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Geothermal technology has enormous potential to power the planet and Fervo wants to tap it
Tapping the geothermal energy stored beneath the Earth’s surface as a way to generate renewable power is one of the new visions for the future that’s captured the attention of environmentalists and oil and gas engineers alike.
That’s because it’s not only a way to generate power that doesn’t rely on greenhouse gas emitting hydrocarbons, but because it uses the same skillsets and expertise that the oil and gas industry has been honing and refining for years.
At least that’s what drew the former completion engineer (it’s not what it sounds like) Tim Latimer to the industry and to launch Fervo Energy, the Houston-based geothermal tech developer that’s picked up funding from none other than Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures (that fund… is so busy) and former eBay executive, Jeff Skoll’s Capricorn Investment Group.
With the new $28 million cash in hand, Fervo’s planning on ramping up its projects, which Latimer said would “bring on hundreds of megawatts of power in the next few years.”
Latimer got his first exposure to the environmental impact of power generation as a kid growing up in a small town outside of Waco, Texas near the Sandy Creek coal power plant, one of the last coal-powered plants to be built in the U.S.
Like many Texas kids, Latimer came from an oil family, and got his first jobs in the oil and gas industry before realizing that the world was going to be switching to renewables and the oil industry — along with the friends and family he knew — could be left high and dry.
It’s one reason he started working on Fervo, the entrepreneur said.
“What’s most important, from my perspective, since I started my career in the oil and gas industry, is providing folks that are part of the energy transition on the fossil fuel side to work in the clean energy future,” Latimer said. “I’ve been able to go in and hire contractors and support folks that have been out of work or challenged because of the oil price crash… And I put them to work on our rigs.”
Fervo Energy chief executive, Tim Latimer, pictured in a hardhat at one of the company’s development sites. Image Credits: Fervo Energy
When the Biden administration talks about finding jobs for employees in the hydrocarbon industry as part of the energy transition, this is exactly what they’re talking about.
And geothermal power is no longer as constrained by geography, so there are a lot of abundant resources to tap and the potential for high-paying jobs in areas that are already dependent on geological services work, Latimer said (late last year, Vox published a good overview of the history and opportunity presented by the technology).
“A large percentage of the world’s population actually lives next to good geothermal resources,” Latimer said. “[There are] 25 countries today that have geothermal installed and producing and another 25 where geothermal is going to grow.”
Geothermal power production actually has a long history in the Western U.S. and in parts of Africa where naturally occurring geysers and steam jets pouring from the earth have been obvious indicators of good geothermal resources, Latimer said.
“Fervo’s technology unlocks a new class of geothermal resource that is ready for large-scale deployment. Fervo’s geothermal systems use novel techniques, including horizontal drilling, distributed fiber optic sensing and advanced computational modelling, to deliver more repeatable and cost effective geothermal electricity,” Latimer wrote in an email. “Fervo’s technology combines with the latest advancements in Organic Rankine Cycle generation systems to deliver flexible, 24/7 carbon-free electricity.”
Initially developed with a grant from the TomKat Center at Stanford University and a fellowship funded by Activate.org at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Cyclotron Road division, Fervo has gone on to score funding from the DOE’s Geothermal Technology Office and ARPA-E to continue work with partners like Schlumberger, Rice University and the Berkeley Lab.
The combination of new and old technology is opening vast geographies to the company to potentially develop new projects.
Other companies are also looking to tap geothermal power to drive a renewable power-generation development business. Those are startups like Eavor, which has the backing of energy majors like bp Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Temasek, BDC Capital, Eversource and Vickers Venture Partners; and other players including GreenFire Energy and Sage Geosystems.
Demand for geothermal projects is skyrocketing, opening up big markets for startups that can nail the cost issue for geothermal development. As Latimer noted, from 2016 to 2019 there was only one major geothermal contract, but in 2020 there were 10 new major power purchase agreements signed by the industry.
For all of these projects, cost remains a factor. Contracts that are being signed for geothermal that are in the $65 to $75 per megawatt range, according to Latimer. By comparison, solar plants are now coming in somewhere between $35 and $55 per megawatt, as The Verge reported last year.
But Latimer said the stability and predictability of geothermal power made the cost differential palatable for utilities and businesses that need the assurance of uninterruptible power supplies. As a current Houston resident, the issue is something that Latimer has an intimate experience with from this year’s winter freeze, which left him without power for five days.
Indeed, geothermal’s ability to provide always-on clean power makes it an incredibly attractive option. In a recent Department of Energy study, geothermal could meet as much as 16% of the U.S. electricity demand, and other estimates put geothermal’s contribution at nearly 20% of a fully decarbonized grid.
