Geothermal Energy and Public Health: Opportunities, Risks, and Emerging Research Directions

Abstract

Geothermal energy stands at a pivotal moment in its development trajectory, with installed global capacity rising steadily, an expanding pipeline of enhanced and next-generation geothermal systems, and growing recognition of the technology’s potential contribution to global decarbonization and public health goals. A complete public health assessment of this expansion, however, requires weighing genuine and substantial opportunities—reduced air pollution relative to fossil fuel alternatives, reliable baseload power supporting broader health-relevant development outcomes—against a persistent, only partially resolved set of health and environmental risks, together with a rapidly evolving technical research frontier that is actively reshaping the field’s risk profile. This article synthesizes recent systematic reviews on geothermal energy risk and opportunity, chronic and community health epidemiology, and emerging enhanced geothermal systems research, to characterize the current state and future trajectory of geothermal energy’s public health implications. It draws on subsurface reactive transport modeling and reactive heat exchanger engineering relevant to long-term geothermal reservoir performance, machine learning-enhanced geomechanical characterization relevant to induced seismicity and wellbore stability risk, and heterogeneous reservoir management principles from analogous subsurface energy operations, and further considers how AI-driven precision public health, predictive analytics, and economic impact assessment frameworks developed for national healthcare systems could inform emerging public health research directions for the geothermal sector. The article concludes by identifying priority research gaps at the intersection of next-generation geothermal technology and public health, and proposes a forward-looking research agenda for the field.