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- [00:00]
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Hey, it's Steven. I'm just popping into the feed to let you know that the Open Circuit crew is off this week. We will be back next week. In the meantime, if you're looking around the Internet for something to consume, you could go over to YouTube and subscribe to Latitude Media. There you can see our full episodes in video of Open Circuit and our other podcast, Catalyst with Shayl Khan will soon be on video. So if you are a watcher of podcasts and you do that on YouTube, definitely subscribe to Latitude Media for this week. I hope you enjoy this episode of the Green Blueprint. The Green Blueprint is a show with Laura Pierpoint as host. It is about the people architecting the clean economy. And we're in production now, so that's going to be back in March with a new season. This episode in particular is a really nice complement to our geothermal episode from a couple weeks ago. It features Cindy Taft, the CEO of Sage Geosystems. Cindy spent decades in oil and gas and is now building what she describes as pumped hydro flipped upside down. So instead of pumping water up a mountain, they're pumping it deep underground and using pressure in engineered fractures to store energy. It's part geothermal, part long duration storage and part oil field engineering experiment. They built their first commercial facility in about 13 months and then they ran straight into the grid interconnection wall, which for many of you who are developing projects might feel personal. So if you want a really grounded look at what it takes to build next generation geothermal and what still slows it down, look no further. So here's Lara Pierpoint with the Green Blueprint. I hope you enjoy and we'll see you next week.
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Latitude Media covering the new frontiers of the energy transition. In 2022, Cindy Taft and her team at Sage Geosystems were fine tuning their gravity fracking technology in the field.
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C
Our fracking technology, which is called gravity fracking, it allows you to frack downward toward the heat. But we also, after we created a fracture, we were cycling and testing that fracture on what was the best way to get the heat out of the ground without putting a lot of energy into the system.
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Cindy's team has a background in oil and gas, but Sage Geosystems is taking that background and applying it to geothermal power. During this particular test, they realized that applying this fossil fuel technology to geothermal power generation might actually be a gateway to solving an even bigger challenge in the electricity industry.
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C
It was during that testing that we also recognized that we had the perfect energy storage solution, which is like pump storage, but upside down, this is a big deal.
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Most of the energy storage in the world, about 90% of all energy storage globally is, is pumped hydro, which requires a mountain, a ton of water, and usually a whole lot of permitting. Instead of pumping the water up a mountain, Cindy and her team are pumping it down into the earth.
- [02:59]
C
As everybody knows, wind and solar have done a great job greening the grid. But we need to help wind and Solar either become 24 hour power generation or help them move the power to from a time of day where it may not be needed to a time of day that it's needed. And that's where long duration energy storage comes in. We're pioneering what we call pressure geothermal, which leverages both the heat and the pressure of the earth, which allows us to do energy storage, which is a mechanical energy storage that uses the pressure and it also allows us to do, of course, power generation from geothermal. I do think it is the age of geothermal. It's such a huge untapped potential and it's around the world. It's right under our feet.
- [03:52]
B
I'm Laura Pierpoint and this is the Green Blueprint, a show about the architects of the clean energy economy. We've already invented most of the solutions needed to decarbonize the global economy. But many of these technologies are not yet commercial and they need to get financed and built at scale. We don't have decades to get them commercialized. We have years. This week, I'm talking with Cindy Taft, CEO at Sage Geosystems. There are enough geothermal heat resources in the United States to meet the electricity needs of the entire world. But much of these resources are in areas that are inaccessible to traditional geothermal drilling. Cindy and her team are pioneering technologies that will help unlock some of this harder to reach geothermal power and geothermal storage too. We'll talk about the company's groundbreaking advancements. Literally in the world of geothermal energy
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C
storage, we are on the learning curve, is where wind and Solar were like 10 or 15 years ago. And so there's a lot of excitement ahead for not only Sage, but for the industry.
