AI transcript
0:00:06 [MUSIC]
0:00:06 Pushkin.
0:00:13 >> It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?
0:00:17 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:00:21 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point
0:00:26 in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate
0:00:30 ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
0:00:34 So if you’re trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v.
0:00:35 Gore.
0:00:39 Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:00:47 >> So, Jenny Chase, who’s arguably the foremost solar analyst in the world,
0:00:50 recently said by 2030, in the middle of the day,
0:00:55 essentially everywhere in the world, unless it’s a cloudy day, electricity is free.
0:01:00 >> She told me that at 9 AM today, I interviewed her five hours ago, seven hours.
0:01:05 >> All right, great, so now that we live in that world,
0:01:09 like people don’t get how profound a transformation that is.
0:01:15 [MUSIC]
0:01:17 >> I’m Jacob Goldstein, and this is What’s Your Problem.
0:01:21 I hope you listened to last week’s episode where I did, in fact,
0:01:27 talk to solar expert Jenny Chase about how solar energy got so cheap.
0:01:32 That was the first of three shows we’re doing on the triumph of solar power.
0:01:36 Today and next week, I’m gonna be talking to people who have very big plans for
0:01:43 what to do with that very cheap or even free intermittent solar energy.
0:01:46 My guest today is John O’Donnell.
0:01:50 He wants to use cheap solar and wind energy to solve one of the biggest
0:01:54 unsolved problems in the energy transition.
0:01:58 Heat, industrial heat, delivering the reliable,
0:02:03 intense heat that companies around the world need to make everything from steel
0:02:04 beams to t-shirts.
0:02:09 Today, companies burn fossil fuel to generate that heat.
0:02:13 John is the co-founder of Rondo Energy, a company that, John thinks,
0:02:19 has figured out an economical way to turn intermittent electricity into industrial heat.
0:02:22 John has started companies before, and at the beginning of our conversation,
0:02:26 he told me one of the most important and really kind of surprising lessons
0:02:29 that he learned from those earlier companies.
0:02:35 >> Innovate as little as you can, if the technology’s gonna make a difference.
0:02:38 One of the important questions is not just how quickly can I develop it and
0:02:42 make a first unit, but how quickly can I make it bankable?
0:02:48 How quickly can I make it suitable for billion dollar infrastructure investments?
0:02:54 And it is a very high standard to be able to prove reliability,
0:02:57 durability, certainty of deployability.
0:03:03 And there are lots of material science research groups,
0:03:09 folks who are trying to work on innovations at an individual cell level,
0:03:16 who don’t really necessarily understand the challenge that customers by systems,
0:03:21 bankers by infrastructure, that we know will last for 30 years.
0:03:28 And it was with that rigorous focus of what is the simplest,
0:03:37 most proven thing that we could do that led us down the path that we chose.
0:03:43 Because we found a path that others had opened 200 years ago.
0:03:48 That we found a way to reuse a technology from the 1850s.
0:03:53 With a physics insight that let us use these proven materials
0:03:57 in this new way to solve this challenge.
0:04:00 >> I love the idea that innovation is not your friend.
0:04:03 Like that’s such a flip, right?
0:04:08 It’s like the Occam’s razor of starting an energy transition company or something.
0:04:09 >> Well, that’s right.
0:04:16 And we saw this, go back to clean tech 1.0, go back to 2005,
0:04:22 where there were companies that were going to make PV out of anything but
0:04:24 silicon because we knew silicon was expensive.
0:04:26 >> PV meaning photovoltaic cells.
0:04:27 >> Photovoltaic solar.
0:04:29 >> Solar panels, yeah.
0:04:36 And everybody quote unquote knew that the simple dumb thing that we’d been doing
0:04:41 for a long time, silicon wasn’t going to get cheap enough.
0:04:48 And then China put capital into reducing the cost of making polysilicon.
0:04:50 Just build more production.
0:04:54 The cost of polysilicon fell 70% in one year.
0:05:00 And today, just because of Wright’s law, just because of learning curve,
0:05:04 the simplest technology became the dominant one.
0:05:12 Today we see dozens of alternate battery chemistries in electrochemical batteries.
0:05:16 >> Alternatives to lithium ion, alternative to lithium ion batteries.
0:05:19 >> That’s right, which are facing that same, okay,
0:05:23 how fast can lithium ion improve?
0:05:26 And it continues to improve better than anyone forecasts.
0:05:34 And again, in our case, we are doing the absolute simplest thing.
0:05:38 And it is a solution that we know for sure works.
0:05:46 >> So you mentioned you came up with this idea that is a version of a 200-year-old idea.
0:05:47 What’s the big idea?
0:05:49 What’s that idea?
0:05:55 >> Up until about ten years ago, most of the energy storage in the world was at blast furnaces.
0:06:01 In the 1850s, there was an innovation that reduced coal use at a blast furnace by
0:06:06 building a tower with a thousand tons of brick with air passages.
0:06:13 The exhaust from the blast furnace blows through that tower, heats the brick to 1500 C.
0:06:17 Then things are switched around, the exhaust is being passed through another tower.
0:06:22 And the tower full of hot brick, air is being sucked through that tower and preheated to
0:06:26 1200 C into the furnace to save coal.
0:06:33 >> So basically, when they burn coal to make iron, they take the exhaust heat that comes
0:06:38 out of the furnace, they use that to heat up bricks, and then later they feed that heat
0:06:44 from the bricks back into the furnace, and it makes the plant essentially run more efficiently.
0:06:47 >> That’s right.
0:06:54 We had a physics insight that if we built a particular structure, we could use the same
0:06:57 technology that is in your toaster.
0:07:03 A very small amount of heating elements are delivering heat by radiation, thermal radiation,
0:07:07 and heating in the whole surface of the bread uniformly.
0:07:12 If we built the right structure, we could embed electrical heating elements in a structure
0:07:22 of brick with air passages and heat that brick rapidly and uniformly to very high temperatures,
0:07:26 and then pull heat out of it just the way the blast furnace units do.
0:07:32 Cool air in, superheated air out, and with superheated air, we can drive a cement kiln
0:07:38 or we can drive a boiler and make steam for making everything from baby food to chemicals.
0:07:46 And that unlocked using this abundant, brick is basically made from dirt, certain kinds
0:07:51 of clay, no critical minerals, and an unrefined material.
0:07:57 I mean, that’s one of the things about Tesla wrote a report last year, their so-called Master
0:07:59 Plan 3.
0:08:04 Their forecast for stationary storage, their assessment was the world was going to have
0:08:10 twice as much heat battery as electrochemical battery storage.
