Energy Innovation Pioneers
Each year, Energy Innovation Pioneers program at CERAWeek features a select group of promising startups working on early-stage innovations that have the potential to disrupt the global energy industry. These companies epitomize the spirit and drive for invention characterizing the energy industry.
We are delighted to share with you the 19th annual class of Energy Innovation Pioneers:
- Bedrock Energy, Joselyn Lai, Co-founder and CEO
- BioSqueeze, Mark Ranalli, President and CEO
- C-Motive, Matt Maroon, CEO
- Cyclic Materials, Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO, President and Co-founder
- IONATE, Matthew Williams, Founder and CEO
- Modern Hydrogen, Tony Pan, CEO and Co-founder
- Svante, Claude Létourneau, President and CEO
Energy Innovation Pioneers
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Bedrock Energy"Founded in 2022, Bedrock Energy is working to decarbonize the commercial real estate sector through geothermal heating and cooling. The company is developing a solution that combines autonomous drilling technology and advanced subsurface simulation solution software to reduce the cost, space and time requirements of constructing borehole heat exchangers. By improving the confidence and creditworthiness of geothermal heat pump systems Bedrock seeks to unlock geothermal heating and cooling as a scalable, investment-grade clean energy asset class that can be deploy widely in urban environments. With a team hailing from the oil and gas research and development and oilfield operations, the company is also creating a pathway from high-quality domestic jobs in the energy transition.
Bedrock Energy’s investors include Wireframe Ventures, Overture Climate VC, Long Journey Ventures, Cantos, Toba Capital, First Start Ventures, Divergent Capital and Climate Capital.
https://bedrockenergy.com -
BioSqueeze"BioSqueeze, founded in 2021, has developed a solution that uses biomineralization to eliminate methane leaks from oil and gas wells.
Traditional remediation treatments like cement and resins are challenged to remediate this source of fugitive emissions due to difficulty bonding to casing and existing cement. BioSqueeze’s technology delivers natural, non-pathogenic soil bacteria downhole via a low-viscosity, self-diverting fluid system that penetrates deep into leakage pathways, as small as 1 micron wide, and forms a permanent, gas-tight limestone barrier. The company has sealed over 150 wells across the United States and Canada with this technology.
This technology was developed in conjunction with the Department of Energy over a 10-year period to research how microbes could be used to seal problematic defects in wellbore casing cement. Investors in BioSqueeze include Valo Ventures, Zero Infinity Partners and NextFrontier Capital.
https://biosqueeze.com -
C-Motive Technologies"C-Motive Technologies is developing a sustainable and high-efficiency motor technology to decarbonize stationary industrial and e-mobility applications. By combining printed circuit board technology with a proprietary dielectric fluid, these motors leverage electrostatic principles to enable a new way of producing motion with electricity without the need for magnets, rare-earth metals or electrical steel. They also reduce copper usage by 90% compared to conventional electric motors. As a direct-drive system, C-Motive’s motors do not produce torque ripple or audible noise, nor do they require active cooling. Compared to conventional electric motors, these systems reduce copper usage by up to 90% and can produce greater than 90% efficiency in a range of high-torque, low-speed applications.
C-Motive’s investors include Rockwell Automation, Prime Impact Fund, Clean Energy Trust and N29 Capital Partners.
https://www.c-motive.com -
Cyclic Materials"Founded in 2021, Cyclic Materials is creating a circular supply chain for rare earth elements and other metals, such as cobalt, copper and nickel, critical for the electrification and decarbonization of the energy system. Rare earth elements are key components of electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and consumer devices.
Due to the difficulty separating the various magnetic materials in end-of-life products, rare earth elements are among the least recycled materials. Cyclic Materials has developed a two-step process to recover rare earth elements from high performance magnets and re-circulate them back into the manufacturing process. The first step extracts magnets from end-of-life products, such as hard drives and ev motors. The second step uses Cyclic’s hydrometallurgical technology to process them to create fresh magnets and other products.
The company commissioned its first magnet extraction plant in September 2023, with a processing capacity of 18 million pounds of devices per year, and expects to start up a commercial demonstration plant for the hydrometallurgical process in the second quarter of 2024.
Investors in Cyclic Materials include BMW iVentures, Energy Impact Partners, Fifth Wall, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada and Planetary Technologies.
https://www.cyclicmaterials.earth -
IONATE"IONATE is developing a hardware-software solution to make power grids smarter, adaptable and more efficient. Their Hybrid Intelligent Transformer (HIT) is an all-in-one monitoring and power flow control device that enables the grid to adapt the rapid fluctuations in power flow associated with an increasingly decentralized energy system. Underpinned by innovations in magnetics, IONATE’s technology replaces passive transformers to facilitate dynamic voltage control, harmonics removal and power factor correction with milli-second precision.
Transformers are the logical nodal points in the grid to achieve responsive control. IONATE’s HIT is a drop-in solution with the same power rating and certification as traditional transformers. Once placed in strategic points of the network, IONATE’s AI platform can couple top-down grid orchestration with instantaneous bottom-up control to turn the passive legacy power grid into a flexible and distributed platform.
IONATE won the Future Energy System Award by the UK Innovation Centre, CIRED’s Best Startup Award and the Global EnergyTech Award for Best Distribution Solution. Investors include IQ Capital, Smartworks (the investment arm of Wien Group), VC Cycle Group, Zero Carbon Capital and Old College Capital.
https://www.ionate.energy -
Modern Hydrogen"Founded in 2015, Modern Hydrogen is working to accelerate the clean hydrogen economy. Their small, modular systems decarbonize hydrogen from natural gas at the point of use. By leveraging the existing natural gas distribution infrastructure, Modern Hydrogen’s decentralized pyrolysis technology sidesteps the need for new pipes, electric connections or onsite storage. Modern also sells the solid carbon co-produced with the clean hydrogen as a clean material to decarbonize the built environment.
Modern Hydrogen is backed by both strategic and cleantech investors. These include NextEra Energy, National Grid Partners, Gates Frontier and IRONGREY.
https://modernhydrogen.com -
Svante Technologies"Svante is a purpose-driven, leading carbon capture and removal solutions provider. The Vancouver, Canada-based company manufactures nanoengineered filters and modular rotary contactor machines that capture and remove CO2 from industrial emissions and the air in an environmentally responsible manner. Svante is on the 2024 Global Cleantech 100, the XPRIZE Foundation’s XB100―World’s Top 100 Deep Tech Companies and was ranked second among private companies in the Corporate Knights’ Future 50 Fastest Growing Sustainable Companies.
https://www.svanteinc.com