Following the 2015 Paris Agreement dealing with the mitigation of global warming, the government and people of Taiwan have expressed their environmental awareness by accelerating the ongoing effort of substituting fossil-fuel power with green energy forms. With the deadline for promised energy policies approaching, more action is required of the geothermal option despite its high exploration cost and uncertainty issues.

The Play Fairway Analysis (PFA) is an excellent low-cost decision-making tool with a quantitative approach and the capability to combine multiple factors from limited data sources and provide stakeholders a probability assessment in the early stage of the geothermal exploration. It can construct a prudent development roadmap combining geological elements alongside socioeconomic data in place.

Considering the local aspects of the geological setting in metamorphic rocks and an active orogenic mountain belt uplift environment, the study adapts the PFA methodology using relevant data in geochemistry, geophysics, and geographies to depict the key geothermal factors in heat sources and fractural pathways. Existing elements available for analysis include (1) temperature of hot springs, silica geothermometry, and surface uplift rates for heat sources, and (2) active fault lines, shallow micro-earthquakes, dilatation strain rates, and elevation variation for fractural pathway. For pragmatic consideration, we choose population density and national parks to represent added human factors in this study to cover constrains such as operating cost, supply needs, regulations, and the like.

Through normalizing and weighting processes from the ArcGIS platform, the resulting composite map, confirmed with previous research reports, displays the calculated values on each grid cell over the research area in an easy-to-read format. We present three suggested prospects labelled in this realistic map of potential geothermal distribution across Taiwan as candidates for the next phase of geothermal development projects as part of the long push to achieve our nation's green energy goals.