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Once a brick gets hot enough, it effectively becomes a battery to store energy. That’s the low-tech approach by California-based Rondo Energy toward eliminating 15% of global emissions. By using clean wind and solar power to heat their uniquely-shaped bricks, Rondo is already helping manufacturers decarbonize and save money. National climate reporter Chase Cain got an up-close look at the bricks which can each store as much energy than a Tesla Model X.

The world relies on manufacturing, and manufacturing relies on heat — a massive contributor to global carbon emissions, responsible for a quarter of the world's fossil fuel use. Energy entrepreneur John O'Donnell has figured out a better, cleaner way to generate the heat we need to make the stuff we want. Learn how his team turned simple bricks and iron wire into a powerful, unconventional "heat battery" that could deliver industrial heat at scale without the emissions — and why he thinks electrified industrial heat is the next trillion-dollar industry.

Rondo Energy just secured $60 million of funding from some of the world's shrewdest investors. So, can they now achieve their goal of a 90GWh per annum production facility for their simple heat battery technology, reducing global industrial CO2 emissions by 12 MILLION tonnes per year? Time will tell!

To make industry sustainable will take a 1000 small revolutions across industry.

Planned capacity will produce Rondo Heat Batteries saving 12 million tons of CO2 annually, powering deep decarbonization in the world’s most energy and emissions-intensive industries with economical and highly effective technology.

The 2MWh Rondo Heat Battery captures intermittent renewable electricity, stores it at temperatures exceeding 1,000°C in brick materials, and delivers continuous industrial heat on demand. Calgren Renewable Fuels produces the world’s lowest carbon intensity (CI) ethanol, biodiesel and RNG at their Pixley, California facility.

Grid-scale lithium ion batteries are our current go-to chemical energy storage solution, but they present their own challenges in safety, sustainability, cost, and longevity. However, the competition is … heating up. New forms of thermal energy storage systems built using abundant, cheap materials are on the rise. One company is aiming to sidestep the complications that come with chemical batteries…with a brick battery.

Rondo Energy have recently received millions of dollars in investments for their thermal battery which uses superheated bricks. When heating is required, they make much more sense than lithium-ion batteries as they are cheaper, use no critical materials, last longer, and are just as efficient! Therefore, the Rondo heat battery can end battery storage as an option for heat applications!

New forms of thermal energy storage systems built using abundant, cheap materials are on the rise. One company is aiming to sidestep the complications that come with chemical batteries…with a brick battery. And another company’s weapon of choice is a crushed volcanic rock battery. Talk about going back to basics to store massive amounts of energy.

The Rondo Heat Battery is a simple solution for low-cost deep decarbonization of industrial processes. Renewable electricity is stored as high-temperature heat in brick. The stored heat is delivered on demand at temperatures up to 1500°C.

In episode of the USEA Power Sector Podcast’s series on energy storage, John O’Donnell, CEO of Rondo Energy, answered questions from journalist Herman K. Trabish about the thermal energy storage technologies that capture and store heat, the mechanics of thermal energy storage and Rondo’s “heat battery,” about why this concept may be vital to eliminating carbon emissions, and what may be just over the horizon for Rondo and other thermal energy storage technologies.

In this episode, we talk with John O’Donnell about the different methods for decarbonizing industrial heat, the use cases for heat batteries, and lessons learned from his days in solar thermal.

Journalist Mark Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.

Caroline Jo, the VP of Project Finance at Rondo, Inc talks about how the company has developed a way to store heat, and used it to power industrial uses, such as manufacturing, etc. A description of this old, now new technology is a way of using renewable/recoverable energy.

Tom Geiser from Rondo Energy puts the case for heat batteries and their role in hard to abate sectors. Plus: Coal giants get a taxpayer funded lifeline.

Rondo is using hot bricks to store energy as heat. And since industrial processes need energy in the form of heat anyway, it’s a no-brainer. Not only is their tech efficient, it’s cost-effective and reuses the same infrastructure that industry uses today, making it easy to integrate. As O’Donnell put it, “this is the lowest-tech thing, but by far this is the highest-impact thing.”

