Texas based geothermal energy firm led by former oil and gas executives to drill their Phase I demonstration well in Texas early this year, with eyes on big oil pivot
HOUSTON, Texas – Sage Geosystems (Sage), a venture focused on ‘hot dry rock’ geothermal energy development, announced it has closed a $3 million Series A round of financing led by Virya, LLC, a climate fund founded by TED Curator Chris Anderson. Anderson will join Sage’s Board of Directors.
The investment by Virya brings together an unprecedented mixture of investors and partners to pursue an accelerating bright spot for the oil and gas industry and climate change advocates alike – the prospect of globally scalable geothermal energy development. “Geothermal is a ubiquitous and truly huge global clean energy source, firmly within the core competency of the oil and gas industry,” says Sage CEO and former Weatherford executive Lev Ring. “We intend to quickly de-risk a novel approach to heat harvesting in hot sedimentary basins, unlocking terawatts of potential globally.” The Sage team believes that geothermal energy is the natural future of the oil and gas industry, and intends to help pave the way for the industry to pivot into the space. “If you think about how vast the oil and gas industry is globally, and what would happen if the industry engaged at scale in geothermal energy development, we could be developing a terawatt or more of geothermal energy each year,” says Lance Cook, CTO of Sage and former Shell Chief Scientist. “That places us in excess of world energy demand by 2050. Once we get through a successful pilot these next few months, we are off to the races.”
Sage was founded in summer of 2020 by Ring and Cook. The new venture experienced a series of fast successes, including having its models validated by an international oil company, and being selected to advance in the U.S. Department of Energy Geothermal Prize Competition, a million dollar multi-phase competition for geothermal innovation. Ring and Cook had worked on geothermal technologies from within the oil and gas industry in the early 2000s, only to be disappointed when the concept failed to launch as the shale boom took off. “Geothermal’s time has come. We are looking at the potential for exponential growth like the shale boom, but this time it’s clean energy,” said Ring. The team credits the Geothermal Entrepreneurship Organization (GEO) at the University of Texas at Austin for reigniting their excitement for geothermal, and for lighting a fire under the oil and gas industry at large to engage. “Industry is buzzing about this right now in a big way. Every major entity has newly formed but quiet efforts in geothermal, and I expect this to snowball as entities begin to make their efforts public over the coming months,” said Cook.
The potential pivot to clean geothermal energy by major hydrocarbon industry entities caught the eye of Chris Anderson, Sage’s lead investor. “Our clean energy future needs reliable baseload power, and so it’s thrilling to see the prospects for geothermal energy improving by the day. The skills and resources of the oil and gas industry can play an absolutely crucial role here,” said Anderson. “There’s potential for an industry often regarded as part of the problem to pivot and to use its drilling and fracking capabilities to unlock vast quantities of zero-carbon energy. That’s why Sage is so exciting to us. This is a space which both climate activists and oil industry executives worried about the long-term future of their businesses can follow with great hope.”
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About Sage Geosystems:
Sage Geosystems in a Houston Texas based geothermal energy firm, founded by former Weatherford Global Head of R&D, Lev Ring, and former Shell Chief Scientist of Wells, Lance Cook. They reunited after working for decades together in the oil and gas industry to brainstorm new scalable geothermal energy concepts. Urged on by their families to “turn toward the green side of the force,” they got hooked on the idea of leveraging the core competencies of oil and gas to unlock this baseload and ubiquitous form of green energy, and soon after launched Sage. Sage utilizes a number of novel approaches to heat harvesting, including a combination of single well closed loop system and novel use of stimulation it calls ‘HeatRoots’ to create an AGS/EGS hybrid geothermal system. More about Sage at www.sagegeo.com.
About Virya LLC:
Virya is a new climate impact fund designed to invest nimbly in ventures with high potential impact on eliminating global greenhouse gas emissions. It was co-founded by Chris Anderson, the Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas primarily through the medium of TED Talks, and by Solomon Goldstein-Rose, author of “The 100% Solution.” As an entrepreneur, Anderson founded Future plc, a British media company. Its success allowed Chris to create a private nonprofit organization which owns and operates TED, and the climate initiative Countdown. In his work on Countdown, Anderson met Goldstein-Rose, whose multi-year research on climate suggested numerous exciting avenues for investing in clean energy. More about Virya at https://virya.llc.
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Media Contact:
Lev Ring
