The State of California has committed $20 million in its 2026 budget to support geothermal exploration, mapping, characterisation, and development. Designed to overcome the financial barriers associated with early-stage exploration, the programme utilises a cost-share model that mandates matching non-state funds, creating a total potential investment pool of $40 million.
According to the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), the funding will focus specifically on next-generation geothermal technologies, rather than mature conventional hydrothermal projects. A key objective is to support appraisal drilling—the expensive process of drilling the first full-scale wells and establishing connectivity between them. As appraisal drilling carries the highest subsurface risk and is difficult to finance privately, this public funding aims to absorb early-stage technical uncertainties.
The initiative is expected to prioritise projects in distinct, underexplored geological regions of the state. By sharing the high upfront costs of exploratory drilling and generating publicly available subsurface data, the programme intends to crowd in private capital and catalyse the commercial deployment of baseload geothermal power.
Image Courtesy of National Laboratory of the Rockies. "Geospatial Data Science." [2026]. Access: www.nlr.gov/maps.