0:08:18 But that this is categorically so much lower cost because it’s using raw materials, not
0:08:22 refined materials, because it’s not doing any chemistry of any kind.
0:08:25 It’s the same technologies.
0:08:26 Just making stuff hot.
0:08:27 It’s just heating bricks.
0:08:31 So you can use raw materials, exactly.
0:08:37 So okay, so so just to kind of summarize, there’s a big problem in the world.
0:08:45 Industries burn fossil fuel for heat to make almost everything steel, cement, clothes, whatever.
0:08:49 You have this idea that kind of solution to the problem.
0:08:56 We can use intermittent, cheap, renewable electricity to heat up bricks and use those
0:09:00 bricks essentially to provide that heat.
0:09:03 What do you have to do to industrialize it, to commercialize it, to make it a thing in
0:09:05 the world?
0:09:12 So step by step, one of our one of our engineering team members in his last job was working on
0:09:14 Mach 6 hypersonic missiles.
0:09:21 He now does computational fluid simulations on air moving at about four miles an hour,
0:09:23 and the challenge is just as high.
0:09:29 We could not do what we’re doing without modern computer systems that let us do detailed
0:09:33 simulations of all the structure and behavior.
0:09:39 But step by step, it was really identifying, okay, which materials, which manufacturing
0:09:47 processes, what geometry, and we built a series of things that fit on a desktop to things
0:09:52 that look like an industrial refrigerator to things that are just multiplied by, you
0:10:00 know, about 10X, and right now we’re doing the 50X step as we go from the first commercial
0:10:07 pilot unit to the first series manufacturing of the commercial models.
0:10:09 There are plenty of different steps along the way.
0:10:14 This thing, as I said earlier, how do we innovate as little as possible, as much as necessary,
0:10:21 but as little as possible, and how do we pick subsystems and partners so that we are certain
0:10:28 we can go to massive scale, because, like, speed is the most important thing.
0:10:34 One of the studies of this class of heat batteries, their finding was, yeah, this is going to
0:10:40 eliminate about 20% of total world CO2 when it gets to scale.
0:10:41 Okay.
0:10:43 20% is a lot.
0:10:49 And it’s going to reduce the cost of manufacturing all the commodities that we use.
0:10:51 So let’s get to it.
0:10:53 How do we get there as fast as possible?
0:10:57 In a way, for something to scale that fast, it has to be cheaper, right?
0:11:04 The only way something can grow that fast is if it’s just cheaper and simple, right?
0:11:07 It has to be those things, otherwise it won’t grow fast.
0:11:13 As long as there is some sort of premium or higher cost, it will go as slowly as possible.
0:11:20 If you’re in a razor thin margin commodity business, the last thing you want is to increase
0:11:21 your cost of production.
0:11:25 Your customers may go elsewhere.
0:11:31 But if there is no emission solution that will reduce your cost of production, yeah,
0:11:37 private markets, huge flows of private capital will drive it to scale.
0:11:44 If it’s ready, if it really does meet what it says it does, if it’s safe, I mean, there
0:11:51 are lots of things and as I said earlier, is it proven enough that infrastructure capital
0:11:52 can apply?
0:11:56 Which is like the most sort of conservative, cautious capital.
0:12:01 They want to make sure not just that it works, but that it’ll work every day for 30 years.
0:12:02 That’s right.
0:12:08 And of course, we saw the solar industry as each technology became bankable, enormous
0:12:15 explosion in growth as financial engineers joined manufacturing engineers and built an
0:12:21 industry that meets everybody’s and that is the opportunity we have right now.
0:12:28 This new class of supplying the energy for industrial heat, if you just do a units conversion,
0:12:30 it’s about 7,000 gigawatts.
0:12:37 It’s many times more renewables that exist in the world today that will be needed in
0:12:44 this new market segment and grid researchers, notably Jesse Jenkins at Princeton have identified
0:12:49 that when these technologies are connected to the grid, they help the grid.
0:12:51 They make it more robust.
0:12:56 They help more renewables connect because it’s a new special class of load.
0:12:59 So there’s a virtuous cycle.
0:13:04 Well, and it’s optimized to want to use energy at a time when there’s too much energy, right?
0:13:07 Like that’s the whole point, right?
0:13:11 And in order for that to really work, because lots of people say they’re going to do that,
0:13:14 but in order for that to really work, you really have to be something that can take
0:13:17 energy only a few hours a day.
0:13:25 You have to be able to operate at low capacity factor to have a low cost per kilowatt.
0:13:31 And as I think I mentioned, the technology we use for capturing electricity is the same
0:13:33 one that is in your toaster.
0:13:39 It is literally a hot wire and it is difficult to get cheaper than a hot wire.
0:13:46 So yeah, these these play a unique role in being kind of a bottom feeder that’s taking
0:13:49 electricity that nobody else wants.
0:13:57 Yeah, that as a result, eliminating curtailment, making renewables that are serving the grid
0:14:02 more profitable because they can sell all their energy.
0:14:06 This new kind of load is going to transform the grids it’s connected to.
0:14:11 So curtailment is like turning off solar panels in the middle of the day because there’s not
0:14:12 enough demand.
0:14:14 Basically, that’s what curtailment is.
0:14:15 Yes.
0:14:20 England threw away 55% of the wind power available at the Scotland border last year.
0:14:22 You got to put some bricks over there, man.
0:14:26 You got to put some hot bricks on the Scotland border.
0:14:32 So tell me about the the pilot plant that you have, right?
0:14:33 You have built a pilot plant.
0:14:34 Is that correct?
0:14:35 Yeah.
0:14:43 We built a first small unit for a customer who is an innovator in producing low carbon
0:14:44 biofuels.
0:14:51 The goal is a couple of large units that eliminate all the combustion at the refinery.
0:14:58 And they said, show us, we were keen to work with them in the longer term, and we were
0:15:06 also on a journey, we were preparing to build a first commercial unit for another customer
0:15:09 that holds 100 megawatt hours.
0:15:15 We had built things in the lab that hold 200 kilowatt hours.
0:15:17 And that’s too big a step.
0:15:18 Right.
0:15:21 So it’s like about a thousand-fold leap of 500-fold.
0:15:22 Only 500.
0:15:23 Yeah, exactly.
0:15:24 Yeah.
0:15:29 So let’s build something in between, and in particular, the work that we had been doing
0:15:36 in the lab, we had recognized, OK, we have the geometry, we have the materials, but we
0:15:41 aren’t making the thing the way that it’s going to be easy to construct.
0:15:47 We want to make the core a different way, and we want to actually test-build something
0:15:52 of the full commercial implementation before we go build a big one.
0:15:57 And that was the genesis that said, why we want to do this project.
