Clean Energy Around the Clock Today!? Inventor and Energy Dome CEO Claudio Spadacini on his New Battery

Born and raised in a small Italian town near the Swiss Alps, Claudio Spadacini learned from an early age that electricity can spark world changing innovation anywhere. Due in large part to their access to hydropower, the first car ever built in Italy came from his small town. In step, Claudio’s first aspiration was to design race cars. While he still loves race cars, Claudio eventually transitioned his passion into engineering and sustainable energy solutions. 

In this episode, Greg and Claudio recount first meeting at COP 28 in Dubai. Claudio shares his journey from the geothermal energy sector to Energy Dome - creating the world’s first CO2 battery. He also explains his perspective on what it takes to be truly innovative in a sector. Yes, this conversation definitely exhilarated Greg and his passion for physics! We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

Outline: 
Chapter 1: Recap and Introduction to the Episode with Greg and Flo (00:38 - 04:33)
Greg and Flo Recap the interview and introduce Energy Dome as a company focused on enabling clean energy production around the clock.
The importance of energy storage for 10-12 hours is highlighted as a key missing piece in the clean energy transition.

Chapter 2: Interview Begins, Meeting Claudio at COP 28 and Energy Dome's Mission (05:02 - 08:56)
Claudio and Greg discuss meeting at COP 28 and sharing insights on clean energy initiatives.
Claudio's background in engineering and his success in founding impactful technology ventures are mentioned.

Chapter 3: Challenges in Geothermal Energy and Energy Dome's Solutions (09:17 - 14:46)
The challenges of geothermal energy as a base load power source are discussed.
Energy Dome's approach to solving these challenges and transitioning into energy storage solutions is explored.

Chapter 4: Entrepreneurial Journey and Innovation Process (15:02 - 20:07)
Claudio talks about the innovation process starting with deep knowledge and challenging the status quo.
The importance of analyzing and synthesizing information to drive innovation is emphasized.

Chapter 5: Energy Dome's Technology and Impact in the Market (22:00 - 27:43)
The discussion shifts to Energy Dome's technology and its ability to maintain efficiency on a weekly basis for energy storage.
Claudio explains the importance of stress-testing the technology and continuing to evaluate its performance in the market.

Chapter 6: Standardization, Business Model, and Finance (31:19 - 43:34)
Standardization challenges in geothermal energy projects are addressed, along with the goal of making Energy Dome's technology temperature independent.
The scalability and financeability of the business model are touched upon, highlighting the need for creating a significant impact in the market.

Chapter 7: Looking Back and Future Outlook (45:06 - 52:57)
Claudio reflects on starting a company in 2007 and the importance of thinking big and being laser-focused on goals.
The conversation ends with a call for strong teams and individuals to drive the transition away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energy solutions.


Claudio Spadacini Bio and Publications:

Claudio holds a Master’s degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Turbomachinery, Energy Production, and Conversion. Claudio was awarded the Sesini Award as a top graduate student and, during his career, filed 45 patents.
He's the founder and CEO of Energy Dome, a leading long-duration energy storage solutions provider. The company developed the CO2 Battery, a breakthrough technology capable of storing a large quantity of energy cost-effectively and efficiently. Energy Dome’s mission is to unlock renewable energy and make solar and wind power dispatchable 24/7.
 
An engineer by education, but most importantly, an innovator and entrepreneur by nature and experience, Claudio has founded multiple successful technology ventures in the energy sector, taking them from germinal concepts to tangible market leadership.
Prior to Energy Dome, Claudio founded and led Exergy S.p.A., which, under his guidance, has developed and installed more than 500 MWe of binary geothermal power plants; the critical element of Exergy's success is the innovative radial outflow turbine, patented and developed by Claudio himself.

He also founded Sebigas S.p.A., a company with a portfolio of over 80 plants specializing in designing, constructing and managing biogas plants worldwide. He’s also the co¬founder of Idroelettrica Cavaglio: this company built a hydroelectric power plant that holds the record for drilling the longest tunnel of its kind.

In short, all of Claudio’s new ventures are based on disruptive technologies as he boasts a strong bias toward innovations and extensive knowledge of conventional and renewable energy systems, turbomachinery, and thermodynamic processes. 

Publications
M. Astolfi, D. Rizzi, E. Macchi and C. Spadacini "A Novel Energy Storage System Based on Carbon Dioxide Unique Thermodynamic Properties.", Proceedings of the ASME Turbo Expo 2021: Turbomachinery Technical Conference and Exposition, Virtual - Online, June 7–11, 2021. V004T07A002. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/GT2021-59487

“Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) Power Systems. Technologies and Applications”, Editor(s):
E. Macchi, M. Astolfi, Woodhead Publishing, 2016, ISBN 9780081005101, eBook ISBN: 9780081005118 https://doi.org/10.1016/C2014-0-04239-6.
•        D. Rizzi and C. Spadacini, “Chapter 11 - Radial outflow turbines for Organic Rankine Cycle expanders”, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) Power Systems. Technologies and Applications, Pages 335-359, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100510-1.00011-9.
•        M. Quaia, L.G. Xodo and C. Spadacini, “Chapter 14 - Geothermal energy exploitation with Organic Rankine Cycle technologies”, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) Power Systems. Technologies and Applications, Pages 473-525, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100510-1.00014-4.