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The AI revolution is intersecting with a critical moment in the energy sector. I'm Stephanie Huang, host of where the Internet Lives, a podcast from Google and Latitude Studios about the unseen world of data centers. This season, explore the new era of AI innovation. Hear from Google leaders on energy for AI and AI for Energy and how to build data centers that are good grid citizens. Find where the Internet lives. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [05:32]
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OpenCircuit is brought to you by the Yale center for Business and the Environment. They offer Yale's Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Certificate. This certificate is a fully online 10 month program built for working professionals who are who want to shape the clean energy future. The program focuses on building real world skills in clean energy policy, technology, project finance and innovation all in just five hours a week. Learn more and apply @cbey yale.edu or just follow the link in the show notes and good news. You can use the discount code OpenCircuit26 to save $500 on tuition applications close April 20, 2026 after four sold out shows, Latitude Media is bringing Transition AI to San Francisco. The two day conference on April 13th and 14th will bring together the people and companies who are successfully getting digital and energy projects cited financed and built in the AI era. The solutions are getting more sophisticated but there's still no uniform blueprint for building at gigawatt scale joint attendees from Google, pge, edf, Energy Impact Partners and AES to align on what's real, what's, what's possible and what can get built. Head on over to latitudemedia.com events or just click the link in the show notes and there you'll see a full agenda and you can Register for Transition AI 2026. And as a bonus for our listeners, use the code PODS10. That's P O D S10 PODS10 for a 10% discount.
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Before joining Sage, Cindy had a long career in oil and gas as the VP of Unconventional Wells and Logistics at Shel. Not long after Sage was founded in 2020, Cindy got a call from out of the blue.
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C
My current partners reached out and said, hey, we're setting up a geothermal company. I thought, wow, what a great opportunity to pivot from oil and gas and use those skills to do geothermal power generation. Now.
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Cindy joined Sage the following year and in 2023 the company launched a commercial pilot to field test their geothermal energy stor. It wasn't long before it caught the attention of others in the cleantech community.
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C
When we were doing the energy pilot in 2023 at our Starr County, Texas test well, the CEO of San Miguel had come by because he had heard about it.
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San Miguel Electric Cooperative, or SMECCI for short, is an electric cooperative that serves rural communities in South Texas. Historically it's operated a coal plant, but in 2024 Smeckey got a $1.4 billion grant from the US Department of Agriculture to transition to solar and storage.
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C
And he was just intrigued and said, wow, this is going to revolutionize energy storage.
- [08:25]
B
Of course, batteries are our dominant storage technology across the US but they're not as cost effective for long duration storage. And this is a problem for projects like Smekies that are trying to replace 24, 7 power sources.
- [08:38]
C
If you think about replacing 24 hour power generation from coal with solar, you need more than two to four hour storage discharge durations, which is what lithium ion batteries can give you. If you're trying to turn solar into 24 hour, you need a 16 hour discharge duration basically to produce power. You know, between the time the sun goes down to the time the sun comes back up. You can use lithium ion batteries, but now you have to stack them. You have to, you know, for you're using four batteries to achieve that 16 hour duration, whereas ours is made really for that longer duration. And so it's going to be more cost effective than the batteries. We're going to be a perfect pair as they, as they scale up their solar to replace the coal plant, because we'll be able to basically turn that solar into 24 hour power generation with these longer discharge durations.
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So in 2024 and 2025, Sage leased land from Smecci to build their initial commercial scale energy facility.
- [09:46]
C
The idea is they get kind of a front row seat to our technology. So as they scale solar, then they're going to be able to see what our technology has done, see the effectiveness of it and the affordability of it.
- [09:59]
B
I talked with Cindy about her journey from the oil and gas world into geothermal and how Sage Geosystems is flipping the script on traditional pumped hydro. We started the conversation though, discussing their first commercial scale energy facility, say a bit about the size of the project. So it was a 410megawatt coal plant. Is the solar plant about the same size and how much storage are you
- [10:21]
C
providing currently with Smeky? We are leasing land from them, so we're not involved with their first phase of solar, which is under a USDA loan because they had to basically choose a storage technology that was proven which lithium ion batteries. However, if you think about a coal plant that's producing 400, I think they're rated at 410 megawatts, you know, 24 hours a day. 400 megawatts of solar is only going to achieve about what, a third of what they're producing because it only produces for eight hours a day. So the USDA loan is for this first tranche of 400 megawatts, but what they plan on doing is scaling after that. In order to backfill the rest of the power capacity that they need to replace the coal plant. And so, although we're not in tranche one, we are built in an area where they plan to expand that solar build in the field and they own about 12,000 acres. So we're basically set up for that next tranche of solar that's going to be built.
- [11:32]
B
You constructed this plant and a wildly fast amount of time. You mentioned that you essentially went from funding the project to completing the project in 12 months. So can you say a bit about that journey and what it was like? Did you have a thousand people working around the clock to make this construction happen in that timeframe or what was your secret to making it all work?
