Aug 4, 2022 · 39m · how-i-built-this
HIBT Lab! Quaise Energy: Carlos Araque
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Guy Raz interviews Quaise Energy co-founder and CEO Carlos Araque about utilizing gyrotron-powered millimeter-wave drilling to unlock deep geothermal energy. The discussion covers Araque's path from oilfield engineering to tough-tech entrepreneurship and examines how repowering existing thermal power plants can accelerate global decarbonization.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 41.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 4.0 Guest disagreement 0.1 Guy pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 10:45 Rejecting solar and wind power density claims
Carlos firmly pushes back against Guy's premise of blanketing deserts in solar panels, calling it trading one black eye for two due to severe land-use constraints.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 23:19 Challenging borehole stability under deep pressureGuy presses Carlos on physics and geology, questioning how a 20-kilometer borehole avoids immediate collapse under immense earth pressure.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 36:43 Educating on natural 40 terawatt Earth heat leakageCarlos educates Guy on planetary thermal dynamics, explaining that Earth naturally bleeds twice humanity's total power consumption every second.
Guy holds their own ▶ 33:42 Demonstrating San Francisco megawatt-hour mathGuy demonstrates deep preparation by citing San Francisco's 14,000 MWh daily usage and accurately calculating the exact number of 50 MW wells required to power the city.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carlos Araque's Childhood in Medellín and Path to MIT | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks open-ended biographical questions regarding Carlos growing up in Medellin and discovering engineering through his father. Carlos shares vivid memories of cartel bombings during his youth. | |
| Hands-On Engineering with the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy prompts Carlos about his undergraduate work with MIT's solar vehicle team and his subsequent career at Schlumberger. Carlos explains the mechanics of downhole tool engineering and global oil operations. | |
| Recognizing the Urgency of the Global Energy Transition | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy tracks Carlos's career shift from fossil fuels to clean tech at MIT's The Engine. Carlos explains that the energy transition barrier is fundamentally a technological and high-risk capital challenge. | |
| Assessing Scalable Energy Solutions and the Land-Use Dilemma | 4 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Guy asks if covering deserts with solar and wind could solve global energy needs. Carlos educates him on the concept of power density, pointing out that land constraints make massive solar/wind deployment ecologically unviable and limiting solutions to fission, fusion, and deep geothermal. | |
| The Mechanics and Untapped Potential of Deep Geothermal Energy | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Guy breaks down his conceptual understanding of electricity generation via steam turbines. Carlos affirms the model and explains how drilling 20 kilometers unlocks clean steam universally. | |
| Mid-Show Break and Sponsorship Interlude | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Following the mid-show break, Carlos explains MIT professor Paul Woskov's breakthrough of replacing mechanical drill bits with high-power millimeter microwave beams to vaporize hard basement rock. | |
| Outpacing Historical Drilling Records: Kola Superdeep vs. Quaise | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Guy notes that the Russian Kola Superdeep borehole took two decades to drill 12 kilometers. Carlos astonishes Guy by explaining Quaise's millimeter-wave process can reach 20 kilometers in just weeks to repower existing thermal plants. | |
| Gyrotron Mechanics and Subsurface Hole Stabilization | 4 | 6 | 0 | 1 | Guy probes how extreme subsurface pressure can be handled without the borehole collapsing. Carlos explains that intense thermal vitrification turns surrounding rock into a self-supporting glass casing. | |
| Founding Quaise Energy, Venture Capital, and Oil Industry Backing | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about fundraising and whether the oil and gas sector is supportive. Carlos details the unit economics of a twenty-million-dollar well lasting fifty years and notes direct investment from fossil fuel majors. | |
| Second Mid-Show Break | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Guy inquires about the deepest hole drilled to date and upcoming timelines. Carlos clarifies they are currently drilling inches to feet in the lab before moving field testing to Oregon by 2024. | |
| Overcoming Economic, Regulatory, and Workforce Hurdles | 5 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Guy draws comparisons to French nuclear build times and questions the impact on fossil fuel labor. Carlos explains that geothermal directly reuses three million oil and gas workers and converts existing power plants at one to three cents per kilowatt-hour. | |
| Scalability, Urban Power Requirements, and Minimal Land Footprint | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Guy performs live math on San Francisco's daily power demand, calculating that 12 wells would suffice, and asks about methane leakage risks. Carlos confirms the math, highlights the eight-inch diameter footprint, and explains drilling far below methane-bearing strata. | |
| Long-Term Global Vision and Limitless Earth Heat | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks if tapping Earth's heat could deplete the resource over time. Carlos explains the planet naturally radiates 40 terawatts continuously—double global human consumption—making the energy virtually infinite. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Araque: Medellín Saw Up to 14 Car Bombs Daily During Peak Violence
“The city is a valley, so you would see it across the distance from one side of the valley to the other one, and you would count 10 car bombs in a day, maybe 14 in a bad day.”
