Tag: geothermal

Four U.S. companies landed a spot on MIT Technology Review‘s annual list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Spanning industries from nuclear and geothermal power to battery recycling and gene editing, these businesses demonstrate resilience and potential to thrive in spite of—or in some cases because of—shifting political and economic forces in the U.S.

These climate tech companies were selected based on a number of criteria including the likelihood that the technologies can mitigate climate change threats or reduce emissions, and whether they are likely to actually succeed as businesses, according to MIT Technology Review senior editor James Temple.

This year’s list is also shorter than lists of past years and is much more “geographically diverse,” Temple noted, which reflects the challenges facing these technologies and businesses at large. Alongside U.S. companies, the list includes those from Canada, China, Germany, India, and Sweden.

Here are the four homegrown climate tech companies featured on MIT’s list:

Fervo Energy

Fervo Energy is a Houston-based company applying oil and gas practices to make geothermal energy more cost effective and accessible. Whereas geothermal energy extraction is usually location-specific (think: Iceland), Fervo uses hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to access the energy source almost anywhere. In June, Fervo landed $206 million, much of it from Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, to continue building out the world’s first enhanced geothermal power plant in Utah (and in September got a big shoutout in Gates’s famous blog). 

When the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed into law in July, it curtailed or eliminated a number of tax incentives for various industries like solar, wind, and EVs. But key Biden-era tax incentives were largely preserved for geothermal and nuclear. Plus, U.S. energy secretary Chris Wright listed geothermal as a priority alongside advanced nuclear, hydropower, and fossil fuels when expanding on Trump’s early, energy-related executive orders. 

That said, possible risks to the technology’s viability include lengthy permitting processes, and the seismic risks that fracking more broadly can pose, according to MIT.

Kairos Power

Alameda, California-based Kairos Power is developing advanced nuclear reactors that executives say can produce reliable and abundant nuclear power more safely and affordably than today’s fission reactors. Kairos’s reactor design uses a robust fuel form that can remain intact at high temperatures, as well as a molten fluoride salt as a coolant, rather than water. The company has backing from Google, with which it struck a deal that is poised to help develop its small modular reactor technology and inked a historic deal in August with a major U.S. utility. 

Like Fervo, Kairos Power operates in an industry with which the Trump administration’s has taken a comparatively friendlier stance. Kairos aims to kick off commercial operations as soon as 2030, but risks remain. MIT Technology Review noted Kairos isn’t the first to experiment with molten salt reactors—other such projects have failed—plus Kairos’s unique fuel requires specialized uranium that previously was mostly sourced from Russia. 

Pairwise

Pairwise applies Crispr gene editing technology to crops. In partnership with biotech giants Bayer and Corteva, the Durham, North Carolina-based startup aims to produce crops that can withstand the increasingly hostile conditions of a planet with a changing climate, according to MIT.

The company already introduced a less bitter mustard green, and now it is turning its focus toward sturdier corn, high-yield yams, and disease-resistant cacao trees with various partners including the Gates Foundation and global candy company Mars. Pairwise has not yet successfully introduced to market any of its climate optimized foods, and risks remain about how consumers might receive them, MIT noted.

Redwood Materials

Carson City, Nevada-based Redwood Materials has already made a name for itself as a U.S. leader in battery recycling. Now it’s moving into battery upcycling, turning end-of-life EV batteries into microgrids that experts believe could be crucial for shoring up the grid amid rising energy demand.

As more consumers adopt electric vehicles, there’s increasing domestic and global demand for minerals like lithium and cobalt. Redwood says that recycling batteries reduces the need for mining and boosts the domestic supply chain, all while cutting carbon emissions by 70 percent compared with processing mined materials, MIT Technology Review reported. Plus, this new microgrid technology could help quickly meet power needs as data centers demand ever more energy. But as MIT points out, Redwood still has technical and scaling hurdles to clear for its microgrids, and the viability of the business could be threatened if consumer demand for EVs tumbles.

Check out the full list of Climate Tech Companies to watch here.