Jamie Beard, founder of Project Innerspace, discusses distributed heating solutions and criticizes the push for hydrogen home heating over ground-source geothermal.
Assertion Supported
Beard: Drilling 70,000 geothermal wells yearly to 2050 meets global energy demand
“Current oil and gas well drilling capacity in the world, which is roughly, you know, 70,000 wells a year. We do that every year between now and 20 50. That meets global energy demand.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Beard: $1 billion could launch every active geothermal startup into field testing
“I mean, a billion dollars could launch every team I'm aware of into the field. That's, I mean, look, that's a drop of the bucket compared to the climate Problem.”
Insight
Beard: Syndicates must fund five sequential geothermal projects to avoid data-wait death
“We should not be waiting for five years of operational data. The reason he needs that is because he, you know, he needs to get funding for a second project, and that's why we need to fund five outright. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Stamp them out one after the other. I…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Beard: Geothermal will fail to scale if mired in climate lawsuits
“Geothermal is going to carry the baggage of a hundred years of fighting between the hydrocarbon industry and environmental and climate groups, and that, navigating that I mean, it will be incredibly important to, you know, making sure that we can achieve fast …”
Opinion
Beard: Using geothermal baseload merely to mine battery lithium is a distraction
“And so, when I see geothermal in the media as a lithium play, really, I mean, if you look at it, if you back up and look at that, what you're thinking is, oh, ok, good, we'll use this clean, awesome, ubiquitous, baseload energy source to mine lithium to make b…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Beard: 20 geothermal startups are stranded needing $30M–$50M for demonstration projects
“There's 20 teams globally right now that could be in the field building a geothermal project that can't raise the 30 to fifty million dollars they need to go out and drill the well and build the plant”