Rondo Energy is building a renewable energy battery using bricks and toaster wire. But it’s not for your home—it’s for the factories that run the world. Industrial heat drives 10% of global carbon emissions. It’s essential for making steel, cement, chemicals, food, paper, and fuel. And it’s one of the hardest challenges in climate—expensive to electrify, risky to retrofit, and central to the global economy.
That’s what makes Rondo’s approach so powerful. In this episode, John O’Donnell, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, explains how Rondo stores excess wind and solar energy as clean, high-temperature heat and delivers it into existing industrial systems without combustion, redesigns, or rare materials.
Its low-cost approach is underway across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. John shares how decades of experience building global energy projects—and navigating the realities of infrastructure finance—shaped Rondo’s strategy for rapid scale and deployment, and why the low-carbon future is being built with bricks.
What is Supercool?
Across industries, the most exciting innovations are profitable, high-performance, and low-carbon — all at once. Each week, climate tech entrepreneur Josh Dorfman talks with the founders, CEOs, and executives who turn low-carbon innovation into business advantage. They break down the technologies, business models, and strategies that outperform the status quo — creating new markets, advancing the low-carbon economy, and building the future.