Araque: The Global Energy Transition Will Happen in Our Generation
“You know, the energy transition will happen in our generation. It has to happen”
Energy transition is blocked by technology, not politics, says Araque
“So I became convinced that the reason we don't transition energy is first and foremost because we do not have as a species that technology to do it. Politics play a role, but it is really a technological gap first and foremost.”
Solar and wind alone would match CO2's ecological harm, says Araque
“I think it would, but the ecological consequences would be just as bad as putting CO₂ into the atmosphere.”
Araque: Only fission, fusion, and deep geothermal can scale to humanity's needs
“So when you look at that, I think there's only three things that can do it. The first one is indeed nuclear fission. As you just mentioned, it has the scalability and the power density to do it. The second one is fusion, which is what the sun does, but it's st…”
Araque: Drilling at most 20 kilometers unlocks global geothermal energy
“Well, if you want to cover the entire planet, if you want to make sure every single human being has access to geothermal energy, not just a little bit of it, not just a little bit to bathe in hot water, but also to power every single appliance and every single…”
Araque: Quaise Can Reach 20-Kilometer Depths to Unlock Global Geothermal
“So we think we can get to 20 kilometers. This is twice as deep as we've ever drilled as humans, and precisely what's needed to make geothermal totally global and ubiquitous.”
Quaise will drill deep geothermal wells next to existing power plants
“So we would do this very close to an existing power plant, because we want to pump water into that hole, we want to convert it to steam, and we want to run the steam through the power plant.”
Araque: There are 10,000 thermal power plants built worldwide
“We have 10,000 Power plants built in the world.”
Araque: Gyrotron millimeter waves can vaporize any subterranean basement rock
“Anything that's down there in the basement rock
Can be vaporized through this.
if you try to vaporize a metallic wall, it's not going to work, but there's no metallic walls down there.
So, so rock vaporizes.”
Araque: Millimeter-wave drilling creates vitrified glass walls that stabilize deep boreholes
“So when you're drilling the energy, you use temperature to stabilize the hole, and it basically keeps itself open.
It creates a glass wall that's very, very, very strong.
We've seen this in the lab.”
Drilling a 20-kilometer deep geothermal well will cost just $20 million
“Twenty million dollars. Just twenty million dollars. Okay. Twenty million dollars. Twenty million dollars per well if it's 20 kilometers.”
Araque: Quaise Energy has two oil and gas company investors
“We have two investors that are oil and gas companies, and they're very, very keen and very supportive of doing this technology.”
Quaise has only drilled inches in lab, aiming for feet by 2022
“Oh, it's in the lab, right? So we're talking about Inches. A couple of inches going towards feet by the end of the year.”
Quaise will start field drilling in 2024, repower plant by 2028
“So, twenty-twenty-four is what we say we're going to do, and after that, you start the journey towards repairing a power plant, and that takes us the better part of the rest of the decade. So, twenty-twenty-seven, 28 is when we intend to repair the first power…”
Araque: Existing power plants can be repowered with geothermal in weeks
“Yeah, I mean, the power plant's already built, and all we have to do is to feed it the steam that's carbon free. And you can do each one in weeks. That's precisely the play we're after.”
Twelve 8-inch deep geothermal wells could power all of San Francisco
“They're only eight inches in diameter, so absolutely you can. Yeah, I don't think you can do it with anything else, but you're right. It's 12 wells for that amount of energy to run San Francisco.”
Araque: Deep geothermal drilling avoids methane by drilling past fossil layers
“Yes, because we're not drilling into methane. We're drilling way, way below that, right? So we're just drilling into hot, dry rock. You know, we're talking about kilometers beyond where oil and gas normally is found. So, so you're really not tapping into those…”