0:16:03 And over the last year and a half, a little more than that now, we’ve learned a ton from
0:16:10 operating there, from going through catastrophic rainstorms that flooded the site and flooded
0:16:16 the substation and a variety of things that were unpredictable, but that have been valuable
0:16:19 learning experiences as well.
0:16:21 So just what’s it look like?
0:16:32 This thing is a box that contains 10 tons of brick, storing two megawatt hours of energy.
0:16:41 Each brick is about a one-meter cube in terms of its size that has open chambers in which
0:16:49 light moves heat around and finds slots in the brick through which air passages.
0:16:55 It’s a complicated-looking object, but it’s about a meter cube, and it weighs about a
0:16:56 ton.
0:16:59 Sorry, about a half a ton, yeah.
0:17:04 Each brick, you’re saying each brick when you say it’s a meter cube and it weighs half
0:17:05 a ton?
0:17:07 Yeah, a single brick, yeah.
0:17:14 So part of the journey was learning how to make big ones so that the assembly at site
0:17:16 would be very quick.
0:17:23 Inside that structure of brick are electrical heaters that are passing through passages.
0:17:28 Inside that brick array, it’s surrounded by an insulated box, which is surrounded by an
0:17:34 insulated kind of shed, and it looks like a small industrial building on the outside.
0:17:40 It’s got water pipes and steam pipes on one side and an electrical connection at the other.
0:17:56 In a minute, John talks about building plants around the world right now.
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0:18:52 It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?
0:18:55 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:19:00 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American
0:19:05 politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one
0:19:09 of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
0:19:13 So if you’re trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore.
0:19:21 Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:19:26 So you have this pilot plant, it’s running.
0:19:28 What are you worried about?
0:19:30 What are you still trying to figure out?
0:19:39 Well, today we are in contract and in construction in one, two, three, four, five countries on
0:19:47 projects making cement, polyester, whiskey, beer, polycarbonate, plastic, and biofuels.
0:19:51 We are struggling to grow the company rapidly.
0:19:59 We’re about 150 people in seven countries right now establishing construction relationships
0:20:05 with construction companies in all of those five countries.
0:20:11 There are plenty of things at this point of stretching at the seams.
0:20:19 We’ve just, only just a few months ago, concluded establishment of a European subsidiary with
0:20:25 financing from the European Investment Bank and Breakthrough Energy’s project finance
0:20:32 team that have created an enormous financial engineering capability and legal capability
0:20:36 inside our company that almost killed us.
0:20:39 That’s the hard part.
0:20:42 Fixer, easy, finance, and legal, it’s hard.
0:20:46 Well, it depends on where you are, but at the moment, yes, that’s right, because it
0:20:53 was about a year ago that we established a giant manufacturing capacity with one of our
0:20:59 early investors who was a diversified producer of many things, including this refractory brick
0:21:01 doing business in 60 countries.
0:21:09 So part of it has been establishing, proving the initial that the thing works, then establishing
0:21:15 manufacturing capacity, establishing delivery capacity, the ability to finance projects.
0:21:20 There’s more than one answer to your question, depending on what perspective that you look,
0:21:23 and right now we’re engaged in all of them.
0:21:26 So it’s execution risk, if I were to reduce what you’re saying.
0:21:32 It’s like you figured out how to do the thing, but doing it is hard, doing it in five countries.
0:21:43 And I mean, presumably also, you have to spend a lot of money now in order to get sort of
0:21:44 steady returns over 20 years, right?
0:21:45 That’s your model.
0:21:49 You’re building these things, and then you’re selling the heat over the life of the thing.
0:21:51 Is that the way it works?
0:21:55 For about half of our projects, that is the way it works, but you’re right, we’re spending
0:21:56 a lot of money now.
0:22:02 And part of what we’re doing, of course, these early projects are proving the technology
0:22:06 in that place, in that application, with that construction partner.
0:22:12 So we’re setting the grounds for hypergrowth and establishing that bankability criterion
0:22:14 that I mentioned earlier.
0:22:19 And it takes a lot of work to get the first one done, but if we’ve done that right, with
0:22:23 that partner in that country, we will step and repeat.
0:22:28 And there are these giant markets where we are in the money, and there are a lot of people
0:22:32 who want to be customer number two or three.
0:22:39 But to your point, for some of our projects, we are a technology provider where we are
0:22:43 building something and then turning the keys over to the customer.
0:22:48 And in others, we are the owner-operator, and we are selling energy services, not energy
0:22:49 equipment.
0:22:52 Basically, you own the bricks, or they own the bricks?
0:22:55 I mean, are those the two models you’re describing?
0:22:56 More or less.
0:22:57 Yeah.
0:23:02 There are several ways that customers will bring these things in, and in some cases,
0:23:08 it’s because, look, the heat battery is in the middle of their petrochemical complex.
0:23:14 They want to own everything in that square mile factory facility.
0:23:19 In other cases, no, we’re going to establish something that’s right next door and sell steam
0:23:22 over the fence.
0:23:26 That’s just the nature of this business, and we’re standing ourselves up to do business
0:23:30 the way that the market needs us to.
0:23:32 You used the phrase “in the money.”
0:23:39 Does that mean it’s cheaper for them to buy heat from you than to use fossil fuel to generate
0:23:40 heat?
0:23:41 Is that what “in the money” means in that context?
0:23:42 Yes.
0:23:46 That’s true in every single project, and that is, yes, exactly.
0:23:49 Is regulation a problem for you at all?
0:23:50 Is it a benefit to you?
0:23:53 How does regulation fit with your business?
0:23:55 We’re using a new fuel.
0:24:00 We’re using electricity in a fundamentally new way.
0:24:08 The rules that the world has around electricity networks need update, and we hear an awful
0:24:18 lot about the challenges of connecting renewable generation to electricity grids and the delays
0:24:25 and the structural conflict between we want to lease cost electricity network, but we
0:24:31 need one that operates with these fundamentally new sources of generation.
0:24:36 What’s gone on so far with lithium-ion batteries in particular has begun to address the matter
0:24:40 of how do we connect these intermittent loads?
0:24:44 How do we connect loads that benefit the electricity grid?
0:24:48 This matter is a very big deal country by country.
0:24:49 Netherlands just made a rules change.
0:24:53 Denmark made a rules change in April last year.
0:24:56 We had a project contracted in October.
0:25:00 Germany and England have just made rules changes.
0:25:04 In some places, the rules like in Urquhart and Texas already work.
0:25:10 I’m speaking to you from California, where decarbonization is both mandatory and forbidden.