- [11:52]
C
We were actually able to build and commission that facility in 13 months. That's from funding to actually being ready to store power. We're now just waiting on the grid interconnection to actually operate that facility. We were very focused. We wanted of course, to get, you know, as a startup company, you know, what you want to do is move as quickly as you can to building that first commercial facility. So we knew the first commercial facility would be very important for us. And so, you know, we had already thought about and worked what the, you know, basically the prediction feed engineering, so designing the, well, designing the power plant, designing the equipment. So once we got funding, we were able to basically finalize that design work with an EPC to make sure that, you know, all the details were worked out. And then of course we needed to order the long lead equipment. And so some of the long lead equipment that we were kind of worried about were kind of transformers. Not really equipment special to what we were doing, but still equipment that, you know, had a long, a longer lead. One of the pieces of equipment that we had to re engineer was actually the Pelton turbine. The Pelton turbines that are out there in the industry for pump storage. Hydropower are not rated to the same pressure as our Pelton turbines or our Pelton turbines rated to 5000 psi. And that's because again, we are deeper than the tallest pumped hydro. So we need that higher pressure rating. So that was one of the things that we had to finish the engineering on and then get that started as far as getting it built. And so yeah, so that's where after we got the funding, we ordered the long lead equipment and then we actually didn't start the dirt work at the location until August. And so that's eight months later. So between August and March, which is about seven months, is when we actually did all of the field work, including building the location, drilling the well, and then after, you know, completing the well, meaning fracking the well, and then after the well was fracked, we basically built the facility. So that's all of that work was done in about seven months. And then. Yeah, so, so that's where we are today. But now, unfortunately, we're waiting on the grid interconnection. So we beat the grid interconnection timeline by at least a year, which is kind of disappointing. But I think people recognize that that's one of the challenges with the, with the grid is just getting, getting that interconnection timeline shorter.
- [14:36]
B
Let's talk for a second about that. Grid interconnection, this is an issue across the US is that it takes forever to get permission to connect to the grid. Can you say a bit about when you felt like it was the right time to submit your request for grid interconnection? Like, how far were you on this project and how sure were you you were going to build it and would you have done differently given that now you're waiting, going on a year for this interconnection to happen?
- [15:05]
C
Yeah. When I, when I talked about the long lead equipment, grid interconnection was one of the first things that we kicked off. Of course, what you have to do is you have to basically apply for a grid interconnection feasibility study. What I found, Laura, is the challenge with the grid. It's a very linear process and I appreciate the caution and the need, especially with new technology to, you know, make sure that, you know, when you put it on the grid, it doesn't basically shut the grid down in one way or another. However, I think the process could just be. When I think about oil and gas processes, we do a lot of things in parallel. You know, we're trying to knock down, knock out cost. We're to trying, we're trying to be more efficient. A lot of things are done in parallel to the point where you may be drilling a well adjacent to a well that you're actually doing other work on. Right. But in the, in the grid interconnection process, it's very linear. So you do the feasibility study and you know, kind of they have their, their linear process and so it's just very slow. And the thing is, I, I'm told, and I know it's true that in Texas on the ERCOT grid, the process is actually faster than it is on other, you know, grids around the country. And so, and it's still the feasibility study, in the beginning we were told it'll take six weeks and then we immediately put our application in and then we were, we were told it'll take six months and then it ended up taking like 10 or 11 months. So just that part of the process is quite frustrating. So I think it's something that definitely needs to be fixed. I do. Again, I want to reemphasize, I appreciate the importance of doing these studies and making sure that you can actually put new power on the grid without shutting the grid down. But it just needs to be, I think, a lot more efficient in the process to get these things done. The other thing I will say is that with the utilities that do these feasibility studies struggle with is that because the process is so long, different projects will be put into the queue, even though they may or may not be funded, even though they may or may not know that they're going to be going forward. And so the queue gets very long and then projects will drop out which will speed up the queue eventually. But it's still a huge challenge because that queue is, is falsely too long because there's technologies that are in the queue that may never be built, or projects, I should say, that may never be built.
