilled and commissioned the two Puga wells and is carrying out reservoir evaluation for the pilot plant
Mapped 381 hot springs across 10 geothermal provinces and estimated India's theoretical geothermal potential at about 10.6 GW
Notified the National Policy on Geothermal Energy in September 2025 and runs the pilot projects at Ankleshwar and Gandhinagar
Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council partnering the project locally alongside the UT administration
Puga sits in the Himalayan Geothermal Province, which also covers Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The other provinces are the Naga-Lusai belt, the Andaman and Nicobar volcanic arc, the Son-Narmada-Tapi lineament, the West Coast or Konkan belt, the Cambay Graben in Gujarat, the Aravalli province, the Mahanadi basin, the Godavari basin and the South Indian cratonic region.
GS Paper 1 > Geography - geothermal resources and Earth's interior; GS Paper 3 - energy, renewable sources and infrastructure
General Awareness > Science and Energy Current Affairs
General Awareness > Government Policies and Renewable Energy
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Low-carbon thermal energy from Earth's interior, produced by radioactive decay of isotopes and residual primordial heat.
Returning condensed geothermal fluid to the reservoir to keep hydrostatic pressure up and avoid depleting the resource.
A shallow-geothermal system using borehole heat exchangers to heat or cool buildings.
The start of drilling a well; the Puga well was spudded on 3 June 2026.