0:25:17 The grid rules in California make it impossible to connect projects like ours, and we’re building
0:25:22 our next California project with no connection at all to the electricity grid.
0:25:26 For that reason, basically just because they wouldn’t let you if you wanted to?
0:25:32 It was going to take seven years to get a connection, and the price of the grid service
0:25:40 alone exceeds the cost of fuel, so that even if the solar energy were free, the economics
0:25:43 could not work.
0:25:51 There are places where the rules matter, and it is mostly a matter of modernizing the rules
0:26:00 to deal with these fundamentally new technologies that were not conceived when today’s rules
0:26:02 were established.
0:26:08 Steve Chu, who was Obama’s energy secretary after he won the Nobel Prize, used to go around
0:26:12 giving a talk saying, “The United States does electricity today the way we did roads
0:26:20 in 1939,” and he’s right about interstate transmission and all sorts of things, but
0:26:27 these things are being worked at the same time as our technology and others are coming
0:26:33 to the fore because, look, five, 10 years from now, I think it’ll be widely understood
0:26:39 that all of industry is going to be repowered on electricity.
0:26:47 Buy everything is the way we make this transition to a lower-cost world that is zero emission,
0:26:54 and I’m very encouraged that that process is underway in a bunch of places, and there
0:27:00 are different pieces to get out of the way and to enable that transition on that journey,
0:27:06 and I’m delighted that there are other folks building heat batteries and heat pumps and
0:27:12 electrolyzers and all sorts of things, as well as electrochemical batteries.
0:27:20 That collection, those technologies, the winners will find their way to scale, but these regulatory
0:27:27 matters need to be adjusted for any of them to deploy.
0:27:29 We’ll be back in a minute with the light and brown.
0:27:43 It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, “How did we get here?”
0:27:46 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:27:51 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American
0:27:56 politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate ended with one
0:28:00 of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history, so if you’re trying to make
0:28:04 sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore.
0:28:13 Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:28:16 Our tandem bicycles overrated or underrated?
0:28:19 I have three in my backyard.
0:28:21 Tandem bicycles are fantastic.
0:28:25 Why has the world not come to tandem bicycles?
0:28:29 How do you know that nobody else knows?
0:28:33 Most of my rides have been with my kids, especially when my kids were younger.
0:28:38 It was a way of doing centuries when they weren’t willing to ride long distances.
0:28:41 You pedaled the hundred miles and they coasted?
0:28:47 It wasn’t like that, but there were allegations of that at different times.
0:28:50 Who sat him back?
0:28:55 My kids, but my wife isn’t as excited about tandem bicycles as I am, so I understand there’s
0:29:00 a diversity of opinions on this topic.
0:29:05 I’ve read that you’re also a pilot, and I saw a quote from someone who once flew with
0:29:08 you, and they called flying with you, you know what I’m going to say?
0:29:14 They called it one of the scariest and most exhilarating flights I’ve ever had.
0:29:18 I just want to give you a chance to comment on that.
0:29:23 We were on our way to a particular site where, to a meeting where we were going to go testify
0:29:28 against the construction of a coal plant in a particular spot, and we chose a route that
0:29:33 went fairly close to a peak on our way there in Nevada.
0:29:36 Well, just because it was a straight line, you were just like, well, let’s go on a straight
0:29:37 line?
0:29:44 We were, I don’t know, a mile away, but we were level with the peak, and he liked that,
0:29:47 or he both got excited and terrified.
0:29:55 So you worked on nuclear fusion long ago, and people are still working on nuclear fusion.
0:30:00 Do you think it’ll ever work in a meaningful way?
0:30:06 You think the economics of it will ever make sense even if we figure out the science?
0:30:09 There are people who know much more about it than I do that you should ask that question.
0:30:19 I was building computer systems for the instrumentation group, but every problem that existed, every
0:30:26 single one of the horrific material science challenges, whatever, there are very smart
0:30:30 folks working on those things, but you asked the right question.
0:30:36 Is there a chance that it will be economical, given what’s going on in energy storage?
0:30:42 That the world has consistently underpredicted how fast that would come down in cost, that
0:30:48 we have consistently underpredicted how fast wind and solar come down in cost.
0:30:55 It’s very difficult to see how fusion will compete with free, and of course, baseload
0:31:00 technologies that can deliver us energy all the time are super attractive, but you have
0:31:05 to look at the whole system, and again, there are people who know much more about that than
0:31:06 I do.
0:31:11 Just one thing about energy at any level, could be on the level of basic physics or
0:31:16 not, that you wish everybody knew.
0:31:25 We can have this energy transition that we talk about right now, and it is the greatest
0:31:36 business opportunity of our lifetime, and we have the technologies to do about 80% of
0:31:42 what we need to do, and the technologies basically are at hand.
0:31:49 We have the tools to drive through this transition, and 10 and 20 years ago, there was this belief
0:31:54 that the green transition, for example, the energy transition was going to make us all
0:31:59 poorer, that it was going to be a burden to those in developing countries, that it was
0:32:05 going to take away wealth, and we are now at this moment where the thing I wish people
0:32:13 knew was that, look, these technologies are cheaper, and we can go faster, and there are
0:32:22 spectacular opportunities to drive change and go faster than the world needs to to achieve
0:32:28 Paris and a safer climate, and most people don’t know that.
0:32:33 I hear often a sense of hopelessness, there’s nothing we can do, it’s going to take longer
0:32:38 than we want, and it’s like, guys, we just put our heads together, we have the tools
0:32:51 to do this, it’s profitable to do this, let’s get to it.
0:32:55 John O’Donnell is the co-founder of Rondo Energy.
0:33:00 Next week, I’ll talk with Rafi Garabedian, co-founder of Electric Hydrogen.
0:33:05 Rafi’s company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and is trying to turn all of that
0:33:10 cheap intermittent energy from solar and wind power into hydrogen.
0:33:14 That hydrogen could be used for everything from making fertilizer to powering container
0:33:18 ships.
0:33:24 Today’s show was produced by Gabriel Hunter-Chang, it was edited by Lydia Jean Cott and engineered
0:33:25 by Sarah Bouguere.
0:33:29 You can email us at problem@pushkin.fm.
0:33:41 I’m Jacob Goldstein and we’ll be back next week with another episode of What’s Your Problem?
0:33:46 It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?
0:33:49 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:33:54 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American
0:33:59 politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate ended with one
0:34:02 of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
0:34:07 So if you’re trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco Bush v. Gore.
0:34:11 Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:00:06 Pushkin.
0:00:13 >> It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?
0:00:17 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:00:21 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point
0:00:26 in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate
0:00:30 ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
0:00:34 So if you’re trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v.