- [18:01]
B
I think there's a lot of gold in what you just said. For any policymakers who are listening in, it seems that in as much as we have an opportunity for permit reform, kind of parallelizing parts of the process seems like a no brainer to me. Like that shouldn't be controversial. And I want to take a little bit of a technology break here and ask you a couple questions. So you mentioned a couple times, and I love this image that this is basically pumped hydro storage flipped on its head and upside down. One of the things of course though, that you think about is that with pumped hydro, when you've got a lake that's up high, you're taking advantage of that gravitational potential energy right as it comes down. And so when you flip it over, you don't have the advantage of that gravitational energy. So explain exactly how it works in terms of kind of creating the pressure gradient and how it is that you get enough energy to drive one of these Pelton turbines from the water that you're effectively pumping underground.
- [18:50]
C
Yeah, so absolutely. You know, some people say it's very similar to gravity energy, but let me just explain how it works. So you're drilling a well, you know, say 8 to 12,000ft deep into the earth and when you create a fracture at these depths, you have what they Call the overburden, which is the weight of the rock above that fracture. So when you basically use the water, pressurized water, to open that fracture, we do use lung as an analogy, because what we're doing is putting a volume of water into the fracture, and then we're only cycling about 10 or 20% of it. So when you breathe in and out, your lungs are only cycling maybe 30% of the air, because your lungs always want to be open. And that's the same thing in our technology. We want those fracs always to be open so that we can maximize the round trip efficiency. But pressurized water in the fracture, holding that fracture open. And so when you release the pressure, open a valve at the surface, what's happening is that fracture is going to want to return to its natural state and close. And when it does, it basically drives that water out of the fracture and up the well, and it's under a great amount of pressure. So when it gets to the Pelton turbine, it will spin the Pelton turbine, which will spin the generator, and then you generate electricity. So the deeper you are, I guess, energy density, either in pump storage hydropower or subsurface or upside down pump storage hydropower is a function of the height of that water column. So we actually are deeper than the tallest pumped hydro, which is about 3,000ft. Our depths are 8 to 12,000ft. So we have actually a higher energy density. So the deeper you go, the higher that energy density is going to be because of that pressure energy.
- [20:53]
B
And then in terms of the duration of the energy storage that you're getting, can you essentially put a lid on this and wait almost as long as you want? Like, would this work for seasonal storage in the United States, or is there kind of like a decay time to how much you're able to use the storage when it's under pressure like that?
- [21:08]
C
Laura, that's a great question. So we're targeting a low permeability rock. So the permeability measure is millidarcis. So we want 50 millidarcis or less. We can definitely store the water for a long time, as you said, for seasonal storage, if there's a market for that, the lower the permeability is, the lower the kind of leak off is in the subsurface. So we have seen some rock that lose. Like, actually, you'll see the pressure start to increase because you're shut in. And what's happening is that water gets heated and starts to expand. But you, you, if you say you, you're in a 40 to 50 millidarcy rock, you may have some leakage into the rock matrix, which means that you would have a pump system at the surface monitoring the pressure, where you could add water as that, as that pressure declines. So yes, we can literally store the water for weeks, if not months, and we would just monitor the pressure. Depending on the formation permeability, we may have to have water added occasionally to keep the pressure up. But in some formations, like I said, we've seen, we have seen literally no leak off. So yes, we can definitely do the longer storage durations with this technology.
- [22:45]
B
You spent a lot of time and energy, it sounds like, at the outset, before breaking ground on the site, really making sure that you had the engineering right. And one of the things that, again, I think I've seen across a lot of climate tech companies is that when it comes to doing engineering studies and development work and everything that happens before you construct, a lot of folks cut corners and they don't want to spend a lot of time doing a huge amount of de risking because there's a lot of binary risk in that moment. It sort of feels like we need to get field experience, we need to get that construction date happening. So can you say a bit about like, what. It sounds like you did a lot there. So what was the ratio of sort of like how much money and time and effort you spent on development versus the time you. And the time and money you spent on construction itself once you broke ground?
