Chevron Technology Ventures
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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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Voyage raises $31 million to bring driverless taxis to communities
Voyage, the autonomous vehicle startup that spun out of Udacity, announced Thursday it has raised $31 million in a round led by Franklin Templeton.
Khosla Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures also participated in the round. The company, which operates a ride-hailing service in retirement communities using self-driving cars supported by human safety drivers, has raised a total of $52 million since launching in 2017. The new funding includes a $3 million convertible note.
Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron has big plans for the fresh injection of capital, including hiring and expanding its fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which always have a human safety driver behind the wheel.
Ultimately, the expanded G2 fleet and staff are just the means toward Cameron’s grander mission to turn Voyage into a truly driverless and profitable ride-hailing company.
“It’s not just about solving self-driving technology,” Cameron told TechCrunch in a recent interview, explaining that a cost-effective vehicle designed to be driverless is the essential piece required to make this a profitable business.
The company is in the midst of a hiring campaign that Cameron hopes will take its 55-person staff to more than 150 over the next year. Voyage has had some success attracting high-profile people to fill executive-level positions, including CTO Drew Gray, who previously worked at Uber ATG, Otto, Cruise and Tesla, as well as former NIO and Tesla employee Davide Bacchet as director of autonomy.
Funds will also be used to increase its fleet of second-generation self-driving cars (called G2) that are currently being used in a 4,000-resident retirement community in San Jose, Calif., as well as The Villages, a 40-square-mile, 125,000-resident retirement city in Florida. Voyage’s G2 fleet has 12 vehicles. Cameron didn’t provide details on how many vehicles it will add to its G2 fleet, only describing it as a “nice jump that will allow us to serve consumers.”
Voyage used the G2 vehicles to create a template of sorts for its eventual driverless vehicle. This driverless product — a term Cameron has used in a previous post on Medium — will initially be limited to 25 miles per hour, which is the driving speed within the two retirement communities in which Voyage currently tests and operates. The vehicle might operate at a low speed, but they are capable of handling complex traffic interactions, he wrote.
“It won’t be the most cost-effective vehicle ever made because the industry still is in its infancy, but it will be a huge, huge, huge improvement over our G2 vehicle in terms of being be able to scale out a commercial service and make money on each ride,” Cameron said.
Voyage initially used modified Ford Fusion vehicles to test its autonomous vehicle technology, then introduced in July 2018 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, its second generation of autonomous vehicles. But the end goal has always been a driverless product.
TechCrunch previously reported that the company has partnered with an automaker to provide this next-generation vehicle that has been designed specifically for autonomous driving. Cameron wouldn’t name the automaker. The vehicle will be electric and it won’t be a retrofit like the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid vehicles Voyage currently uses or its first-generation vehicle, a Ford Fusion.
Most importantly, and a detail Cameron did share with TechCrunch, is that the vehicle it uses for its driverless service will have redundancies and safety-critical applications built into it.
Voyage also has deals in place with Enterprise rental cars and Intact insurance company to help it scale.
“You can imagine leasing is much more optimal than purchasing and owning vehicles on your balance sheet,” Cameron said. “We have those deals in place that will allow us to not only get the vehicle costs down, but other aspects of the vehicle into the right place as well.”
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Oil and gas giants Chevron and Occidental are backing tech to combat carbon emissions
Carbon Engineering, a Canadian company developing technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and process it for use in enhanced oil recovery or in the creation of new synthetic fuels, has locked in financing from two big industry backers — Chevron and Occidental Petroleum — to bring its products to market.
The undisclosed amount of capital Carbon Engineering raised from the investment arms of two of the world’s largest oil and gas companies — Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures — will be used to commercialize its technology at a time when legislation in California and British Columbia are making low-carbon fuels more economically viable, according to a statement from the company’s chief executive, Steve Oldham. The company had already managed to nab Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as an investor.
Gates is one of several big-name backers to be drawn to renewable energy technologies in the face of a steadily warming planet that’s rapidly approaching a tipping point of no return when it comes to global climate change. Together with a group of other multi-billionaires, including Marc Benioff, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma, Masayoshi Son and Meg Whitman, Gates launched a $1 billion fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures last year to back companies that are developing things like new energy storage and water production technologies.
The Squamish, B.C.-based Carbon Engineering isn’t in the Breakthrough portfolio, but is one of several companies working on making economically viable a technology called “direct air capture” of carbon dioxide.