0:00:35 Gore.
0:00:39 Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:00:47 >> So, Jenny Chase, who’s arguably the foremost solar analyst in the world,
0:00:50 recently said by 2030, in the middle of the day,
0:00:55 essentially everywhere in the world, unless it’s a cloudy day, electricity is free.
0:01:00 >> She told me that at 9 AM today, I interviewed her five hours ago, seven hours.
0:01:05 >> All right, great, so now that we live in that world,
0:01:09 like people don’t get how profound a transformation that is.
0:01:15 [MUSIC]
0:01:17 >> I’m Jacob Goldstein, and this is What’s Your Problem.
0:01:21 I hope you listened to last week’s episode where I did, in fact,
0:01:27 talk to solar expert Jenny Chase about how solar energy got so cheap.
0:01:32 That was the first of three shows we’re doing on the triumph of solar power.
0:01:36 Today and next week, I’m gonna be talking to people who have very big plans for
0:01:43 what to do with that very cheap or even free intermittent solar energy.
0:01:46 My guest today is John O’Donnell.
0:01:50 He wants to use cheap solar and wind energy to solve one of the biggest
0:01:54 unsolved problems in the energy transition.
0:01:58 Heat, industrial heat, delivering the reliable,
0:02:03 intense heat that companies around the world need to make everything from steel
0:02:04 beams to t-shirts.
0:02:09 Today, companies burn fossil fuel to generate that heat.
0:02:13 John is the co-founder of Rondo Energy, a company that, John thinks,
0:02:19 has figured out an economical way to turn intermittent electricity into industrial heat.
0:02:22 John has started companies before, and at the beginning of our conversation,
0:02:26 he told me one of the most important and really kind of surprising lessons
0:02:29 that he learned from those earlier companies.
0:02:35 >> Innovate as little as you can, if the technology’s gonna make a difference.
0:02:38 One of the important questions is not just how quickly can I develop it and
0:02:42 make a first unit, but how quickly can I make it bankable?
0:02:48 How quickly can I make it suitable for billion dollar infrastructure investments?
0:02:54 And it is a very high standard to be able to prove reliability,
0:02:57 durability, certainty of deployability.
0:03:03 And there are lots of material science research groups,
0:03:09 folks who are trying to work on innovations at an individual cell level,
0:03:16 who don’t really necessarily understand the challenge that customers by systems,
0:03:21 bankers by infrastructure, that we know will last for 30 years.
0:03:28 And it was with that rigorous focus of what is the simplest,
0:03:37 most proven thing that we could do that led us down the path that we chose.
0:03:43 Because we found a path that others had opened 200 years ago.
0:03:48 That we found a way to reuse a technology from the 1850s.
0:03:53 With a physics insight that let us use these proven materials
0:03:57 in this new way to solve this challenge.
0:04:00 >> I love the idea that innovation is not your friend.
0:04:03 Like that’s such a flip, right?
0:04:08 It’s like the Occam’s razor of starting an energy transition company or something.
0:04:09 >> Well, that’s right.
0:04:16 And we saw this, go back to clean tech 1.0, go back to 2005,
0:04:22 where there were companies that were going to make PV out of anything but
0:04:24 silicon because we knew silicon was expensive.
0:04:26 >> PV meaning photovoltaic cells.
0:04:27 >> Photovoltaic solar.
0:04:29 >> Solar panels, yeah.
0:04:36 And everybody quote unquote knew that the simple dumb thing that we’d been doing
0:04:41 for a long time, silicon wasn’t going to get cheap enough.
0:04:48 And then China put capital into reducing the cost of making polysilicon.
0:04:50 Just build more production.
0:04:54 The cost of polysilicon fell 70% in one year.
0:05:00 And today, just because of Wright’s law, just because of learning curve,
0:05:04 the simplest technology became the dominant one.
0:05:12 Today we see dozens of alternate battery chemistries in electrochemical batteries.
0:05:16 >> Alternatives to lithium ion, alternative to lithium ion batteries.
0:05:19 >> That’s right, which are facing that same, okay,
0:05:23 how fast can lithium ion improve?
0:05:26 And it continues to improve better than anyone forecasts.
0:05:34 And again, in our case, we are doing the absolute simplest thing.
0:05:38 And it is a solution that we know for sure works.
0:05:46 >> So you mentioned you came up with this idea that is a version of a 200-year-old idea.
0:05:47 What’s the big idea?
0:05:49 What’s that idea?
0:05:55 >> Up until about ten years ago, most of the energy storage in the world was at blast furnaces.
0:06:01 In the 1850s, there was an innovation that reduced coal use at a blast furnace by
0:06:06 building a tower with a thousand tons of brick with air passages.
0:06:13 The exhaust from the blast furnace blows through that tower, heats the brick to 1500 C.
0:06:17 Then things are switched around, the exhaust is being passed through another tower.
0:06:22 And the tower full of hot brick, air is being sucked through that tower and preheated to
0:06:26 1200 C into the furnace to save coal.
0:06:33 >> So basically, when they burn coal to make iron, they take the exhaust heat that comes
0:06:38 out of the furnace, they use that to heat up bricks, and then later they feed that heat
0:06:44 from the bricks back into the furnace, and it makes the plant essentially run more efficiently.
0:06:47 >> That’s right.
0:06:54 We had a physics insight that if we built a particular structure, we could use the same
0:06:57 technology that is in your toaster.
0:07:03 A very small amount of heating elements are delivering heat by radiation, thermal radiation,
0:07:07 and heating in the whole surface of the bread uniformly.
0:07:12 If we built the right structure, we could embed electrical heating elements in a structure
0:07:22 of brick with air passages and heat that brick rapidly and uniformly to very high temperatures,
0:07:26 and then pull heat out of it just the way the blast furnace units do.
0:07:32 Cool air in, superheated air out, and with superheated air, we can drive a cement kiln
0:07:38 or we can drive a boiler and make steam for making everything from baby food to chemicals.
0:07:46 And that unlocked using this abundant, brick is basically made from dirt, certain kinds
0:07:51 of clay, no critical minerals, and an unrefined material.
0:07:57 I mean, that’s one of the things about Tesla wrote a report last year, their so-called Master
0:07:59 Plan 3.
0:08:04 Their forecast for stationary storage, their assessment was the world was going to have
0:08:10 twice as much heat battery as electrochemical battery storage.
0:08:18 But that this is categorically so much lower cost because it’s using raw materials, not
0:08:22 refined materials, because it’s not doing any chemistry of any kind.
0:08:25 It’s the same technologies.
0:08:26 Just making stuff hot.
0:08:27 It’s just heating bricks.