Lectures/Presentations
C. Spadacini, L. Centemeri, D. Rizzi, M. Sanvito and A. Serafino, "Fluid-dynamics of the ORC Radial Outflow Turbine", International Seminar on ORC Power Systems, Brussels, Belgium, 12-14 October 2015.
C. Spadacini, M. Frassinetti, A. Hinde, S. Penati, M. Quaia, D. Rizzi and A. Serafino, “The First Geothermal Organic Radial Outflow Turbines”, Proceedings World Geothermal Congress 2015, Melbourne, Australia, 19-25 April 2015.
C. Spadacini, D. Rizzi, C. Saccilotto, S. Salgarollo, L. Centemeri, "The Radial outflow Turbine Technology - Impact on the cycle, thermodynamics, machinery fluid and rotor dynamic features", International Seminar of ORC Power Systems, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7-8 October 2013.
C. Spadacini, L. Centemeri, L. G. Xodo, M. Astolfi, M. C. Romano and E. Macchi, “A new configuration for Organic Rankine Cycle power systems”, International Seminar of ORC Power Systems, Delft, the Netherlands, 22-23 September 2011.

Creators & Guests

Host

Greg Robinson

Husband. Dad. Working to make basic needs not so basic..

Producer

Flo Lumsden

Audio and Video producer. Owner of #chorusstudios

What is The World Changing Podcast?

Join us as we talk to the skeptics, supporters, and innovators in the fields that depend on electricity to run their industries, which is changing every single day. Hosted by Greg Robinson and Flo Lumsden, an Aston podcast produced by Chorus Studios.

Claudio Spadacini: In my town in the north of Italy, which is very close to swiss border, very close to the Alps, the first hydropower plant that been built there. My town, which is small, has been the first town in Italy to have electrical public lighting there. The first car in Italy has been built. My father told me about those stories, and what I learned from that is really that there are no limits. You can make a revolution from a small town.

Greg Robinson: Welcome to the World changing podcast. Was that too much? Yeah, that was probably too much, but let's keep it. We'll keep it anyway. How about this? If we do the podcast and the world doesn't change, then we can take that out. Welcome to the World changing podcast, where we deconstruct the projects and products that are moving us towards a decentralized and carbon free future. We'll talk to the skeptics, supporters, and innovators in the fields that depend on electricity to run their industries, which is changing every single day. I'm your host, Greg Robinson, co founder of Aston Labs, a decentralized infrastructure company. And on the other side of the camera here, we have Flo Lumpson, our producer, and she will make sure that the train stays on the tracks while we do this.

Flo Lumsden: Good morning, Greg. I'm excited to recap our conversation with Claudio from energy Dome.

Greg Robinson: It was awesome.

Flo Lumsden: It was so awesome.

Greg Robinson: Mm.

Flo Lumsden: I learned so much. He did a great job of explaining how the energy dome works, and I find it really cool. It's like a brand new invention, power creation, power storage, and deployment. It's super sustainable. What were your big takeaways?

Greg Robinson: Yeah, so I met, when I first met Claudio, I was telling him about, at Aston, working to deploy clean energy campuses. And the biggest question I always get is, how are you going to make clean energy work around the clock? And so I was at cop 28, standing in this giant museum, and I met Claudio, and I told him what were doing, and he said, oh, we've developed this company called Energy Dome, and we're focused on basically making clean energy, namely solar and wind, work around the clock. And so, you know, that's a huge missing piece, is how do we get energy storage for 12 hours? Ten to 12 hours, that's what we need. And so, I mean, that's. That's the major takeaway for me.

Greg Robinson: But even beyond that, just like Claudia's background, history as an engineer, it's very rare to find somebody who can be like that, deeply steeped in the engineering, and then also several times build businesses that have such a huge impact. So let me just. Let me do the formal description. So, Claudio has a master's degree from Polytechnic University of Milan, mechanical engineering. He specialized in turbomachinery energy production and conversion. He was also awarded the Sassini award and has filed 45 patents. He's the founder and CEO of Energy Dome, which we go into at length during the episode, so spend too much time on that. Claudio has founded multiple successful technology ventures in the energy sector, taking them from initial concepts to market leadership. Prior to energy dome, Claudio founded and led Exergy, which developed and installed more than 500 binary cycle geothermal plants.

