Talking Climate Tech 003 redux
Geothermal Startups, Climate Tech London 24, and Colosso is Pylon of the Month!
Issued to subscribers 6th December 2024.
Happy Friday, it's been a long week, right? Let's get to it;
💸 Startup News
🔎 Deeper Dive
🏡 Konfab News
😃 Other Stuff
I dipped my toe back into the warm water of Geothermal on LinkedIn again this week. Geothermal is a much-underutilised resource, certainly in the UK and the reality is in most places. The 'heat beneath our feet' has huge untapped potential, but not all geothermal is made equal. ♨️
Varied across low, medium and high [>150deg.C] temperature resources, drilling depth typically up to 2km, access to sedimentary basins, mine water, steam, whether it's suitable for electricity generation, industrial applications, domestic heat networks, needs heat pumps, the list of variables goes on.
That's before you throw in the commercial complexities of Gov. policy, subsidy, investment, infrastructure capital, off-take agreements and project development.
It feels like we are at the nexus of some major growth in this sector - policy and impetus are shifting, investment is ready, new technologies, data analysis and business models are available.
The transition of skills, resources and knowledge from the Oil & Gas sector represents a further opportunity we can't afford to miss. ⏩
💸 Startups to Watch
Some big hitters at the forefront of going deeper for the hot stuff:
"Millimeter wave drilling ... to drill as far down as 20 km to reach temperatures up to 500° C."
Raised $95m to date, Series A March 24 at $21m
Why it matters - Improved Levlised Cost of Energy and high temperature for electricty generation, using <1% of the land of other renewables
"Geopressured Geothermal System (GGS) technologies utilising oilfield techniques of heat and pressure, targeting temperatures up to 250 deg. C"
Raised $58m to date, Series A February 24 at $17m
Why it matters - For dry hot rock sites, broadens global geographical opportunity. Also has energy storage capability through subsurface pressurised water.
"Closed-loop geothermal using conduction from hot rock to the working fluid."
Raise $350m estimated, recent $45m injection for EU project
Why it matters - Those hot rocks again for local district heating. The Germany project has x2 wells at 5km depth plus 12 pairs of lateral wells, total dilling 90km!
🔎 Deeper Dive
Some more bits to keep you going through the weekend and beyond...
In advance of the IEA 'Future of Geothermal' report, you can dig into the IRENA Feb 23 geothermal market and technology report here.
Chuckle at poor Elon Musk whose $56bn 2018 pay packet got turned down for reinstatement by the judges again. 😭
As we head into dunkelflaute season, the call for more baseload power in the UK to support variable renewable energy generation continues. GB Nuclear is ramping up the beauty parade with the Final 4 here.
On that note, the progression towards fusion continues, 🇬🇧 Tokamak Energy just picked up another $125m.
Disappointingly, Heirloom, they of Direct Air Capture technology development, picked up another $150m. Why it won't work and is a distraction to our decarbonisation goals from the excellent writer, campaigner and chemical engineer Paul Martin.
🏡 Konfab News
Climate Tech Show 24
I was up to London last week for this, but got ill afterwards, so London 🙄
Smaller than anticipated, but still some very interesting startup pitches, my LinkedIn round-up here;
Kane Watkinson
Some further reading for you on those to keep an eye on:
⚫ UP Catalyst - Carbon and graphite nanomaterials from CO2
🖥️ GoCodeGreen | B Corp™ - decarbonising corporate compute infrastructure
⚡ Electryone AI - Virtual Power Plant SaaS platform for energy providers
♨️ Anzen - solid-state thermoelectric heat pump ⚡
The Video Podcast
After a slight reschedule and juggle, more exciting news on that in the New Year, the first one is 'in the can'. Clips and the full interview coming next week, further background on that session here:
Kane Watkinson
😃 Other Stuff
Pylon of the Month
Who knew this would be the most talked about part of the newsletter 😆 Not sure if that reflects the quality of the rest of it, or just that so many people in the climate tech and renewable energy sector love pylons!
There is a rumour that some subscribers, who I had a chat with this week, are preparing their local pylon images to send in. Let's see if we can get some from around the world! 🌍
We have members hailing from:
Argentina, Austria, UK, Ukraine, Iceland, Italy, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, USA, Canada, Columbia, Germany, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Poland with more arriving daily.
In the meantime, here is my kid's favourite!
This big guy is 'Colosso' from DOMA Art Collective in Argentina - standing proud at 45m tall 🤖
Wouldn't it be cool to see these giants striding out across the land?
That's it, see you next Friday.
Kane 🌱
PS - New subscribers can catch up on all the news via the links below ⬇️