0:08:31 So you can use raw materials, exactly.
0:08:37 So okay, so so just to kind of summarize, there’s a big problem in the world.
0:08:45 Industries burn fossil fuel for heat to make almost everything steel, cement, clothes, whatever.
0:08:49 You have this idea that kind of solution to the problem.
0:08:56 We can use intermittent, cheap, renewable electricity to heat up bricks and use those
0:09:00 bricks essentially to provide that heat.
0:09:03 What do you have to do to industrialize it, to commercialize it, to make it a thing in
0:09:05 the world?
0:09:12 So step by step, one of our one of our engineering team members in his last job was working on
0:09:14 Mach 6 hypersonic missiles.
0:09:21 He now does computational fluid simulations on air moving at about four miles an hour,
0:09:23 and the challenge is just as high.
0:09:29 We could not do what we’re doing without modern computer systems that let us do detailed
0:09:33 simulations of all the structure and behavior.
0:09:39 But step by step, it was really identifying, okay, which materials, which manufacturing
0:09:47 processes, what geometry, and we built a series of things that fit on a desktop to things
0:09:52 that look like an industrial refrigerator to things that are just multiplied by, you
0:10:00 know, about 10X, and right now we’re doing the 50X step as we go from the first commercial
0:10:07 pilot unit to the first series manufacturing of the commercial models.
0:10:09 There are plenty of different steps along the way.
0:10:14 This thing, as I said earlier, how do we innovate as little as possible, as much as necessary,
0:10:21 but as little as possible, and how do we pick subsystems and partners so that we are certain
0:10:28 we can go to massive scale, because, like, speed is the most important thing.
0:10:34 One of the studies of this class of heat batteries, their finding was, yeah, this is going to
0:10:40 eliminate about 20% of total world CO2 when it gets to scale.
0:10:41 Okay.
0:10:43 20% is a lot.
0:10:49 And it’s going to reduce the cost of manufacturing all the commodities that we use.
0:10:51 So let’s get to it.
0:10:53 How do we get there as fast as possible?
0:10:57 In a way, for something to scale that fast, it has to be cheaper, right?
0:11:04 The only way something can grow that fast is if it’s just cheaper and simple, right?
0:11:07 It has to be those things, otherwise it won’t grow fast.
0:11:13 As long as there is some sort of premium or higher cost, it will go as slowly as possible.
0:11:20 If you’re in a razor thin margin commodity business, the last thing you want is to increase
0:11:21 your cost of production.
0:11:25 Your customers may go elsewhere.
0:11:31 But if there is no emission solution that will reduce your cost of production, yeah,
0:11:37 private markets, huge flows of private capital will drive it to scale.
0:11:44 If it’s ready, if it really does meet what it says it does, if it’s safe, I mean, there
0:11:51 are lots of things and as I said earlier, is it proven enough that infrastructure capital
0:11:52 can apply?
0:11:56 Which is like the most sort of conservative, cautious capital.
0:12:01 They want to make sure not just that it works, but that it’ll work every day for 30 years.
0:12:02 That’s right.
0:12:08 And of course, we saw the solar industry as each technology became bankable, enormous
0:12:15 explosion in growth as financial engineers joined manufacturing engineers and built an
0:12:21 industry that meets everybody’s and that is the opportunity we have right now.
0:12:28 This new class of supplying the energy for industrial heat, if you just do a units conversion,
0:12:30 it’s about 7,000 gigawatts.
0:12:37 It’s many times more renewables that exist in the world today that will be needed in
0:12:44 this new market segment and grid researchers, notably Jesse Jenkins at Princeton have identified
0:12:49 that when these technologies are connected to the grid, they help the grid.
0:12:51 They make it more robust.
0:12:56 They help more renewables connect because it’s a new special class of load.
0:12:59 So there’s a virtuous cycle.
0:13:04 Well, and it’s optimized to want to use energy at a time when there’s too much energy, right?
0:13:07 Like that’s the whole point, right?
0:13:11 And in order for that to really work, because lots of people say they’re going to do that,
0:13:14 but in order for that to really work, you really have to be something that can take
0:13:17 energy only a few hours a day.
0:13:25 You have to be able to operate at low capacity factor to have a low cost per kilowatt.
0:13:31 And as I think I mentioned, the technology we use for capturing electricity is the same
0:13:33 one that is in your toaster.
0:13:39 It is literally a hot wire and it is difficult to get cheaper than a hot wire.
0:13:46 So yeah, these these play a unique role in being kind of a bottom feeder that’s taking
0:13:49 electricity that nobody else wants.
0:13:57 Yeah, that as a result, eliminating curtailment, making renewables that are serving the grid
0:14:02 more profitable because they can sell all their energy.
0:14:06 This new kind of load is going to transform the grids it’s connected to.
0:14:11 So curtailment is like turning off solar panels in the middle of the day because there’s not
0:14:12 enough demand.
0:14:14 Basically, that’s what curtailment is.
0:14:15 Yes.
0:14:20 England threw away 55% of the wind power available at the Scotland border last year.
0:14:22 You got to put some bricks over there, man.
0:14:26 You got to put some hot bricks on the Scotland border.
0:14:32 So tell me about the the pilot plant that you have, right?
0:14:33 You have built a pilot plant.
0:14:34 Is that correct?
0:14:35 Yeah.
0:14:43 We built a first small unit for a customer who is an innovator in producing low carbon
0:14:44 biofuels.
0:14:51 The goal is a couple of large units that eliminate all the combustion at the refinery.
0:14:58 And they said, show us, we were keen to work with them in the longer term, and we were
0:15:06 also on a journey, we were preparing to build a first commercial unit for another customer
0:15:09 that holds 100 megawatt hours.
0:15:15 We had built things in the lab that hold 200 kilowatt hours.
0:15:17 And that’s too big a step.
0:15:18 Right.
0:15:21 So it’s like about a thousand-fold leap of 500-fold.
0:15:22 Only 500.
0:15:23 Yeah, exactly.
0:15:24 Yeah.
0:15:29 So let’s build something in between, and in particular, the work that we had been doing
0:15:36 in the lab, we had recognized, OK, we have the geometry, we have the materials, but we
0:15:41 aren’t making the thing the way that it’s going to be easy to construct.
0:15:47 We want to make the core a different way, and we want to actually test-build something
0:15:52 of the full commercial implementation before we go build a big one.
0:15:57 And that was the genesis that said, why we want to do this project.
0:16:03 And over the last year and a half, a little more than that now, we’ve learned a ton from
0:16:10 operating there, from going through catastrophic rainstorms that flooded the site and flooded
0:16:16 the substation and a variety of things that were unpredictable, but that have been valuable
0:16:19 learning experiences as well.