Greg Robinson: And the critical element, going back to what I was saying before, of exergy success, is the radial outflow turbine, which was patented and developed by Claudio himself. He also founded Sebi Gas, a company with a portfolio of over 80 plants, specializing in designing, constructing, and managing biogas plants worldwide. He's the founder of Hydroelectrica Cavallo. This company built a hydroelectric power plant that holds the record for drilling the longest tunnel of its kind. So, basically, Claudio has been working on making energy service and clean energy production work around the clock. And energy Dome is really just sort of a logical extension of his career so far. So let's get into it.

Flo Lumsden: Awesome.

Greg Robinson: I hope you enjoy the episode. When we first talked about doing this, I immediately was like, oh, we're gonna spend this whole time talking about childhood and where we grew up and what were using to become engineers eventually in life. But I thought it would be interesting to kind of start a little more recent, which is how we met, because I think we met at CoP 28 this year, and where we met at the museum of the future having cocktails with an AI robot. And, yeah, I don't think we talked to the robot, though very much. We were talking about what my main takeaway from Cop 28 this year was.

Greg Robinson: I would tell people about what I was working on or what were working on at Aston and how were trying to, you know, deploy these micro grids, or we'll call them private grids, that ran on 100% clean energy. And depending on who I was talking to, I would get somebody who would say, well, that's not going to work with clean energy, because clean energy isn't going to work around the clock, so we're going to have to use gas no matter what. And then I would meet with other people who would say, well, we just need storage. We just need to make sure that we have a solution. So that's where I wanted to start, because I think when I talk in my own circles about what you're working on at energy Dome.

Greg Robinson: The main, just the light bulb, no pun intended, goes off and people are like, oh, yeah, that's what's been missing. So can you just give a high level description of energy Dome?

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah. Thank you for the question. Thank you for having me here.

Greg Robinson: Absolutely. Thank you.

Claudio Spadacini: I think that energy Dome is just as being incorporated has been founded just to give answer to that demand of around the clock renewable and dispatchable electricity. So energy Dom has developed a system and a technology which is proprietary, which make it possible to deliver around the clock electricity renewable, which is dispatchable. It's a thermodynamic cycle. It's a thermodynamic process. The beauty is that it uses only half the shelf component, which are really used in other industries like oil and gas, and that make the technology very attractive, because on top of being very efficient, 75% round trip efficiency, and very cost competitive, the capex are 30 40% less than lithium ion batteries. It is also available today. It is implementable today. We are not a lab company.

Claudio Spadacini: We are not making any research on new chemistry, which may be available in ten years or so. But we have developed a solution which we have been able to execute and to put on ground in a very short period of time, and we are ready to build in the market. So that is the beauty. And that, I think, is a real answer to the need of around the clock, dispatchable renewables that we feel is really growing this demand all around in every country and just in every corner around the world.

Greg Robinson: Work. Yeah, it's funny, I just had a conversation last week. I asked somebody, I said, have you heard of energy dome? And they just, like, somebody who had been in renewable development for a long time in the States, and like, oh, yes, I just, you know, I read this article in the New York Times, which I saw was a, that was a great piece that came out. So let me step a little bit further back. I'm kind of going to go very quickly backwards, and then we'll come back again to talk about energy dome and how you're deploying that. This isn't your first time thinking about around the clock clean energy, though. Prior to energy dome, you were working in geothermal.

Greg Robinson: What inspired you to go from a technology which a lot of people, if I, you know, if we're talking about base load, clean energy, geothermal seems like a full solution. So what are the challenges of geothermal that you saw as we need to find a better way. We need to find a different way and go into energy dome. So if you can just kind of talk a little bit about the challenges of geothermal as a round the clock base load power and kind of, and then maybe move into how energy dome is kind of solving some of those challenges of geothermal.

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah, geothermal is very fascinating. I'm so happy that I spent, let's say, eight years of my career in that sector, and potentially is a round the clock source of electricity, which is also quite well distributed, not equally distributed around the world, but quite well distributed. When I started exergy, my previous company in geothermal, I think that we did great advantages on all the downstream technologies on the binary cycle. We have been able to innovate, and we gave a strong impulse in that market. But then in beginning, I think, 2013, 2014, the drop in price of solar PV became really a huge obstacle for deploying geothermal. But the real obstacle of geothermal, in my view, are financial. So the geological risk which is intrinsically associated to geothermal, is something that is priced very expensive from any, let's say, investor or lender.

Claudio Spadacini: And the cost of capital associated to geothermal is really something which is really damaging, or let's say, reducing very much the relativity of all the geothermal investments. So, in my view, the geological risk, which can be a risk of losing money by drilling a well, for example, which is dry, or just by delaying a project by one or two years or even more, is really unattractive to financial investor or infra fund that wanted to invest into debt, could be appropriated as an investment to oil major, which they know. What does it mean? They have a balance sheet which is huge, which is big enough to finance that exploration activities with their balance sheet.

