Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the investment firm financed by billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Jack Ma that invests in companies developing technologies to decarbonize society, is investing USD 12.5M in a geothermal project development company called Baseload Capital.
Baseload Capital is a project investment firm that provides capital to develop geothermal energy power plants using technology developed by its Swedish parent company, Climeon.
Like the spinoff from Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Dandelion Energy, which recently raised USD 16M in a new round of financing, Climeon builds standardized machines to tap geothermal energy. But Dandelion is targeting consumers with its technology to provide home heating, while Climeon turns geothermal energy into electricity.
The company’s modules which stand around two meters cubed produce 150 kilowatts of electricity, which is enough to power roughly 250 European households.
Climeon, which was founded back in 2011, formed Baseload Capital about a year ago to invest in special purpose vehicles to build the power plants that use Climeon’s technology. Baseload takes an equity stake in these companies and provides debt financing for them.
Through its investment into Baseload Capital, Breakthrough Energy Ventures will help finance and develop these small-scale power plants globally.
The company’s pitch is that its modular units make it easy to scale up or decommission plants. Modules list for EUR350,000 and customers also spend EUR5,000 per-module, per-year on Climeon’s power plant management software.
So far, the company says it has an order backlog of roughly USD 88M.
The investment in Baseload Capital is Breakthrough Energy’s second foray into the geothermal industry. Last year, the company backed Fervo Energy, which uses proven technologies to help speed the development of geothermal energy at a cost of 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.
