Scaling Clean Energy and the Geothermal Opportunity | NYCW 2024

At New York Climate Week, Gigascale Founding Partner Mike “Schrep” Schroepfer joined journalist Chris Anderson to discuss how deep-tech founders are changing what’s possible. From geothermal to grid-scale storage, a new generation of tools, including digital twins, automation, advanced materials, and AI-assisted design, is enabling the faster construction of new physical systems.

Hear more on how a new generation of companies builds for scale in this conversation with Mill cofounder and former Nest founder, Matt Rogers.

Conversation Highlights

• The New Builder Toolkit: Better tools have collapsed hardware timelines from years to months. 3D printing, simulation, and digital twins now let hardware founders test, learn, and build faster. “These are the tools that make the impossible affordable,” says Schrep. “Every company pays attention to their bottom line. The fastest way to drive change is to build clean technologies that outperform on product and economics, then the incumbents follow.”
• The Playbook to Move from Lab to Market: Every successful deep tech company follows a similar progression: model, prototype, pilot, customer. With lots of testing and rapid iteration along the way. “Run at the hardest problems first. The difference between companies that make it and those that don’t is speed to data.” Rapid iteration isn’t just about learning, it’s how you make deep tech capital-efficient. This theme continues in Engineering a Faster, Cheaper, Cleaner Future, where Schrep explains how iteration speed drives progress.
• Geothermal’s Moment: Data centers and AI factories may be driving demand, but the real story is supply. Geothermal is an underused, forever resource now within reach thanks to lower drilling costs, new materials, and faster modeling cycles. With better economics, what was once a frontier technology is becoming a scalable foundation for clean baseload power.

Technology turns either-or questions into yes-and opportunities. We can make life prosperous, energy-rich, and build a planet we can live on.

Key Takeaways

• New tools collapse hardware development from years to months, enabling faster progress in resource-intensive sectors, like clean energy.
• Deep-tech founders succeed when they optimize for learning speed, not perfection.
• Climate impact will be driven by using deep tech to reinvent the physical economy.

Watch the Full Conversation