September 22, 2023, Vancouver, BC
Vancouver-based clean tech venture capital firm Evok Innovations announced that it has led an oversubscribed $52.6 million (USD $38 million) Series-A funding round in Rodatherm, a pioneer in next-generation geothermal energy.
This is the largest first venture raise for a geothermal starup of all time, underscoring the booming industry and ground-breaking technology Rodatherm has developed.
The financing was led by Evok Innovations and included participation from TDK Ventures, Toyota Ventures, TechEnergy Ventures, MCJ, Active Impact Investments, Renewal Funds, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Giga Investments, and others.
See full details on the financing here.
Operating in stealth since 2022 and with operations in both Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and Salt Lake City, Utah, Rodatherm has developed a novel fully cased, pressurized, closed-loop geothermal system that is optimized for hot sedimentary basins, enabling both conductive and convective heat transfer from the reservoir. Rodatherm’s working fluid is fully isolated and used directly in a power-generating turbine, achieving 50% higher efficiency than water-based binary-cycle geothermal systems, with exceptionally low operating and maintenance costs. Rodatherm’s advanced geothermal system is expected to achieve competitive levelized costs of energy with firm power, including fossil fuels, at early project scale and is designed to have a decades long operating life. With this, Rodatherm has the potential to be one of the first truly firm, environmentally clean, scalable, and affordable energy generation technologies available, paving the way towards complete energy security.
Led by CEO Curtis Cook, the Rodatherm team brings a fresh yet deeply informed perspective to geothermal, combining cutting-edge innovation with a clear understanding of the energy industry’s operational realities. Mr. Cook founded, led and built several successful energy corporations, including Vesta Energy Corp which commercialized a single well discovery into a successful company with an asset value over $1B. The team has broad energy industry experience and a history of working together effectively in high impact environments.
“The geothermal industry is at an inflection point, and Rodatherm is uniquely positioned to deliver a scalable, cost-effective solution for clean, secure baseload power,” said Curtis Cook, CEO of Rodatherm. “This funding allows us to commercialize our technology and validate our pathway to a full power development project that will make a significant impact on the energy transition.”
About Rodatherm
With locations in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and Salt Lake City, UT, Rodatherm Energy is a privately held geothermal power generation company with a current focus on the Great Basin region in the Western United States and the potential to operate in many geographies globally. It consists of a team of seasoned energy professionals dedicated to clean, cost-effective, and reliable electricity generation. Distinguished by its pioneering Advanced Geothermal System (AGS), which utilizes a novel closed-loop design and working fluid to deliver highly efficient, low-cost, and firm geothermal power, the company possesses a land base capable of sustaining hundreds of MW of versatile, long term, sustainable baseload and dispatchable power generation.
About Evok
Evok is a clean tech venture capital fund focused on supporting exceptional entrepreneurs with bold visions for scaling novel technologies within heavy industry. At Evok, we provide value beyond capital by leveraging our team of technologists and company builders, along with our limited partner group—which includes major financial institutions and industrial leaders—to help accelerate the success of our companies. In 2016, Evok was founded with the thesis of collaborating with industrial partners to invest in and scale novel technologies in the energy sector. With the launch of Evok Fund II in 2022, we expanded this mandate, bringing in strategic partners across new industrial verticals, including critical minerals. Evok is actively investing out of Fund II, fund focused on supporting Series A+ companies in North America that are taking novel approaches to supporting the energy transition across a wide array of sectors and industries.