Claudio Spadacini: But in my opinion, that is a kind of business which is available only for large corporate oil measures that can really make decision to go there to draw money from their balance sheet. That is the only way to make the difference. Otherwise, just the cost of capital will make geothermal not attractive against other source of energy. On top of that, there is kind of intrinsical impossibility to standardize because you never know what you find down there. So the temperature is different every location. The brine that you find is different every location. So standardization is an issue. And the. The lack of standardization means higher prices and less competitivity.

Claudio Spadacini: That is one of the reasons why at a certain point in time, when I saw that photovoltaic dropped and I started to wonder myself if there was some possibility or some potential technology to be paired with solar PV window to make solar plus storage or wind plus storage competitive against geothermal or against other, let's say, around the clock, dispatchable renewables. And I got the feeling that there was that possibility, and that is the reason why I started to think in energy storage.

Greg Robinson: Let's go to the beginning of energy dome. So you're thinking about this, which I do want to get into compressed air, compressed CO2, because compressed air has been a thing for a long time. Like many people have said, oh, we can use compressed air. But the issue, and you told me this the first time we met, the issue with compressed air is the temperatures that you have to get to. And so you're leaving geothermal, you're thinking about getting into energy storage, and what is that process? A big thing. On this show, we like to talk about that entrepreneurial journey, because obviously when we're pitching investors, we have to get about this much time to talk about the origin story. So we say, I was sitting there and I came up with this idea for energy dome, and then it happened.

Greg Robinson: But take us back to that moment and you can maybe drag it out a little bit longer than that. How did you arrive on the idea of compressed CO2 as that solution? When I heard it was like I kind of had this moment where I was like, well, duh, that seems like a logical way to solve the issues of compressed air. So how did you go from, I want to get into storage to landing on CO2 as the solution, compressed CO2?

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah, very happy about this question because this is very good. So after I started to think about the possibility of a new technology which could be competitive as solar in the energy storage field, I started to learn. I just started, let's say, to study. I just started to inform myself about all the potential available technology. So I studied quite deep. Compressed energy storage, liquid air energy storage and flow batteries, all the other gravitational and many, many other. But because I think that any innovation process start from deep knowledge. So you can be able to innovate in a sector only if you know that sector more deeply and more in detail than many others. And that is that phase which is the analysis phase. It's that phase where you use your left part of your brain that is very analytical, very informational.

Claudio Spadacini: Studying there is something like this. Then you know the idea when it comes in a while, because that is just a process to put together and make the synthesis of all the information that you have in your brain in the right way and take a conclusion. So I had all the ingredients in my brain which was to. I have a deep knowledge of CO2 and thermodynamic behavior of CO2. For example, one of the reason that CO2 is the best for storing energy is the fact that CO2 liquefies at ambient temperature under pressure. And that is the reason why we use CO2 in fire extinguisher. And we don't use nitrogen in fire extinguisher. Otherwise, for the same kilogram of gas, we should use a bottle pressure vessel, which is ten times bigger, for the same kilogram of gas.

Claudio Spadacini: But after all those studying and putting together with my previous experience, I also had another company I founded in 2008, which was involved in biogas. And in biogas, we built more than 80 biogas plants. And we used a lot of double membrane gas holder to store the biogas produced before to burn this into engines. So when I got the idea to use the CO2, and using the nice property of CO2 to become liquid at ambient temperature, I immediately recognized the possibility to store CO2 at constant pressure and at ambient pressure in a large double membrane gas holder, which we call the dome. That was the missing piece to make liquefied or compressed CO2 attractive. So when I got this idea, it was just while on my trip back from Zurich, back home, I remember. So I was really on my itinerary.

Claudio Spadacini: And when I came home, I just started to make a calculation like crazy, to get confirmation of the idea. Because when you get an idea, the most important strategy, in my opinion, is to try to destroy it as much as you can, in order to verify if that is reliable enough to survive and to be a good idea. So that is what I did. To me, any innovation, any real innovation process, start from a deep knowledge and a deep attitude in challenging the status quo. To always be 100% convinced that you can do it better. There are solutions that you can improve, but you can improve by another order of magnitude. That is my attitude. And I always believe that it is possible to do things better.

Claudio Spadacini: And I feel that is the process which gave me the possibility to, at the end, to get this idea.

Greg Robinson: That's great. I love that concept of learning the numbers. To leave the numbers, you have to learn all of the information so that it can become art, so that you can then actually get an idea out of the synthesis of all of that. I love that. I think the journey to something elegant, because when you look at the energy dome solution, it really is, as you say, standardized, repeatable, using off the shelf parts. It checks all of those boxes, all of those things that anyone has said about the challenges or why we won't be able to scale clean energy. I think that all of those components are checked by the energy dome solution.

