Finding common ground

City-scale geothermal potential and its impact on subsurface climate

• Mon 23rd Feb 2026
• 19:30-21:00
• Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Churchill College, Storey's Way, Cambridge, CB3 0DS and Zoom
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Geothermal energy systems have the potential to significantly contribute towards the decarbonisation of heating and cooling. While robust methods exist for systems at local scale, assessing the geothermal potential at city scale remains prohibitively difficult. This constitutes a significant barrier to wider geothermal utilisation, as uncertainty can prevent investment. This talk will present a methodology for city-scale geothermal potential quantification, building on previous work on quantifying the thermal state beneath cities. The methodology utilises statistical clustering to identify locations with similar thermal responses, producing ‘geothermal archetypes’, significantly reducing computational costs. Through the synergistic combination of numerical and analytical approaches, the potential for large-scale geothermal exploitation is quantified, considering downstream effects.

Professor Ruchi Choudhary, Professor of Digital Civil Engineering, Dept. of Engineering, Cambridge University

Dr. Ruchi Choudhary is Professor of Architectural Engineering in the Engineering Department at University of Cambridge. She specializes in simulation methods for predicting energy demand of the built environment. At Cambridge, she leads the multi-disciplinary Energy Efficient Cities Initiative (EECi). The energy questions in her research are wide ranging and interdisciplinary: understanding the synergistic role of food production in urban environments, impact of urban-scale geothermal systems on subsurface climate, Bayesian statistical modelling of uncertainties in energy system models across scales, and city-scale energy planning involving socio-demographic features of populations. 

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