- [23:32]
C
Yeah, coming out of the field in 2023, we already had a pretty good idea of what the, well design needed to be and quite frankly what the facility needed to be. And so I would say the learnings from our pilot in 2023 were very crucial. And then, you know, finding an EPC company that we could partner with, finding a, a Hydra, basically a Pelton turbine company that we could, we could partner with, those were some of the, I guess, nearer term challenges. And the reason the EPC company was kind of the reason both of them were challenged is because what we were doing was new. Right. So it's just new technology. So you had to find companies that were willing to kind of think out of the box and, you know, be interested in what, in the technology you're trying to develop. But once we landed these companies, I think a lot of it was just, you know, the, the, the dedication that you have to do, put into projects, putting the, you know, the time and the effort to get the details right, making sure that nothing is overlooked because, you know, once you put all of the stuff on together on location. It has, it has to work, right? And so we've, we've shown that it works and we were able to, you know, again, use some really good companies that partner with some really good companies to get to this point. So yeah, the ratio I would say that we spent, you know, probably six months, six to nine months designing and then we were in the field for seven months building. So but you know, for the second energy storage facility that we build, I think that pre engineering will, will be shortened. We do have learnings that we want to incorporate into the second design so the focus will probably be on that. But you know, the other thing to think about, Laura, is the well, you know, design and the well construction actually in the field is very similar as we talked about, to oil and gas. So you weren't having to really look at new technologies there. So it was really more how are you going to complete the well then? Once you complete the well, you know, and you're operating the well, how does that facility work? So I would think that, I would say that most of the focus was on the facility.
- [26:02]
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We'll dig deeper on how oil and gas technologies are helping advance clean geothermal power and take a look at Sage Geosystems upcoming partnership with geothermal giant Ormot after the break. AI is pushing economic and technological progress into a full out sprint and the energy sector is at the center of it all.
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Explore the new era of AI innovation
- [26:29]
B
in the fifth season of where the Internet Lives, an award winning podcast from Google and Latitude Studios. What does it take for a data center to be a good grid citizen? How is AI revolutionizing agriculture, medicine, art and manufacturing? And what does that mean for the future of energy demand and digital infrastructure? Find where the Internet lives wherever you listen to podcasts or click the link
- [26:52]
C
in the show notes.
- [26:53]
A
Are you ready to accelerate your career in clean energy? Of course you are. Yale's Financing and Deploying Clean energy certificate, a 10 month online program, is designed for working professionals ready to become the next leaders of the clean energy economy. You'll dive into real world frameworks and clean energy policy, project finance, technology and innovation all in just five hours a week. If you're passionate about clean energy and ready to level up your career, the Yale center for Business and the Environment is the place to start. Join this year's cohort by visiting CBEY Yale. Edu to learn more and enroll today. And be sure to use the code OpenCircuit26 to save $500 on tuition. Applications are open through April 20, 2026 on April 13th and 14th, Latitude Media is offering the chance to hear from the experts on the front lines of the AI energy infrastructure transition AI 2026 is a two day in person conference in San Francisco addressing the challenges of building at gigawatt scale in the face of AI load growth. And the programming includes two live recordings of our two original podcasts. That's Catalyst with Shayl Khan and Open Circuit with me, Caroline Golan and Jigar Shah. Shale's going to be interviewing Google's new chief of AI infrastructure, Amin Vadat. And you're not going to want to miss that. So our podcast listeners get a 10% discount. Use the code PODS10P O D S PODS10. When you check out, you can follow the link in the show notes or go to latitudemedia.com events to see the full agenda and register. We will see you April 13th and 14th in San Francisco for Transition AI.
- [28:39]
B
Did you have like an aha moment when there was something specific that got your attention and made you realize that geothermal was in a very different spot than it had been previously?
- [28:49]
C
Yeah, I would say it was. When my partners Levering and Lance Cook reached out and said, you need to come join us, we're going to pursue geothermal. And I figured because these guys had invented technology for the oil and gas industry for years, technology quite frankly, that people told them was impossible and technology that still, you know, being used in the oil and gas industry. So I figured if anybody could figure out how to kind of crack the nut on geothermal, it would be these, these two guys. And so I got on a call with them and they explained what they were doing and what some of their thought processes were. And that's, that's the, that's what convinced me that, you know, there's a playground here that basically it's a huge resource. And so the playground is just exciting because, you know, the company or companies that crack the nut on this are going to have a huge resource to go after. And quite frankly, as we talked about earlier, it's in a lot of areas right under your feet. So what an exciting opportunity.
- [30:01]
B
Let's talk for a second about the fact that one of my favorite things about geothermal technology is that this is one of the rare places where the oil and gas communities and clean tech communities not just meet, but integrate and actually do things together. So can you say a little bit about that? Like how do you see your relationship with all of these different communities? Is it really fluid? Like, you know, what do you think about the fact that that now oil and gas folks like you are coming into the geothermal space. I feel like that signals a really intense level of seriousness and the level of expertise that's coming to the table on particularly the subsurface. But just curious to hear your reflections on this because it's such an interesting kind of like non partisan, everyone's coming together moment around this particular technology that's so unique.