0:16:21 So just what’s it look like?
0:16:32 This thing is a box that contains 10 tons of brick, storing two megawatt hours of energy.
0:16:41 Each brick is about a one-meter cube in terms of its size that has open chambers in which
0:16:49 light moves heat around and finds slots in the brick through which air passages.
0:16:55 It’s a complicated-looking object, but it’s about a meter cube, and it weighs about a
0:16:56 ton.
0:16:59 Sorry, about a half a ton, yeah.
0:17:04 Each brick, you’re saying each brick when you say it’s a meter cube and it weighs half
0:17:05 a ton?
0:17:07 Yeah, a single brick, yeah.
0:17:14 So part of the journey was learning how to make big ones so that the assembly at site
0:17:16 would be very quick.
0:17:23 Inside that structure of brick are electrical heaters that are passing through passages.
0:17:28 Inside that brick array, it’s surrounded by an insulated box, which is surrounded by an
0:17:34 insulated kind of shed, and it looks like a small industrial building on the outside.
0:17:40 It’s got water pipes and steam pipes on one side and an electrical connection at the other.
0:17:56 In a minute, John talks about building plants around the world right now.
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0:18:52 It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?
0:18:55 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:19:00 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American
0:19:05 politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one
0:19:09 of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
0:19:13 So if you’re trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore.
0:19:21 Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:19:26 So you have this pilot plant, it’s running.
0:19:28 What are you worried about?
0:19:30 What are you still trying to figure out?
0:19:39 Well, today we are in contract and in construction in one, two, three, four, five countries on
0:19:47 projects making cement, polyester, whiskey, beer, polycarbonate, plastic, and biofuels.
0:19:51 We are struggling to grow the company rapidly.
0:19:59 We’re about 150 people in seven countries right now establishing construction relationships
0:20:05 with construction companies in all of those five countries.
0:20:11 There are plenty of things at this point of stretching at the seams.
0:20:19 We’ve just, only just a few months ago, concluded establishment of a European subsidiary with
0:20:25 financing from the European Investment Bank and Breakthrough Energy’s project finance
0:20:32 team that have created an enormous financial engineering capability and legal capability
0:20:36 inside our company that almost killed us.
0:20:39 That’s the hard part.
0:20:42 Fixer, easy, finance, and legal, it’s hard.
0:20:46 Well, it depends on where you are, but at the moment, yes, that’s right, because it
0:20:53 was about a year ago that we established a giant manufacturing capacity with one of our
0:20:59 early investors who was a diversified producer of many things, including this refractory brick
0:21:01 doing business in 60 countries.
0:21:09 So part of it has been establishing, proving the initial that the thing works, then establishing
0:21:15 manufacturing capacity, establishing delivery capacity, the ability to finance projects.
0:21:20 There’s more than one answer to your question, depending on what perspective that you look,
0:21:23 and right now we’re engaged in all of them.
0:21:26 So it’s execution risk, if I were to reduce what you’re saying.
0:21:32 It’s like you figured out how to do the thing, but doing it is hard, doing it in five countries.
0:21:43 And I mean, presumably also, you have to spend a lot of money now in order to get sort of
0:21:44 steady returns over 20 years, right?
0:21:45 That’s your model.
0:21:49 You’re building these things, and then you’re selling the heat over the life of the thing.
0:21:51 Is that the way it works?
0:21:55 For about half of our projects, that is the way it works, but you’re right, we’re spending
0:21:56 a lot of money now.
0:22:02 And part of what we’re doing, of course, these early projects are proving the technology
0:22:06 in that place, in that application, with that construction partner.
0:22:12 So we’re setting the grounds for hypergrowth and establishing that bankability criterion
0:22:14 that I mentioned earlier.
0:22:19 And it takes a lot of work to get the first one done, but if we’ve done that right, with
0:22:23 that partner in that country, we will step and repeat.
0:22:28 And there are these giant markets where we are in the money, and there are a lot of people
0:22:32 who want to be customer number two or three.
0:22:39 But to your point, for some of our projects, we are a technology provider where we are
0:22:43 building something and then turning the keys over to the customer.
0:22:48 And in others, we are the owner-operator, and we are selling energy services, not energy
0:22:49 equipment.
0:22:52 Basically, you own the bricks, or they own the bricks?
0:22:55 I mean, are those the two models you’re describing?
0:22:56 More or less.
0:22:57 Yeah.
0:23:02 There are several ways that customers will bring these things in, and in some cases,
0:23:08 it’s because, look, the heat battery is in the middle of their petrochemical complex.
0:23:14 They want to own everything in that square mile factory facility.
0:23:19 In other cases, no, we’re going to establish something that’s right next door and sell steam
0:23:22 over the fence.
0:23:26 That’s just the nature of this business, and we’re standing ourselves up to do business
0:23:30 the way that the market needs us to.
0:23:32 You used the phrase “in the money.”
0:23:39 Does that mean it’s cheaper for them to buy heat from you than to use fossil fuel to generate
0:23:40 heat?
0:23:41 Is that what “in the money” means in that context?
0:23:42 Yes.
0:23:46 That’s true in every single project, and that is, yes, exactly.
0:23:49 Is regulation a problem for you at all?
0:23:50 Is it a benefit to you?
0:23:53 How does regulation fit with your business?
0:23:55 We’re using a new fuel.
0:24:00 We’re using electricity in a fundamentally new way.
0:24:08 The rules that the world has around electricity networks need update, and we hear an awful
0:24:18 lot about the challenges of connecting renewable generation to electricity grids and the delays
0:24:25 and the structural conflict between we want to lease cost electricity network, but we
0:24:31 need one that operates with these fundamentally new sources of generation.
0:24:36 What’s gone on so far with lithium-ion batteries in particular has begun to address the matter
0:24:40 of how do we connect these intermittent loads?
0:24:44 How do we connect loads that benefit the electricity grid?
0:24:48 This matter is a very big deal country by country.
0:24:49 Netherlands just made a rules change.
0:24:53 Denmark made a rules change in April last year.
0:24:56 We had a project contracted in October.
0:25:00 Germany and England have just made rules changes.
0:25:04 In some places, the rules like in Urquhart and Texas already work.
0:25:10 I’m speaking to you from California, where decarbonization is both mandatory and forbidden.
0:25:17 The grid rules in California make it impossible to connect projects like ours, and we’re building
0:25:22 our next California project with no connection at all to the electricity grid.
0:25:26 For that reason, basically just because they wouldn’t let you if you wanted to?