Greg Robinson: But I do want touch one other point of energy dome, which I find fascinating, which is when you think about storage, think of the sun is shining, we don't need all of that power, so we store it and then we use it at night. But with energy dome, it's slightly different. We don't just have to use it at night. How long can you keep it in storage before you actually have to use it? Can we shift it seasonally? Can we shift it weekly?

Claudio Spadacini: Since our process is a thermodynamic process, which use pressure and temperature, so the pressure part of the storage, it can be there indefinitely for a very long period of time. Then inside the process, we also have a thermal energy storage, which is the part that can degrade a bit over time. And as a whole, the process, the CO2 battery, is able to keep and store electricity very efficiently, 75% round trip efficiency for daily storage. So if I charge today, discharge tomorrow, if we go longer, let's say on a weekly basis, we can still keep around tip efficiency, which is very similar to the original one for seasonal two.

Claudio Spadacini: But the point is that is the economical efficiency, which is not that high if you use the CO2 battery for a seasonal storage, because the return on the investment is based on how many charge and discharge per year you are able to do. So if you charge and discharge daily, obviously you pay back the investment much faster.

Flo Lumsden: Craig, I have a basic question to ask real quick as I'm trying to wrap my head around different types of batteries. I've got hydro batteries, where the energy is stored in the water behind a damn. We've got lithium ion batteries where it's stored in the chemicals of the battery. And now we've got, what I understand to be sort of like a CO2 battery, is how I'm starting to understand energy dome to create the energy in the CO2, the potential energy that can then be released later. What is that process like? You need solar power, some kind of power from somewhere else to. To transform the CO2? Or is it just.

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah, that's a good question. So what we do in our CO2 battery process is that we store the CO2 at ambient temperature and pressure in a balloon in a dome, which is a double membrane gas holder, which keep the CO2 at ambient temperature and pressure. When we need to store the electricity, we just feed with electricity an electrical motor, which drives a compressor, and the compressor compress the CO2 from ambient pressure to medium pressure, high pressure, which is about 60 bars. And then after compression, that CO2 is under pressure, but it's also quite hot, because by compression, the CO2 is warmed up.

Claudio Spadacini: So we cool down the CO2 and we store that heat in a thermal energy storage, and then we condensate the CO2, which can be stored in very small or relatively small vessel, like big extinguisher, like big fire extinguisher in that process. So we use electricity to compress and liquefy the CO2. So at the end of the day, when sun set, we have all the CO2 which has been transferred from ambient pressure in the balloon into high pressure, into the big fire extinguisher bottle. When we need the electricity back to the grid, what we do is just vice versa, the same process in the other way around. So we take the liquefied CO2 back from the bottle, we evaporate, we warm it up to the high temperature, like 400 degrees c, through the heat, which we stored in thermal energy storage.

Claudio Spadacini: And then we inject the high temperature, high pressure CO2 into an expander, which drives a generator, which generates the electricity, which is fed back to the grid. And finally, that expander exhausts the CO2 at ambient pressure into the balloon, into the gas holder, and that closed the loop. So it is a fully closed cycle. We charge the CO2 just at the beginning. We don't use and we don't leak any CO2 to the atmosphere. It's just a thermodynamic battery. So the process is a thermodynamic process, and that is able to store very efficiently and in a clean way all the electricity which is abundant when day light, when sunshine, and which we need to inject back to the grid when sunset.

Greg Robinson: How do you bring the CO2 to the site?

Claudio Spadacini: CO2 is available today, is available on the technical gas market, and the CO2 will be more and more available in the future because it's a commodity which is going to be more and more available around the world. CoE is necessary to produce all the synthetic fuel, starting from hydrogen. CO2 is coming from carbon capture and sequestration, it's coming from renewable sources, it's coming from direct air capture. We will decide from where we can buy, but we just need a very small amount of CO2 because we charge the system only once to the entire life of the planet.

Flo Lumsden: Back and forth.

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah, it's just back and forth. Back and forth, but remain exactly into the same system.

Greg Robinson: And so lithium ion batteries are. They also have a relatively short life cycle. What's the life of an energy dome of a CO2 battery?

Claudio Spadacini: That is a nice question. This is one of our beauty, because we say that we can last for 30 plus years. So we have just steel components. We don't have any kind of metal, but we use only steel. And the pressure are quite moderate, so we are not going to extreme high pressure and also the temperature not extreme. So we stay normally below 400 degrees c. And that is something that make all the components. Also, according to the, let's say, most used international rules, there are no limitations in our. That you can use that system. So we will not have any kind of degradation of efficiency. We will not have any kind of degradation of capacity, because lithium ion batteries degrade both ways. They degrade in efficiency, but they also degrade in capacity. We don't have that.

