Bedrock Energy

Thanks to KeyCrew | KeyCrew Journal for covering our goals to serve buildings everywhere, especially those in the following categories: 🔌 Power-constrained markets, where buildings face grid capacity limitations ⚡️ Markets with strong utility incentives, where geothermal is a cost-effective alternative to more distribution, transmission, and generation investment 🏙️ Properties with high thermal loads, like multifamily residential and hospitality properties 💸 Long-hold or value-add properties, where investment horizons or value-add strategies are particularly well-positioned to capitalize on geothermal Read more:

The US is second-to-none in modern invention. As Noah Smith wrote in his excellent newsletter, we are "the country that sequenced the human genome, created quantum electrodynamics, and invented the transistor and the laser and Crispr... landed humans on the moon... discovered the neutrino and the quark, and invented plastic and the personal computer and the MRI." Historically, the US has brought together the best minds on the planet, convened them in some of the most prolific research universities in modern history, provided world-class funding for basic science, and let ideas flourish commercially with the world's most risk-tolerant, innovative capital ecosystem. Specifically, the earliest unlocks of game-changing #Energy technologies are often #MadeinAmerica. It was a no-brainer for Silviu Livescu, Joel Wish, and me to start Bedrock Energy here, not long after Silviu moved from Alberta to Texas—the heart of the Shale Revolution—specifically to find fertile entrepreneurial ground for his technology vision that now undergirds Bedrock's advancements in #geothermal heating/cooling deployment. But America's edge falls short when it comes to this stage: manufacturing and deployment. #Solar PV is a classic example, invented in the US, but now manufactured at scale and much more affordably in other countries. China now anchors global solar manufacturing, and has deployed ~600GW of solar; meanwhile, here in the nation that first turned solar PV from imagination into reality, our solar installed base sits at <150GW. And if we don't move fast enough, Michael Barnard's article in CleanTechnica signals the US is falling behind in the same way in #geothermal heating/cooling, with China having deployed over 77 GW of thermal equivalent capacity, while the US is in the single digits! The story sounds eerily similar, as geothermal heat pumps were an energy technology pioneered in the US in the 1940s, with research driven by the Carter Administration's Department of Energy and academics at Oklahoma State University starting in the 1970s. But in the decades since, US adoption of this endlessly abundant, incredibly resilient, fully domestic energy category has been far outpaced by the deployment progress in European and Chinese markets. This stagnancy, at 1% of US real estate, is particularly galling because America invented the category decades ago! Plus, geothermal heating/cooling aligns perfectly with every US federal administration's goals for energy independence, clean energy, AND domestic energy supply chains. This is a ready-for-scale energy category that just needs concerted industry collaboration and policy consistency to #LiftOff, as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) wrote in Dec 2024. At Bedrock, we're doing our part by bringing subsurface AI and drilling automation to dramatically transform the economics of deployment, and we invite the utility & real estate sectors to take part in the "wakeup call" in the piece below.

As The New York Times reports, Boise has tapped into its natural geothermal heating resource for over 130 years. But you actually don't need hot springs to do so, and Boise isn't the only state capital with geothermal serving its seat of public service; the Michigan State Capitol has geothermal heating and cooling as well. The wide range of #Geothermal viability is because the typical subsurface temperature gradient everywhere in the world is around 50°-80°F in the first quarter-mile of the Earth. For essentially any city, community, business district, or real estate portfolio anywhere around the world, this common temperature gradient is incredibly useful for free heating and cooling. Great to see the national media highlight this longtime source of clean, resilient thermal energy! https://lnkd.in/ebth_b2P

Thanks Saul Elbein and The Hill for highlighting the natural carryover from Oil & Gas leadership, talent, and tech into the #clean #Geothermal revolution, including Bedrock Energy's very own Fernando Aguilera! Saul mentions "the wild swings of oil and gas prices," the maturity of the oilfield technology adoption curve, and the oilfield company mergers over the past decades. These parallel trends lead to boom & bust cycles and fewer overall jobs, and so many skilled American workers find themselves in the rollercoaster of feast & famine. Geothermal is a natural solution—both a complement and an evolution—for this paradigm. In particular, geothermal #heating/#cooling has been plagued by a driller and technology shortage for decades - there's so much potential for Bedrock to build the drilling technologies that can bring oilfield talent into American communities for clean, safe limitless underground energy! An excerpt from my colleague Fernando's experience: "[A]s wells became more efficient and needed fewer people [and mergers created] fewer clients for drilling companies, Aguilera, the former oilfield drilling contractor director, suddenly found himself having to call hundreds of workers to lay them off... [He] now runs field operations for Bedrock Energy, a company that drills geothermal wells to heat or cool commercial buildings. Unlike in oil and gas, where there were too many staff and rigs for the available work, 'we have the opposite problem in geothermal. We have more jobs that we can take on,' he said."

Data centers are especially well-served by geothermal, as efficient thermal exchange from the ground can significantly lower operating costs and peak loads associated with cooling. At Bedrock, we’re working hard on our advanced subsurface simulation software, which can model geo-field performance over decades — this orientation towards long-term performance is the ideal fit for such cooling-intensive use cases. Thanks to Tim De Chant at TechCrunch for featuring us!

On the heels of an incredible #Geothermal House: MAGMA edition in DC last week, we will be at Geothermal House: #SXSW edition tomorrow! We'll talk about how Bedrock Energy and EcoSmart Solution are making it more affordable and accessible for homes and businesses to tap into the limitless thermal energy right underneath their own properties. The infinite source of clean energy resilience has always been under our feet in our very own communities, and we're excited to share about it in Austin this week!

We're hiring for a Geothermal Operations Engineer! This individual will support deployment of novel drilling and subsurface technologies that make geothermal heat pump systems more accessible and efficient. The ideal candidate will have well-rounded engineering expertise (e.g., building energy modeling, fluid systems, solid mechanics, heat transfer) with a particular emphasis on drilling, well construction, and subsurface engineering. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/gRQt7Qpa

Catch Bedrock at Geothermal Rising's Thermal Energy Networks (TEN) Symposium next week! On Friday, February 7, Joselyn Lai and Michael Chien will be presenting about TENs and their synergies with microgrids, as well as modern best practices for TEN design and construction. We're looking forward to connecting with folks excited about the potential of networked/district geothermal systems!

In case you missed it: last week we announced our $12M Series A, led by Titanium Ventures. We're grateful to Commercial Observer, TechCrunch, and Builders Magazine for their deep dives on our plan to scale geothermal deployment to new geographies and categories. Read more: - Commercial Observer: https://lnkd.in/gPmpu9TW - TechCrunch: https://lnkd.in/g5-kF9Hs - Builders Magazine: https://lnkd.in/gWps3GKR

Announcing today our $12M Series A financing, led by Titanium Ventures, with participation from Energy Impact Partners, Sustainable Future Ventures, and returning Seed investors! Thanks to Axios and Commercial Observer for sharing our big news, and thanks to our investors for their support of our vision for onsite energy abundance for real estate. In a time of intense energy needs, subsurface technologies enable any real estate portfolio to increase profits by drawing free, clean heat from under their very own properties. Our innovations make #geothermal affordable, reliable, and scalable for large real estate assets anywhere, and this Series A round allows us to expand deployments across the country. With this A round, we'll also further development of automated, robotic drilling technologies. We're #hiring mechanical, electrical, and software #engineers as well as #field operators. Come join our mission to decarbonize buildings everywhere with clean, resilient, abundant geothermal energy! https://lnkd.in/g4e7gBFT