At the company’s pilot plant in Squamish, air gets hoovered up by giant fans into a processing facility where it is treated with potassium hydroxide, which captures and holds the carbon dioxide. Then more chemicals and heat are added to the mix to create millions of small white pellets — which contain higher concentrations of the carbon dioxide.
After that, the pellets are heated again to create a gas that is almost pure carbon dioxide. That gas can be either sequestered underground (a proposition with no economic benefit for Carbon Engineering at the moment) or converted back into fuels or chemicals, or used in enhanced oil recovery.
Carbon Engineering and competitors like ClimeWorks or Global Thermostat claim they can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for roughly $100 per ton, or a bit less once they can get to scale. To make money though, they’ll need to refine that carbon dioxide into some sort of product — likely a fuel, which will return that carbon to the atmosphere.
Other companies tackling carbon capture, like Newlight Technologies and Opus12, convert the carbon into plastics or chemicals, while companies like CarbonCure aim to turn the captured carbon into a cement replacement.
While these products from carbon emissions are available, they’re not yet commercially viable at a significant scale. Oldham told National Public Radio that the fuel Carbon Engineering manufactures is roughly 20 percent more expensive than regular gasoline.
That’s why states like California are putting incentives in place to offset the added costs of using these low-carbon products.
Carbon Engineering has already spent $30 million to develop its process, while Climeworks raised $31 million last year to develop its own version of this carbon capture technology.
Not all climate watchers are convinced that these kinds of negative emission technologies are the answer. They argue that it’s less expensive to use renewable energy and other carbon-free energy sources than to take carbon dioxide out of the air.
At this point, though, emission reductions may not be enough. Given the dire reports coming out of the Trump administration and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it’s going to take pretty much a combination of everything that humanity’s got to avoid a pretty catastrophic fate for a pretty large portion of the world’s population.
Even the companies that have been notorious for their contributions to the climate crisis that the world faces are waking up to the need for decarbonization (even if it’s an open question of whether they’re being dragged to the table or sitting down of their own free will).
Oxy Low Carbon Ventures is a good example. Reading the writing on the wall, the firm has invested not just in Carbon Engineering, but another company called NET Power, which purports to have developed a power plant with zero emissions.
“It is a very important time for the air capture field right now,” said Oldham in a statement. “We’re seeing leading jurisdictions, like California and British Columbia, creating markets for low carbon fuels and technologies like DAC, through effective climate policy. These efficient market-based regulations, and action from energy industry leaders like Occidental and Chevron, show the power of policy in driving innovation and achieving emissions reductions while delivering reliable and affordable energy.”
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Evolute debuts enterprise container migration and management platform
Evolute, a 3-year old startup out of Mountain View, officially launched the Evolute platform today with the goal of helping large organizations migrate applications to containers and manage those containers at scale.
Evolute founder and CEO Kristopher Francisco says he wants to give all Fortune 500 companies access to the same technology that big companies like Apple and Google enjoy because of their size and scale.
“We’re really focused on enabling enterprise companies to do two things really well. The first thing is to be able to systematically move into the container technology. And the second thing is to be able to run operationally at scale with existing and new applications that they’re creating in their enterprise environment,” Francisco explained.
While there are a number of sophisticated competing technologies out there, he says that his company has come up with some serious differentiators. For starters, getting legacy tech into containers has proven a time-consuming and challenging process. In fact, he says manually moving a legacy app and all its dependencies to a container has typically taken 3-6 months per application.
He claims his company has reduced that process to minutes, putting containerization within reach of just about any large organization that wants to move their existing applications to container technology, while reducing the total ramp-up time to convert a portfolio of existing applications from years to a couple of weeks.
Evolute management console. Screenshot: Evolute
The second part of the equation is managing the containers, and Francisco acknowledges that there are other platforms out there for running containers in production including Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration tool, but he says his company’s ability to manage containers at scale separates him from the pack.
“In the enterprise, the reason that you see the [containerization] adoption numbers being so low is partially because of the scale challenge they face. In the Evolute platform, we actually provide them the native networking, security and management capabilities to be able to run at scale,” he said.
The company also announced that it been invited to join the Chevron Technology Ventures’ Catalyst Program, which provides support for early stage companies like Evolute. This could help push Evolute to business units inside Chevron looking to move into containerization technology and be big boost for the startup.
The company has been around in since 2015 and boasts several other Fortune 500 companies beyond Chevron as customers, although it is not in a position to name them publicly just yet. The company has 5 full time employees and has raised $500,000 in seed money across two rounds, according to data on Crunchbase.
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