Compared to the rapidly growing wind and solar energy sectors, China's geothermal energy development has remained relatively obscure in recent years. Starting last year, the application of shallow geothermal energy in China has experienced a modest surge in development. The Ministry of Land and Resources has now begun to intensify the exploration of high-temperature geothermal resources, preparing for the geothermal power generation goals of the 13th Five-Year Plan and beyond.

Currently, China's annual ground-source heat pump energy utilization has surpassed that of the United States, ranking first in the world. However, in terms of equipment capacity, China lags behind the U.S., ranking second globally," said Zheng Kexuan, Director of the Geothermal专业委员会 of the China Energy Research Society.

In 2014, the smokeless city of Xiongxian, a region in North China known for replacing coal with geothermal heating, was born. To date, Xiongxian has invested 330 million yuan in geothermal projects, covering 2.4 million square meters with centralized geothermal heating, accounting for 90% of the total centralized heating area.

Following the "Xiongxian Model," China's geothermal industry is currently developing the "Xiaoyangkou Model" and the "Guangdong Fengshun Model" to address the winter heating and summer air conditioning cooling issues in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions. Academician Wang Jiyang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that in the southern regions with favorable conditions, shallow geothermal energy and moderate-temperature geothermal resources can be utilized to create "distributed geothermal heating and cooling systems" to solve the winter heating and summer cooling problems in the south.