Can the oil and gas sector enable geothermal technologies? Socio-technical opportunities and complementarity failures in Alberta, Canada

Regions that produce and export fossil fuels experience strong carbon lock-in. Yet, successful fossil fuel sectors also equip a region with skills and resources that could promote the development of certain low-carbon technologies. This paper considers potential complementarities between the oil and gas sector and low-carbon geothermal energy technologies in Alberta, Canada. We find that resources from oil and gas could enable the development of geothermal technologies because of similarities in areas such as actor skills, policy institutions, political networks, sub-surface information, and physical infrastructure. We also present an improved conceptual framework to study socio-technical complementarities based on the technological innovation systems (TIS) approach. Our framework allows for a more active search for unexploited opportunities to develop a new technology within a given regional or sectoral context and highlights the possibility for system complementarity failures. •A technological innovation system (TIS) can draw resources from its larger context.•TIS framework needs clarifications to consider complementary system interactions.•The oil and gas sector can enable geothermal technologies.•Some complementary overlaps with oil and gas are not fully exploited in Alberta.•Policymakers should search out opportunities to exploit complementary overlaps.