The International Energy Agency (IEA) Implementing Agreement for a Cooperative Programme on Geothermal Energy Research and Technology, or Geothermal Implementing Agreement (GIA), provides an important framework for wide-ranging international cooperation in geothermal R&D. Its activities presently cover four different research areas: Environmental Impacts of Geothermal Development, Enhanced Geothermal Systems, Advanced Geothermal Drilling Technology and Direct Use of Geothermal Energy.

The GIA has begun its third 5-year term of operation, which ends on 31 March 2012. The mission for this term is to promote the sustainable utilization of geothermal energy throughout the world by: improving existing technologies, developing new technologies to render exploitable the vast and widespread global geothermal resources, facilitating the transfer of know-how, providing high quality information and widely communicating geothermal energy's strategic, economic and environmental benefits.