Rondo Energy CEO John O'Donnell discusses how industrial heat production overlaps with electricity generation and the role thermal batteries can play in grid decarbonization.
Opinion
O'Donnell: US developers are dangerously distracted by speculative hydrogen subsidies
“In the U.S., there's a developer community's attention, in my humble opinion, has been a bit attracted to the hydrogen subsidies, and that The place will get the next wave of growth for utility-scale solar. We'll be building hydrogen projects that sell hydroge…”
Assertion Partly supported
O'Donnell: Intermittent renewable electricity is cheaper than burning fossil fuels
“It is intermittent electricity that's becoming the cheapest source of energy humans have ever had available. We have now entered this world where, on a primary energy basis, you can have electricity at a lower cost than burning fuel.”
Assertion Supported
O'Donnell: 1,000°C bricks match lithium-ion energy density at one-tenth the cost
“And when you heat a brick to a thousand C, it stores as much energy per pound as a lithium ion battery. Costs 10 times less, lasts 10 times longer.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Apr 2025
O'Donnell: Heat battery grid carbon savings double project-site savings
“And those grid effects of causing more renewables to show up that the heat battery is not using all those megawatt hours mean that the total system carbon savings are approximately twice the savings at the project site.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Donnell: Path is clear to decarbonize industrial heat within 15 years
“We see the path clear with what we're doing to decarbonize most of that within about 15 years, given the constraints on how fast wind and solar can be built, and there aren't meaningful production constraints on the brick materials that we use.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2030
O'Donnell: Intermittent renewable power will economically eclipse fossil fuels globally by 2030
“By 20 30 in most of the industrialized world, the conditions that exist in the six European countries where we're developing projects now in Australia and the half dozen US states, those market conditions exist in most of the industrialized world that you can …”