Claudio Spadacini: So we can keep all the original performances for 30 plus years. And that is really a beauty. That is one of the advantages that we have. Together with the fact that we don't use any kind of rare metal in a world which is going to be a bit less globalized than was before, this is a big advantage, not only in term of energy efficiency, but also in term of energy security and energy reliance. We know that those are very important arguments that are under discussion at very high level all around the world.

Greg Robinson: Yeah, I thought that was amazing when I heard that. I mean, I think there's so many of these objections that, unfortunately, as we think about energy transition, there are different groups want to keep their business in business, and different countries want to keep their commodities in business. And so it's easy to find these issues with storage or these issues with different types of technology. And luckily, you beat yourself up enough when you were starting the company to find all of these challenges that someone might say, yeah, that's not going to work. That's not going to work. But I do want to ask that question, which is, since you said, as an engineer or an entrepreneur, is like, try to destroy your idea.

Greg Robinson: Is there anything that you came to, as you were trying to destroy the energy dome idea, is there anything that you said, I could destroy the idea with this fact, but I'm going to go forward anyway. Was there anything left on the checklist that you said, this is a limitation, but it's not a big enough limitation for me to. To kill the idea?

Claudio Spadacini: I think that one of the most important thing that you have to realize is that you need to be honest if you really try to destroy the idea. If you really think something, if you really find something which is not working, you have to be very straight and honest and accept it. So by doing a very strong stress test on the technology, me and together then with the founding team, and also in the future, in the next four years, we have continued to do that. The only thing that we found is not really, let's say a deal breaker at all, but it's just a disadvantage. Obviously, we need a bit more space than lithium ion batteries need. And very honestly thinking about that. So we said, okay, we need maybe five times the space if compared to lithium ion batteries.

Claudio Spadacini: So that is a disadvantage. But very honestly thinking about that, since we are talking about energy transition, and energy transition is pretty much about solar production, wind production, and that. So we made some evaluation, because at the end, calculation and number matter in this. So we said, okay, let's try to quantify. Let's try to quantify how this disadvantage can be important. And what we found is that the use of land, if compared to solar photovoltaic, is just a fraction. So if we consider the area that we need to produce a certain amount of energy that we store in one day, the land that we need is around 7% of the land of the solar photovoltaic.

Claudio Spadacini: But on top of that, we have also identified a solution to convert that disadvantage into a strength, because we use that land for the dome, which is the most land consuming component that we have in our CO2 battery. But the dome can be covered with photovoltaic panel. So now that we have also developed that solution, we have not discovered there is a special shape that we have developed. But with this solution, we can also avoid this kind of disadvantage. And in that case, if we put solar pv on top of the dome, at the end, we are even more compact than lithium ion batteries, so it takes a bit of time. Obviously, the important point at the beginning was to prove to ourselves that there were no bottlenecks.

Claudio Spadacini: But if the only disadvantage is the land usage, now we have a solution also to improve that parameter and to be even more attractive and competitive than lithium ion batteries. The only real limitation today, finally, is that maybe we are not the ideal solution to be installed in the center of a city where you really have no space in that, or where the. Because in that case you cannot install. But there are 90 plus percent of the potential installation, which normally we received inquiry for that are always with enough land and space available to install our technology.

Greg Robinson: I'm just thinking about how, as you were talking about standardization across locations for geothermal. The challenge with geothermal is that it's hard to know what's underneath the ground in each place that you go. So you may end up with something coming up that is either as you said, really a dry well or just geological issues. What is under there? Is there some sort of thing you didn't know that was going to come up that's going to kill the whole entire project? Are there any of those things with energy dome? I'm just imagining like altitude or something like just in terms of atmospheric pressure, how big of a challenge is that? I mean, it seems pretty understandable, but are there any other things that you have to consider in each location?

Greg Robinson: I know space is a thing, height is probably a thing that you have to think about, but are there any other of those pieces that are challenging for scale?

Claudio Spadacini: Thank you very much for this question. I can really put the accent one other, let's say beauty of our process, which is to be totally temperature independent. So our process, our ch battery can be installed fully standardized with exactly the same component, with exactly the same specification in Alaska in winter, or in Texas in summer or in the Middle east. So we can work at 100 f, 120 f plus we can also go below zero without any problem and exactly with the same performances, zero point something percent. But really, you know, the performances are not affected by that. We have, just in case of very high altitude. There are a few locations around the world where altitude goes really very high.

