Startup Wants to Store Spare Renewable Electricity to Power Heavy Industry

Rondo Energy Inc. is taking on two problems complicating the shift to renewable energy: figuring out how to power heavy industry without burning fossil fuels and what to do with the surplus electricity weighing on prices when wind and solar power is abundant.

The Oakland, Calif., startup has developed a way of using electricity to convert excess renewable energy into high-temperature heat, then storing the heat in insulated material at more than 1,200 degrees Celsius (about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit) so it can be used to power industrial processes.

Weaning the hard-to-decarbonize industrial sector off fossil fuels would deliver big climate benefits. The industrial sector accounts for 23% of global carbon-dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, largely from the burning of coal to generate high temperatures for processes such as steelmaking and cement manufacturing.

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