The abandoned Con Mine in Yellowknife could one day keep the city's residents warm, depending on the results of a feasibility study the city will launch in the new year.

City officials will assemble a team to study whether geothermal energy can be harnessed from the former underground mine site, which produced five million ounces of gold from 1938 to 2003.

Earlier this year, a preliminary report by Mory Ghomshei, a mining professor at the University of British Columbia, concluded that the former mine's high temperatures — reaching upward of 34 C — and its underground location directly below the city could make it a prime source of geothermal energy.

"The feasibility study will look into the nuts and bolts of how much heat is in the mine, how much is available to be used within the community. And then we'll start looking at where in the community can we utilize this heat and how to move that heat to the surface," Yellowknife energy co-ordinator Mark Henry told CBC News.

"We'll obviously have to look at the economics to determine whether we want to move ahead with it."

Ghomshei's report said the city is one of the best Canadian markets for geothermal heat, since it uses 70 per cent of its energy to heat homes and buildings. Going with geothermal heat, the report said, would cut down on Yellowknife's heavy reliance on fossil fuels for heat, thus cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.

The city has set aside almost $300,000 from the federal Indian and Northern Affairs department and Federation of Canadian Municipalities to conduct the feasibility study.