0:25:32 It was going to take seven years to get a connection, and the price of the grid service
0:25:40 alone exceeds the cost of fuel, so that even if the solar energy were free, the economics
0:25:43 could not work.
0:25:51 There are places where the rules matter, and it is mostly a matter of modernizing the rules
0:26:00 to deal with these fundamentally new technologies that were not conceived when today’s rules
0:26:02 were established.
0:26:08 Steve Chu, who was Obama’s energy secretary after he won the Nobel Prize, used to go around
0:26:12 giving a talk saying, “The United States does electricity today the way we did roads
0:26:20 in 1939,” and he’s right about interstate transmission and all sorts of things, but
0:26:27 these things are being worked at the same time as our technology and others are coming
0:26:33 to the fore because, look, five, 10 years from now, I think it’ll be widely understood
0:26:39 that all of industry is going to be repowered on electricity.
0:26:47 Buy everything is the way we make this transition to a lower-cost world that is zero emission,
0:26:54 and I’m very encouraged that that process is underway in a bunch of places, and there
0:27:00 are different pieces to get out of the way and to enable that transition on that journey,
0:27:06 and I’m delighted that there are other folks building heat batteries and heat pumps and
0:27:12 electrolyzers and all sorts of things, as well as electrochemical batteries.
0:27:20 That collection, those technologies, the winners will find their way to scale, but these regulatory
0:27:27 matters need to be adjusted for any of them to deploy.
0:27:29 We’ll be back in a minute with the light and brown.
0:27:43 It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, “How did we get here?”
0:27:46 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:27:51 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American
0:27:56 politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate ended with one
0:28:00 of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history, so if you’re trying to make
0:28:04 sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore.
0:28:13 Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:28:16 Our tandem bicycles overrated or underrated?
0:28:19 I have three in my backyard.
0:28:21 Tandem bicycles are fantastic.
0:28:25 Why has the world not come to tandem bicycles?
0:28:29 How do you know that nobody else knows?
0:28:33 Most of my rides have been with my kids, especially when my kids were younger.
0:28:38 It was a way of doing centuries when they weren’t willing to ride long distances.
0:28:41 You pedaled the hundred miles and they coasted?
0:28:47 It wasn’t like that, but there were allegations of that at different times.
0:28:50 Who sat him back?
0:28:55 My kids, but my wife isn’t as excited about tandem bicycles as I am, so I understand there’s
0:29:00 a diversity of opinions on this topic.
0:29:05 I’ve read that you’re also a pilot, and I saw a quote from someone who once flew with
0:29:08 you, and they called flying with you, you know what I’m going to say?
0:29:14 They called it one of the scariest and most exhilarating flights I’ve ever had.
0:29:18 I just want to give you a chance to comment on that.
0:29:23 We were on our way to a particular site where, to a meeting where we were going to go testify
0:29:28 against the construction of a coal plant in a particular spot, and we chose a route that
0:29:33 went fairly close to a peak on our way there in Nevada.
0:29:36 Well, just because it was a straight line, you were just like, well, let’s go on a straight
0:29:37 line?
0:29:44 We were, I don’t know, a mile away, but we were level with the peak, and he liked that,
0:29:47 or he both got excited and terrified.
0:29:55 So you worked on nuclear fusion long ago, and people are still working on nuclear fusion.
0:30:00 Do you think it’ll ever work in a meaningful way?
0:30:06 You think the economics of it will ever make sense even if we figure out the science?
0:30:09 There are people who know much more about it than I do that you should ask that question.
0:30:19 I was building computer systems for the instrumentation group, but every problem that existed, every
0:30:26 single one of the horrific material science challenges, whatever, there are very smart
0:30:30 folks working on those things, but you asked the right question.
0:30:36 Is there a chance that it will be economical, given what’s going on in energy storage?
0:30:42 That the world has consistently underpredicted how fast that would come down in cost, that
0:30:48 we have consistently underpredicted how fast wind and solar come down in cost.
0:30:55 It’s very difficult to see how fusion will compete with free, and of course, baseload
0:31:00 technologies that can deliver us energy all the time are super attractive, but you have
0:31:05 to look at the whole system, and again, there are people who know much more about that than
0:31:06 I do.
0:31:11 Just one thing about energy at any level, could be on the level of basic physics or
0:31:16 not, that you wish everybody knew.
0:31:25 We can have this energy transition that we talk about right now, and it is the greatest
0:31:36 business opportunity of our lifetime, and we have the technologies to do about 80% of
0:31:42 what we need to do, and the technologies basically are at hand.
0:31:49 We have the tools to drive through this transition, and 10 and 20 years ago, there was this belief
0:31:54 that the green transition, for example, the energy transition was going to make us all
0:31:59 poorer, that it was going to be a burden to those in developing countries, that it was
0:32:05 going to take away wealth, and we are now at this moment where the thing I wish people
0:32:13 knew was that, look, these technologies are cheaper, and we can go faster, and there are
0:32:22 spectacular opportunities to drive change and go faster than the world needs to to achieve
0:32:28 Paris and a safer climate, and most people don’t know that.
0:32:33 I hear often a sense of hopelessness, there’s nothing we can do, it’s going to take longer
0:32:38 than we want, and it’s like, guys, we just put our heads together, we have the tools
0:32:51 to do this, it’s profitable to do this, let’s get to it.
0:32:55 John O’Donnell is the co-founder of Rondo Energy.
0:33:00 Next week, I’ll talk with Rafi Garabedian, co-founder of Electric Hydrogen.
0:33:05 Rafi’s company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and is trying to turn all of that
0:33:10 cheap intermittent energy from solar and wind power into hydrogen.
0:33:14 That hydrogen could be used for everything from making fertilizer to powering container
0:33:18 ships.
0:33:24 Today’s show was produced by Gabriel Hunter-Chang, it was edited by Lydia Jean Cott and engineered
0:33:25 by Sarah Bouguere.
0:33:29 You can email us at problem@pushkin.fm.
0:33:41 I’m Jacob Goldstein and we’ll be back next week with another episode of What’s Your Problem?
0:33:46 It’s hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?
0:33:49 Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.
0:33:54 In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American
0:33:59 politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate ended with one
0:34:02 of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
0:34:07 So if you’re trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco Bush v. Gore.
0:34:11 Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
This is the second of three episodes about the solar-power revolution. Last week, we talked about how solar power got so cheap. This week, we’re talking with someone who is building giant plants around the world to take advantage of all that cheap, intermittent energy.
John O’Donnell is the co-founder of Rondo Energy. John’s problem is this: How do you turn intermittent energy into the cheap, reliable, intense heat that companies around the world need to make everything from steel beams to t-shirts?
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