- [30:47]
C
Yeah, I was actually going to mention exactly what you just said. So because of that, the geothermal technology is, we've seen a lot of support from both sides of the aisle, so that obviously helps out a lot. But yeah, I mean, Laurie, you mentioned it 10 years ago, 15 years ago, geothermal industry, which drills anywhere from say 30 to 50 wells a year, and this is in the US and the oil and gas industry, which drills 20 to 30,000 wells a year, did not get together. It was you drilled geothermal wells or you drilled oil and gas wells. And the shame of it is even though both industries were learning, they weren't sharing cross, cross sharing those learnings very effectively. And I would say because the oil and gas industry, I don't want to sound biased, but because the oil and gas industry was drilling so many more wells per year, the learnings and the ability to drive costs down was probably more natural in the oil and gas industry and that wasn't being shared in the conventional geothermal industry. So and the overlay between the two industries is just so spot on. You need all of the same technical skill sets. So if you think about geologists, you think about drilling engineers, you think about completion engineers, facility engineers, all those technical skills are needed. The equipment is very much the same. So when you think about service companies that provide drilling or fracking technologies. But the other thing is, I guess what I call leadership skills is needed in both. So the ability to project manage, the ability to drive down cost at scale, and that's all relevant in both geothermal and in the oil and gas industry. So the overlay is actually quite unique. And I guess what excites me too about being in a new technology is the oil and gas industry is primed, the infrastructure is there, it's already primed to scale. Geothermal. Once the industry again is ready to scale, we don't have to wait on new skill sets being built because they, you know, I, I, I, look, I'm, I'm all of the above energy person, but I hear nuclear skills have kind of been lost over time because we haven't built as many nuclear plants. But that's not the Case for geothermal, the skills are there. The oil and gas industry is already ready to help scale. So that's another part of it that's just very exciting to be in geothermal.
- [33:38]
B
So one of the things that we've seen across different climate technologies is that in some cases there's like a single moment, like a single technology breakthrough or business model breakthrough where you really see kind of an inflection point and how the technology ultimately gets adopted and scales. And you mentioned that we've really been working, or at least the Department of Energy has been working on geothermal since the 70s, advanced and enhanced geothermal. So between the 70s and where we are now, were there one or two major kind of technology or business breakthroughs that really have made a huge difference? Or is it more the kind of incremental evolution around geothermal technologies that somehow has gotten us to the point that this is much more viable than it was 30, 40 years ago?
- [34:23]
C
It's interesting because next generation geothermal had kind of had a renaissance in I would say late 80s, early 90s, and then that was the same time as the shale gas revolution kind of started. So shale gas being you're drilling wells horizontally, you're fracking the wells in order to get the hydrocarbons out of the ground. And so that slowed down this geothermal renaissance. But I do think, to your point, that those technology developments, the horizontal drilling, driving the cost down of horizontal drilling as well as multi stage fracking in a well is exactly what the next generation geothermal needed in order to drive down cost and in order to make it an affordable energy mix into the future. So the oil and gas industry impacted next generation geothermal way back then, but again it's what's impacting it now in a more positive way. And that's why you're seeing the growth and the interest in it. In it.
- [35:38]
B
Now let's talk a little bit about the future. So you're getting ready to build a second project and you have decided to partner with Ormond, which is a really interesting decision because Ormond of course is the, you know, 8,000 pound gorilla in the geothermal space. So say a little bit about how this partnership came about and why you decided to partner with Ormont on this next project.
- [36:01]
C
Yeah. So for people that don't know much about Ormat. So Ormat is actually the largest conventional geothermal company in the world. So they've got footprint globally, but they are experts in conventional geothermal. So if you think about Iceland or the Geysers in California where you're basically drilling for hot water, more shallow, so just below the surface. That's what conventional geothermal is. So the challenge though with conventional geothermal is that geographically it is limited because you're looking for a very unicorn geology. You're looking for not only the heat, but you're looking for that water and you're looking for ways for that water to flow, which is the permeability in the rock. And so it limits where you can drill and complete these wells. And so that's why in Texas there is no conventional geothermal. You know, a lot of it's in the western US you have it in Hawaii, you have it in Alaska, and of course you have it overseas. So what Ormat was wanting to do is grow their footprint and they've done a great job of organically growing their conventional geothermal footprint, but they really wanted, want to get into next generation geothermal. Next generation geothermal, being a different geology, is basically hot, dry rock geothermal. And so what you're, what you're drilling for rather than that three legged stool of heat, water and permeability, you're just drilling for the heat. Because what you're doing is engineering a reservoir and then pumping water from the surface to harvest the heat and then bring the heat to surface. And so while Ormat has a huge amount of skill sets, including, you know, they're one of the biggest manufacturers of organic rank and cycle power plants for the geothermal industry, they haven't had operations in next generation geothermal. And so they evaluated our technology against other technologies that are out there. And they, you know, they see our technology as one of the ones that will bring them into the future. So they actually will license our technology for both storage and for geothermal power generation, which will allow them to grow as a company. So that's kind of the background to our partnership with Ormat.