A full quarter of global energy use goes toward heat that powers industrial processes. To provide clean industrial heat but avoid the variability often associated with renewable energy, a company called Rondo makes a thermal battery, storing renewable-energy heat in bricks.

In episode 258, John O'Donnell, CEO of Rondo, a company dedicated to delivering low-cost, zero-emission industrial heat and power, discusses the journey towards a sustainable and cost-effective energy future.

Rondo is tackling the massive emissions problem of industrial heat. Almost everything around us requires heat to be made, from chemicals, to paper, to cement, to steel, and historically, nearly all of that heat comes from burning fossil fuels. So how do we harness the fluctuating availability of renewable power and let industry turn it into a reliable and extremely high temperature heat as needed?

In this episode of Hardware to Save a Planet, Dylan is joined by John O’Donnell, CEO of Rondo Energy, a company with the vision to help the world’s most energy-intensive industries achieve zero carbon emissions.

In this episode, Shayle talks to John O’Donnell, co-founder and CEO of Rondo Energy, a thermal storage startup. (Shayle’s venture capital firm, Energy Impact Partners, has made investments in Rondo Energy.) They break down the challenges of industrial heat and discuss the range of technologies that could help generate it with low emissions.

Reducing Climate Emissions With Zero Emission Industrial Heat And Power - A Chat With Rondo Energy's CEO John O'Donnell

We should all be glad people like John O'Donnell at Rondo Energy exist. In the next 15 years, they'll eliminate 15% of global CO2 emissions. If 15% is hard to wrap your mind around, it's about the same as all of the vehicle, rail, air, and marine emissions combined. 🤯

Climate emissions from the industrial sector are hard to tackle. Many industrial processes require high temperatures traditionally achievable only by burning fossil fuels. Rondo Energy is stepping into the space with their heat battery - a battery that stores energy from intermittent renewables in the form of heat, and then releases it as needed.

In this episode we discuss why industrial heat has historically been seen as a hard to decarbonize industry, how Rondo is seeking to change that by deploying its Heat Battery, and how its product differs from other energy storage technologies.

According to the International Energy Agency, three quarters of the energy used by industry is not in the form of electricity. It's in the form of heat. And that industrial heat accounts for about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. But what if we could turn low-cost, intermittent wind and solar energy into continuous heat and successfully decarbonize industrial heat?

Think that renewables can’t sustain high industrial heat? Listen and learn how storing energy as heat is allowing companies that rely on high industrial heat to reconsider renewables as a cheap and emission-free fuel source.

John has over 30 years of experience taking novel solutions from conception to reality across the energy, semiconductor and supercomputer industries. Prior to founding Rondo, John served as co-founded and vice president of development for GlassPoint Solar, the leading provider of solar thermal energy for industry worldwide.

The biggest issue with more renewable energy is that there will be greater concentrations of energy supply when those resources are available. My guest in Episode 136 brought up a novel idea—build energy-consuming infrastructure (in this case, data centers) that can operate when there is a surplus of renewable energy.

Thermal batteries present the opportunity to reduce nearly all greenhouse gas emissions from industrial heat, a sizable portion of overall U.S. emissions, by drawing from increasingly abundant renewable electricity sources. Thermal batteries use simple components and storage materials to take clean electricity from grid and off-grid sources and convert it into continuous industrial heat, helping to balance the power grid in the process.

While fossil fuels are currently used to generate almost all the heat needed in industrial processes, technological solutions like industrial thermal batteries can provide this heat while powered by clean energy. With the right policy support, we can economically scale up these technologies while cutting climate pollution at the speed and scale necessary to reach our emission reduction targets.

Today, we are publishing Master Plan Part 3, which outlines a proposed path to reach a sustainable global energy economy through end-use electrification and sustainable electricity generation and storage. This paper outlines the assumptions, sources and calculations behind that proposal. Input and conversation are welcome.