Claudio Spadacini: There are some geothermal plants coming from geothermal which are located at 4000 meters or 5000 meters, which is, let's say 15,000ft above sea level in Chile. But those locations are very remote because there is the geothermal resource, but you will never go to install there a gas turbine power plant, which by the way would also be, let's say downrated. So in our case I can say that till to 6000ft, we can almost work without any kind of, let's say down rating. If you go above you just with the same gas holder, with the same balloon and with the same plant, you will just be able to store a certain percentage of kilowatt hour less. So it is just a problem of rating.

Claudio Spadacini: So high altitude, you have to derive the nominal value of the battery, but the battery works without any problem and with a slightly, let's say even higher efficiency because the pressure ratio of the compressor and the pressure ratio of the turbine increase. So there is a slightly improve in round tape efficiency, but there is also a slightly, let's say reduction of capacity, but that is nominal. It can be calculated upfront and that can be put in the economical calculation to see if there is the return.

Greg Robinson: How many megawatts can you of a size? Is there a standard size or is it scalable? I mean, from a standardization standpoint, it sounds like you're trying to get this as repeatable as you can possibly make it. Are you aiming for one specific size or will you change the scale?

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah, we have developed a standardized solution which is 20 megawatt, 200 megawatt hour. In reality, compressor during charging is 24 megawatt, during discharging can be 18 or 22, depending from different configuration. And this is the minimum size of the battery. So the only limitation that we have today is that we have defined a minimum size of the CO2 battery. We are not bidding for ten megawatt, we are not bidding for 5. That is related to the fact that the compressor and turbine really achieve almost the best efficiency at that scale, at that size upwards. We have no big limitation because we can combine those modules and we can aggregate those modules in different configuration.

Claudio Spadacini: We can put 20 compressor and then expand, and we can bid, I don't know, a Gigascale, a 1.5 gigawatt hour CO2 battery based always on the same, exactly same component, which are standardized, which do not introduce any additional risk and get access to very low cost of capital being standardized.

Greg Robinson: Sure.

Claudio Spadacini: That is the concept that we have in term of business model. And I think that is really, it makes sense because we have to pair the standardized solar photovoltaic panel or wind turbine, which we work together with.

Greg Robinson: Yeah, you've mentioned this several times, and it's so funny coming from a mechanical engineering background, to have to think so much about finance. You mentioned about the finance ability of what you're doing. But at the beginning of this year, on this podcast, we talked about kind of the primary challenges in deploying clean energy. And one of the biggest one that come, the biggest ones that comes up is finance. It seems like all these government programs, all these special tariffs, all these investment tax credits, everything is about lowering the cost of capital and making it easier to get it financed and easier to get it deployed. And I just read a great book and I'm blanking on the name of it, but it was about what makes large mega projects, like energy projects or large construction projects go over budget. And it's always standardization, modularity.

Greg Robinson: If you have modularity, things don't run over budget. If you are trying to make specialized projects, things run over budget. And you mentioned that about geothermal. It's hard to. It's different everywhere you go. It was so fascinating to me is just this idea that you can have something that in a lot of ways is traditional. You're using a lot of the same physics that you would use in a turning a turbine. All of those pieces, all these kind of gas cycle processes. But you're almost making this like cookie cutter. It's fascinating to. You're making this sort of standardized thing that could almost ship in the kit and then be installed several times over, if I may.

Claudio Spadacini: Sometimes. I'm joking, I'm joking, you know, in the company, and I'm saying that energy dome will fully succeed when we will have very few engineers in the company. And that will means that the product will be fully developed at that point in time and we will not need any additional modification. This will bring a lot of comfort to investors and financial institution that will be really ready to develop large capital with very low cost. And at the end we will succeed only and only if we will create a big impact in this market. And that is the way to go. It's not tailor made. I spent a lot of time in geothermal trying to turn around the issue of having every time a different source. But there you have no solution. In this case, we only have a grid connection.

Claudio Spadacini: Fortunately, let's say the grid frequencies are standardized. Okay, we can have 50 cycles in Europe or 60 cycle in the US. But aside that change, everything can be standard. And the other big beauty of ch battery is that we are totally temperature independent, so we can really produce a product which can be deployed everywhere with standard specification.

Flo Lumsden: I thought it would be fun to show you guys. I tried to make a diagram of. I don't think I got it right, but it was dome heat cool store, then heat use cool store. Right?

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah.

Greg Robinson: Amazing.

Flo Lumsden: I think as a total outsider, I mean, I didn't know much about this technology before we spoke. So it's exciting to hear about a totally new way of thinking about energy storage that's self contained and just brilliant, honestly, I think it's really brilliant.

Claudio Spadacini: Yeah.

Greg Robinson: Now I'm going to go back, way back. You talked about starting a company in 2007, I think is what you said. I'm very curious. Anytime I hear somebody who's spent their life as an entrepreneur, it's not all glory all the time being an entrepreneur. So it takes, usually it seems like something happened or something, some kind of inspiration happened as a kid. So I'm very curious, was there something as a child that you were either exposed to your parents gave you? Maybe it's somewhere you grew up that kind of sent you down this path.