“We’ve long been believers in geothermal energy but have waited until we’ve seen the right technology and team to drive innovation in the sector,” said Ion Yadigaroglu of Capricorn Investment Group, in a statement. “Fervo’s technology capabilities and the partnerships they’ve created with leading research organizations make them the clear leader in the new wave of geothermal.”
Fervo Energy drilling site. Image Credits: Fervo Energy
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Oxbotica raises $47M to deploy its autonomous vehicle software in industrial applications
While the world continues to await the arrival of safe, reliable and cost-effective self-driving cars, one of the pioneers in the world of autonomous vehicle software has raised some substantial funding to double down on what it sees as a more immediate opportunity: providing technology to industrial companies to build off-road applications.
Oxbotica, the Oxford, England startup that builds what it calls “universal autonomy” — flexible technology that it says can power the navigation, perception, user interfaces, fleet management and other features needed to run self-driving vehicles in multiple environments, regardless of the hardware being used — has picked up $47 million in a Series B round of funding from an interesting mix of strategic and financial investors.
Led by bp ventures, the investing arm of oil and gas giant bp, the round also includes BGF, safety equipment maker Halma, pension fund HostPlus, IP Group, Tencent, Venture Science and funds advised by Doxa Partners.
Oxbotica said it plans to use the capital to fuel a raft of upcoming deployments — several that will be coming online this year, according to its CEO — for clients in areas like mining, port logistics and more, with its lead investor bp an indication of the size of its customers and the kinds of projects that are in its sights.
The question, CEO Ozgur Tohumcu said in an interview, is “Where is the autonomy needed today? If you go to mines or ports, you can see vehicles in use already,” he said. “We see a huge transformation happening in the industrial domain.”
The funding and focus on industry are interesting turns for Oxbotica. The startup has been around since about 2014, originally as a spinout from Oxford University co-founded by academics Paul Newman and Ingmar Posner — Newman remains at the startup as its CTO, while Posner remains an AI professor at Oxford.
Oxbotica has been associated with a number of high-profile projects — early on, it provided sensor technology for Nasa’s Mars Rover, for example.
Over time, it has streamlined what it does to two main platforms that it calls Selenium and Caesium, covering respectively navigation, mapping, perception, machine learning, data export and related technology; and fleet management.
Newman says that what makes Oxbotica stand out from other autonomous software providers is that its systems are lighter and easier to use.
“Where we are good is in edge compute,” he said. “Our radar-based maps are 10 megabytes to cover a kilometer rather than hundreds of megabytes… Our business plan is to build a horizontal software platform like Microsoft’s.” That may underplay the efficiency of what it’s building, however: Oxbotica also has worked out how to efficiently transfer the enormous data loads associated with autonomous systems, and is working with companies like Cisco to bring these online.
In recent years Oxbotica has been synonymous with some of the more notable on-road self-driving schemes in the U.K. But, as you would expect with autonomous car projects, not everything has panned out as expected.
A self-driving pilot Oxbotica kicked off with London-based car service Addison Lee in 2018 projected that it would have its first cars on the road by 2021. That project was quietly shut down, however, when Addison Lee was sold on by Carlyle last year and the company abandoned costly moonshots. Another effort, the publicly backed Project Endeavour to build autonomous car systems across towns in England, appears to still be in progress.
The turn to industrial customers, Newman said, is coming alongside those more ambitious, larger-scale applications. “Industrial autonomy for off-road refineries, ports and airports happens on the way to on-road autonomy,” he said, with the focus firmly remaining on providing software that can be used with different hardware. “We’ve always had this vision of ‘no atoms, just software,’ ” he said. “There is nothing special about the road. Our point is to be agnostic, to make sure it works on any hardware platform.”
It may claim to have always been interested in hardware- and application-agnostic autonomy, but these days it’s being joined by others that have tried the other route and have decided to follow the Oxbotica strategy instead. They include FiveAI, another hyped autonomous startup out of the U.K. that originally wanted to build its own fleet of self-driving vehicles but instead last year pivoted to providing its software technology on a B2B basis for other hardware makers.
Oxbotica has now raised about $80 million to date, and it’s not disclosing its valuation but is optimistic that the coming year — with deployments and other new partnerships — will bear out that it’s doing just fine in the current market.
“bp ventures are delighted to invest in Oxbotica – we believe its software could accelerate the market for autonomous vehicles,” said Erin Hallock, bp ventures managing partner, in a statement. “Helping to accelerate the global revolution in mobility is at the heart of bp’s strategy to become an integrated energy company focused on delivering solutions for customers.”
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