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Having secured $138 million in new funding from an investment group led by private equity firm DCVC, emerging geothermal power plant developer Fervo Energy is focused on completing at least two projects in the Western U.S.
Houston-based Fervo said the additional funding, which augments the $39 million it raised previously by about 350%, would help complete geothermal plants in Nevada and Utah and evaluate new projects in California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon and internationally.
Fervo disclosed neither the number of geothermal plants it is contemplating nor specific project locations.
“Power buyers are interested in geothermal power because they are actively looking for reliable energy sources that can address climate change and rising energy prices,” said CEO Tim Latimer. “Our mission is to meet that growing demand by putting gigawatts of 24/7 carbon-free energy on the grid. This latest investment enables us to execute on those ambitions.”
Compared to intermittent renewables such as solar and wind, geothermal energy “is nonweather-dependent and can effectively replace baseload fossil fuel generating sources like coal and natural gas,” Fervo’s Sarah Jewett, director of strategy, told NGI. “Additionally, the land-use footprint is small compared to other renewables, especially as geothermal operators develop multi-well drilling programs from a single pad.”
Fervo has adapted technologies pioneered by the oil and gas industry, including horizontal drilling and distributed fiber optic sension, to tap the earth’s heat deep underground into “practical, economically viable, clean” geothermal energy.
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Fervo counts oil and gas industry players among its owners. Investors include drilling contractor Helmerich & Payne Inc. and oilfield services (OFS) firm Liberty Energy Inc.
“Fervo has figured out how to adapt de-risked technology from the oil and gas industry to geothermal,” said Liberty CEO Chris Wright, whose company invested $10 million.
Another OFS company advancing geothermal energy is Schlumberger Ltd.
Although Fervo is devoting attention to projects across the West, geothermal potential exists elsewhere in the United States. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2019 projected that geothermal power generation could increase 26-fold by 2050.
“Heat is everywhere, it’s just a question of how deep,” Jewett told NGI. “There exists substantial heat at shallow depths well suited for utility-scale geothermal power development primarily in the Western United States, but there is substantial potential and ongoing efforts to build direct-use heat systems and install geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling in the East.”
In Fervo’s case, most of the geothermal wells that it would drill would be less than 3 kilometers (9,843 feet) deep, Jewett said.
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