Casey Handmer: Terraform Industries and a Carbon-Neutral Future — Manifold #57

 

Casey Handmer (PhD Caltech, general relativity) is the founder of Terraform Industries. He is one of the most capable and ambitious geo-engineers on planet Earth! 

Terraform Industries is scaling technology to produce cheap natural gas with sunlight and air. Using solar energy, they extract carbon from the air and synthesize natural gas, all at the same site. 

March 2024: "Terraform completes the end to end demo, successfully producing fossil carbon free pipeline grade natural gas from sunlight and air. We also achieved green hydrogen at <$2.50/kg-H2 and DAC CO2 at <$250/T-CO2, two incredible milestones." 

Links: 

Casey Handmer’s website: https://www.caseyhandmer.com/ 

Terraform Industries: https://terraformindustries.com/ 

Nerds on Patrol [Episode 3] - Terraform Industries: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9k3dHFJPEU 

Steve and Casey discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

00:31 Casey's early life and background, from Australia to Caltech 

07:55 The academic path and transition to tech entrepreneurship 10:40 Terraform Industries 

15:21 Solar costs, efficiency, and global Impact 

24:25 A world powered by Terraform methane 

31:27 The entrepreneurial journey: challenges and insights 

35:01 Investor dynamics and strategic decisions for Terraform 

41:28 The hard Reality of manufacturing and innovation 

44:11 Navigating intellectual property and strategic partnerships 

45:49 The moral and technical challenges of carbon neutrality 

55:48 Looking ahead: Terraform's next milestones and the solar revolution

Transcript and Audio-only version:

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/casey-handmer-terraform-industries-and-a-carbon-neutral-future-57

Renewable energy past the tipping point? (VPRO documentary)

Have we reached the tipping point (i.e., ~$.05 per kilowatt hour) with renewables? The documentary claims that large investments by China and Germany have brought this to fruition, with a million people now employed in the Chinese solar industry. (Elon not so crazy after all? :-)

"Net-zero" housing

Unfortunately, the build cost is estimated at $600-800k. I'm more interested in the (presumably cheaper) insulation technologies than in the solar panels. See here for energy usage by housing type; a significant chunk of total US energy consumption goes to heating and cooling buildings.

Atlantic Monthly: ... NIST believes that this home – with 10 kilowatts of photovoltaic panels on the roof, and another four solar thermal panels over the front porch – will generate as much energy as a four-person family can consume in a year. This is, in other words, a “net-zero” house.

Financiers: make good!

For those on the Dark Side, please consider the job opportunity below, which might allow you to use your superpowers for Good :-)

In the words of Martin Sheen (Bud Fox's father in the movie Wall Street): "Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others."

Vice President of Project Finance

Clean Power Finance, San Francisco, CA

Clean Power Finance is seeking a Vice President of Project Finance to source and execute its project financing strategy. This individual will report to the CEO and source & develop project finance transactions, and originate & structure tax equity and debt required for the Company's unique renewable financing products. This position requires highly sophisticated deal making and negotiation skills, analytical skills, extreme attention to detail and excellent interpersonal skills.

Responsibilities
• Ability to source and execute renewable energy project financing structures using a variety of financing vehicles including sale-leasebacks, partnership flips, pass-throughs and debt.
• Ability to apply knowledge to develop innovative modifications to existing project and financing structures/strategies as well as lead the development of new structured finance solutions.
• Coordinate directly with banks, institutional investors, and legal resources to manage the timely execution renewable energy project transactions.
• Partner with legal resources in the drafting and execution of term sheets, financing documents, and contracts associated with renewable energy project financings.


Clean Power Finance is the leading provider of integrated software, services and financing solutions to the solar industry. Based in San Francisco, the company’s mission is to drive the adoption of renewable energy in the mass market. Clean Power Finance delivers an end-to-end solution that supports sales and marketing business processes for integrators, distributors and manufacturers. Since its introduction, the CPF Tools software platform has garnered enthusiastic reviews and currently supports over 30 percent of the solar installer community nationwide.

Energetics

Yesterday I heard a great interview (Bloomberg podcast -- unfortunately no longer available online; but see here) with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla (formerly of Kleiner-Perkins, co-founder of Sun), who has been investing in energy technologies of late. One interesting comment he made was that no technology or environmental solution will scale (certainly not enough to affect global warming) unless there is a profit to be made along the way.

Some numbers from this DOE report.

Sources of Electricity

• Currently - around 13 TW of Annualized Average Power Consumption on the Earth.

• Fossil Fuel → Annual Production of 25 billion Metric tons of CO2 ⇒ Requires Massive & Efficient Underground Storage.

• 10 TW ≡ 10^4 One GW Nuclear Power Plants – Will exhaust Terrestrial Uranium Resources in 10 years if constructed.

• Maximum Practical Hydroelectric Resources 0.5 TW.

• Cumulative Energy of Tides and Ocean Currents < 2 TW.

• Total Geothermal Energy on Earth 12 TW.

• Maximum Amount of Extractable Wind Power 2 - 4 TW.

• 120,000 TW of Solar Radiation Strikes the Earth Surface in the form of sunlight.