Founder in Residence, Geothermal Power
Marble
About Marble
Marble is a climate tech venture studio. Our north star is to erase billions of tons from annual greenhouse gas emissions and create a thriving future.
We partner with scientists, engineers and operators to create new deep tech companies that solve hard climate problems — slash emissions, remove carbon from the atmosphere, and cool the planet — while reshaping multi-billion $ industries.
We're proud to be backed by leading climate investors across Europe and the US.
Unlocking Geothermal Power
Global power demand is due to triple by 2050 as electrification and living standards grow. Electrification is paramount to decarbonise buildings, transportation and industry. Meanwhile, hyper scale data centres are driving massive 24x7 power demand surges with extreme geographical concentration.
Although solar and wind will remain the cheapest form of clean electricity, induced system costs mean that utilities and their customers urgently need clean firm resources.
Geothermal energy, available 24/7, is a prime candidate: just 0.1% of the Earth’s heat content could meet global energy needs for over 2 million years. It also has the lowest land use and mineral requirement of any renewable resource, tends to be viewed more favourably than nuclear in sensible jurisdictions, and could potentially scale globally with oil & gas workforce.
Problem: conventional geothermal is only viable in areas with optimal heat and fluid flow conditions. Projects outside of these areas have been plagued by high upfront costs and resource development risk.
Despite being a century old, geothermal power only has 16 GW of installed capacity, less than 0.2% of electricity generation assets worldwide.
We are exploring novel ideas to unlock the geothermal power renaissance, improve economics and reduce failure rate, to meet >10% of global power demand.
The Opportunity
We are interested in two broad strategies to scale next-gen geothermal systems in a broad range of geographies, depths and temperatures.
First, novel approaches in enhanced (EGS) and closed loop (AGS) geothermal, which can further de-risk project development, bring down upfront costs and increase performance.
Second, technologies that could unlock Super Hot Rock (SHR) resources in the 5-10 km range with temperatures above 375°C. These resources could generate 5-10x more MW per well, but remain challenging to operate in due to extreme heat, temperature swings, corrosive water chemistry, brittle hard rocks, long drill paths, mechanical stress, and other operational constraints.
Examples of opportunities we are considering:
- EGS innovations to improve reservoir creation, stimulation, and management to prolong resource lifetime while mitigating common issues with water consumption, corrosion, induced seismicity, etc
- AGS innovations to maximise heat transfer and slash drilling requirements for closed loop system, for instance through innovations in materials and working fluids.
- Well completion, to overcome the casing and cementing failures that occur in super deep conditions. We are interested in creative ways to deploy materials and structures that overcome inefficiencies of conventional completion methods.
- Well characterisation and planning to de-risk exploration with pre-drilling techniques, improved modelling, data acquisition, AI, and other site identification and characterisation techniques.
- Drilling methods to increase penetration rate, reduce costs and down time, and overcome the challenges with digging in SHR conditions, but also for EGS and AGS.
- Surface equipment to bring down their costs, which still represent a major share of a project’s CAPEX, through cheaper and modular power plants and/or advancements in turbines, heat exchangers, condensers, waste heat management, etc.
- Tech enabled project development to reduce the costs of site selection, drilling and completion with data, AI, and standardised equipment.
We are looking for Founder in Residences to join our next cohort, to explore these approaches further and accelerate the geothermal renaissance for energy abundance.
➡️Apply Here or see the Programme Structure
Skills & Profile
We are looking for an entrepreneurial engineer with relevant industry experience in the geothermal sector, or a different background which can bring a creative take on this problem. Your mission: further explore some of the opportunities listed above, to create a high-impact climate company with Marble.
Examples of relevant backgrounds include:
- Geothermal project development / engineering with applied industry experience. Recent exposure to novel approaches and technologies is a plus.
- Materials science / engineering specialised on managing extreme conditions (e.g. temperature, corrosion, mechanical stress, etc) and/or optimising heat transfer and thermal insulation
- Advanced manufacturing with applied expertise in novel fabrication and material deposition methods (e.g. construction, aerospace, automotive, …)
- Power plant / turbine / thermal / process engineering with applied industry experience that could translate to novel approaches in geothermal surface equipment
- Reservoir / production engineering with exposure to EGS and/or AGS (e.g. reservoir modelling, resource assessment, production optimisation)
- Deep drilling with experience in no contact (e.g. microwave, mm wave, plasma, percussion, steel shot, quench spallation, high pressure water jet, thermal shock, etc) or hybrid mechanical
- Startup founder / operator / investor with experience in project development in either geothermal, natural resources, advanced materials, manufacturing
We encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel you meet all requirements. Above all, we value intelligence, creativity and Founder Potential.
Especially if you recognise yourself below:
- You can’t wait to start your own company (or your next one)
- You are a pragmatic optimist on a mission to tackle climate change
- You are outcome focused and action oriented - you make things happen
- You are a great communicator - you can convince others to follow you
- You love to break down ambitious goals into actionable milestones
- You understand that innovation starts with people - not ideas
What We Offer
As a Founder-in-Residence, you will join other stellar individuals who also believe in the need for deep tech solutions to solve hard climate problems.
Together, we would be scoping high potential approaches before converging on the most promising one and finding your future co-founders
We offer (among other things)
- A €2,500 to €3,000 monthly allowance during the programme
- A €250,000 pre-seed investment on startup creation if you’re successful. You and your team will own 80% of the company at pre-seed.
- Full-stack support in our venture creation programme
- Mentorship and guidance at every step of the way
- Hands on support across technology and market research, landing interviews with experts and customers, techno economics, roadmap and scale up strategy, IP strategy, team building, advisor sourcing, and more
- Access to an unparalleled network across science, industry, talent, investors, mentors, climate tech founders, curated vendors and suppliers
- Access to our research insights, knowledge base and founder resources
- Weekly check-ins, work sessions in our Paris HQ (or remote) and continuous peer learning with other programme participants
- Seed Fundraising support after the programme. Introductions to the best seed investors from our network and help with term sheet negotiation.
- Founder Visa sponsorship if you wish to relocate to France. Remote participation is possible, preferably from Europe and with regular in-person meetings.
How to Apply
We are looking for the best candidate - so you are welcome to apply as soon as possible.
➡️ Apply Here or see the Programme Structure
We believe that a diverse group of minds is key to solving the climate crisis. We encourage women and people of colour to apply.
Studies have shown that under-represented candidates are less likely to apply for an opportunity unless they feel they meet every single qualification.
We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive and mission-driven cohort. If you’re excited about the programme but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with what you read on our website, we encourage you to apply anyways!
FAQs
For a full list of FAQs, please visit our website.
