California’s inland Salton Sea is a potential clean energy double dip, with vast and largely untapped geothermal hotspots for generating heat and electricity and rich deposits of lithium, manganese, and other critical minerals needed to fuel the battery revolution.
Now one of the companies looking to commercialize both resources is taking a big step toward debuting on the stock market.
On Thursday, Controlled Thermal Resources is set to announce that it’s converting $205 million of debt into equity ahead of a planned initial public offering on the Nasdaq later this year, Heatmap can exclusively report. Among the big investors swapping debt for a stake in the Imperial, California-headquartered startup is the automaker Stellantis, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deal.
“Like a lot of our colleagues in this industry, we need to raise a lot of capital to build out a multi-stage project,” Rod Colwell, CTR’s chief executive, told me this week. An IPO, he said, “is a mechanism that enables us to keep going back to the market as we build out our 650-plus megawatts and supporting infrastructure that follows.”
He declined to comment on what interest Stellantis, which owns brands such as Chrysler, Jeep, and Maserati, has in the deal. The Dutch auto giant did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Automakers who successfully build out a resilient EV supply chain, including mining and mineral processing, will be in a good position to compete as the U.S. auto market continues to evolve in the years ahead,” Corey Cantor, the research director at the trade group Zero Emission Transportation Association, told me via email. With electric vehicles sales also booming globally, “having a more resilient supply chain up and running soon is more important than ever.”
CTR isn’t pursuing a traditional IPO. Instead, the startup is planning to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, a so-called blank-check firm that’s already trading, allowing the actual primary entity to swiftly issue stock to retail investors. While plenty of SPAC deals have proven volatile in recent years, particularly in cutting-edge clean energy, geothermal stocks are particularly — forgive me — hot.
Fervo Energy, the country’s frontrunner in developing next-generation geothermal power plants, is racing to complete its first major facility, known as Cape Station. Shares in the Houston-based firm skyrocketed after its IPO in May, though the price has sunk in the intervening months.
With demand for electricity soaring, CTR shifted its strategy to focus on building its debut 50-megawatt geothermal power station. Power and heat from that facility will, in turn, be used to extract and process lithium and other minerals from the briny inland lake.
CTR said it aims to move forward with its plant next June, with the facility expected to come online in 2028.
“Shortly thereafter, we’ll be building out the critical minerals component,” Colwell said. “That’ll be commissioned in 2030.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the generation capacity of CTR’s debut power station.
The European CCS boom. Chart: IEA