- [38:40]
B
So how do you think about working with a big, really well established company like that? Because I know that it can be challenging sometimes. Right. Like there's a very stark power dynamic between a small startup and the world's largest, most established geothermal company. So how have you, how have you worked that out?
- [38:56]
C
Yeah, actually to be honest with you, like one of our, a couple of our team members are actually in Reno today visiting with Oromat because we're still deciding what location that we're going to build this first power power generation project at. But Ormat has a lot of, they are bigger than us, obviously huge, but they have the resources also that are very complimentary to us. I Mean, we have the skill set. We have the very niche skills for what our technology is, but they've got a lot more people. They've got proper subsurface departments. And as we grow as a company, we will build those. But they already have them in place, so they have geologists and subsurface people and drilling engineers. When we are talking to them about, you know, building this joint project, you know, we're actually also going to be able to leverage some of the relationships that they have with contractors. So I think. I think the relationship is a good one. It's something that is beneficial to Sage very much like when Chesapeake invested in Sage's Series A. Chesapeake, which is now Expand Energy, they. They were actually very helpful. Helpful in our energy storage facility at Smeky, because they have drilling operations in the area. So we were able to. And they were willing to help us with, you know, geology evaluation, some of the drilling challenges they had in the. In the area. And so it's been beneficial for us because, again, we're just a smaller company with less people.
- [40:42]
B
Are there moments that where you sort of feel like you need to fight for your. For your territory or make sure that they're not being too overbearing or that you're still sort of protecting the value within your company, or do you feel like it's smooth sailing?
- [40:54]
C
We haven't seen that as of yet. I will say they can build faster than what we can build once they start building. And we're building because they're a bigger company. But we also think that the resource potential is huge. And so there's a lot of room in the industry for us, for Ormad, even for our competitors. We think the pie is very big. And we also think that the thirst, I guess, for this renewable, resilient energy is just going to be huge once the industry gets to the point where we're delivering it at a cost that is competitive with other forms of energy. So. So, big pie, lots of room for players. I think we'll be fine.
- [41:48]
B
That's great. I love that answer. Okay, I have one final question for you. If I wired $100 million into your bank account tomorrow at Sage Geosystems, what would you do with it?
- [41:59]
C
I would expedite getting to the field and building that first geothermal facility. There's no doubt about it. And we would do it on an expedited timeline because. Because not only does the country need this power, but the world needs the power. And again, we talked about it earlier. Geothermal is everywhere around the world under our feet. And so as an industry, we just need to show that we can tap into this next generation or hot dry rock geothermal and make it cost effective because I think it's really going to change the profile of the electricity grid going forward.
- [42:42]
B
I'm still waiting for someone to give me $100 million checks that I can start actually handing out on this podcast, but we'll see. Not yet. Cindy, thank you so much for joining us on the Green Blueprint. It was really wonderful having you.
- [42:54]
C
Well, thank you for having me. Thank you.
- [42:58]
B
Cindy Taft is the CEO of Sage Geosystems. The Green Blueprint is produced by Latitude Media in partnership with Trellis Climate. The show is hosted by me, Laura Pierpoint. This episode was produced by Alexandria Hare and Anne Bailey. Ann Bailey is our Senior Editor. Sean Marquand is our Technical Director. Stephen Lacey is our Executive Editor. If you'd like to suggest topics or guests for the show, send an email to the greenblueprintatitudemedia.com you can listen to the Green Blueprint at latitudemedia.com or subscribe wherever you get podcasts. And if you have fellow clean energy or climate tech travelers who would benefit from the insights in this show, send them a link. This is the Green Blueprint, a show about the architects of the clean energy economy.