Claudio Spadacini: Yes, there has been something quite early in my life. I got the right stimulation, I think, from my parents. And I'm getting from a town in the north of Italy, which is very close to swiss border on Lake Maggiore, which is very close to the Alps. And there, most of the first industries in Italy born there just because there was a lot of availability of water and the town was connected with channels to Milan. But in Milan, there was no electricity available, but there was electricity available because there were hydropower plant, the first hydropower plant that been built there. My town, which is small, has been the first town in Italy to have electrical public lighting around the town. Much before than Rome and much before than Milan. There the first car in Italy has been built and many other machinery.

Claudio Spadacini: So I remember that my father told me about those stories, and I've been quite impressed about the fact that there. There have been, let's say, people able to be pioneer into some industry, which is still very relevant. Okay. Now we don't build any more, let's say, cars in my town, because the electricity is another, let's say, location. But I think that learning gave me the courage to be able to be an entrepreneur, to understand that also, coming from a relatively small town, you can really do something big. That is the most important thing that I got, and that is something that I feel I can really, I bring inside me. What I learned from that is really that there are no limits. You can really think big.

Claudio Spadacini: You can really think that you can start to make a revolution starting from a small town which is not well known. And I think that is very important to be an entrepreneur, because you need to be, let's say, straightforward. You need to think about a lot of things, but at the end of the story, you need to have the courage in front of the challenge that you have. So I think this is some of the. Of the best lesson I learned when I was a child.

Greg Robinson: So how about engineering? How did you go into that? Was that part of your curiosity from entrepreneurship and doing something big, or was there?

Claudio Spadacini: I think that, you know, you, when you are that age, any decision is not really rational. You know, you have to take a decision, but you don't know what you are going to do. I had classical studies at the gymnasium before my university. I had not in mind to be an engineer in the last period before to finish my high school, I got some more interest for some technical stuff. Let's say a race car. And I said, okay, I want to go there, and I want to be, let's say, a designer of race car. You know, that's my dream. Then I started with the university, but then during the studies, I lost this passion for race car and Ferrari, which I still keep in term of support, by the way, yesterday, February 1.

Claudio Spadacini: So that's great, but not that much to try to spend, let's say, my career designing race car. A professor, which I met at the university, really inspired me, and he was professor of energy system and energy machinery. And at the end, you need people that inspire you. And the reason why now I'm spending all my career in energy today in energy transition. But, you know, also 20 years ago in energy production is because my professor inspired me.

Greg Robinson: That's awesome. Yeah, I tell that story sometimes about I actually went to college because I had played music my whole life and I wanted to build recording studios. And so I asked somebody, well, if I want to build recording studios, what do I major in? And somebody said, acoustics. So I went and I said, well, where's the acoustics department? And they said, well, it's physics. And so then I went into physics, and then I learned about recording studios, and I found out that what matters a lot is power quality. You had to get the power surface right in the building to make your audio sound good. And so then I just took all these power courses, and now here I am designing power quality now. It's so funny. Even you mentioned race cars. I mean, you know, combustion engines and all those things.

Greg Robinson: You know, it's a main component of that, making those efficient. I love hearing these stories because it almost seems like when you look back, maybe it's because we're so good at storytelling as people, but as you look back, it's almost like it's not. It's not even an accident. All the way back to the passion for race cars or, you know, all the way into this. And. And, yeah, there's people along the way that inspire us to make that slight turn that it's like, well, you know, you could still work kind of near it, and you can still root for Ferrari.

Greg Robinson: And do have one last question for you, which is, if you could stand on stage at Cop 28, these people standing in the audience trying to figure out how we're going to get rid of fossil fuels or stop using fossil fuels, what would you say to those? What would you say to the crowd?

Claudio Spadacini: I'm a very positive guy and I can just transfer to the audience what I really feel. And what I really feel is that if we believe we do it, we can really find a way. But the only important point is that we have to believe and we have to work strong and there are all the conditions to succeed. We can be one part and we aim to be a piece in this big puzzle. But we need strong people, strong team which are laser focused on the target. Put those guys in the condition to operate and they will solve the problem.

Greg Robinson: Amazing. Thanks for spending the time with us, Claudio.

Claudio Spadacini: It was great to be with you.

Greg Robinson: Yeah, great to be with you.

Flo Lumsden: I learned so much. I'm really excited.

Claudio Spadacini: Thank you.

Flo Lumsden: Hey, it's Flo. We would love to hear from you. What questions do you have about the future of electricity and power? What guests do you want us to interview? You can let us know and help us get the word out by commenting, rating, and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram. Our handle for both is podcast.

Greg Robinson: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the World changing podcast. Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube to hear the latest episodes.