Casey Handmer: Terraform Industries and a carbon-neutral future — #57

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Apr 4, 2024

Casey Handmer, founder of Terraform Industries, discusses creating natural gas from sunlight and air, challenges in tech entrepreneurship, solar energy impact, the future of energy, navigating carbon neutrality, and upcoming milestones in the podcast.

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ANECDOTE

Garage Origins And Mars Inspiration

Casey started Terraform after researching Mars resource chemistry and realizing solar was already cheap enough to make synthetic hydrocarbons competitive.
He spent about a year building the first systems in his garage before forming the company and raising early funding.

ADVICE

Start Early And Commit If You're Willing

If you can be convinced to become a founder, don't; decide early and jump in because entrepreneurship is a hard, committing path.
Start now on long‑lead hardware problems because prototypes take far longer than software to mature.

INSIGHT

Realistic End‑to‑End Efficiency

Terraform's end-to-end energy conversion is about 6% from sunlight-to-methane, with subsystem efficiencies: solar ~20–25% and process ~30–35% of electricity.
That chemical route yields ~100× more fuel per land area than photosynthesis-based biofuels, making it far more land-efficient.

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Casey Handmer (PhD, Caltech, general relativity) is the founder of Terraform Industries. He is one of the most capable and ambitious geo-engineers on planet Earth!

Terraform Industries is scaling technology to produce cheap natural gas with sunlight and air. Using solar energy, they extract carbon from the air and synthesize natural gas, all at the same site.

March 2024: "Terraform completes the end to end demo, successfully producing fossil carbon free pipeline grade natural gas from sunlight and air. We also achieved green hydrogen at <$2.50/kg-H2 and DAC CO2 at <$250/T-CO2, two incredible milestones."

Links:

Casey Handmer’s website: https://www.caseyhandmer.com/
Terraform Industries: https://terraformindustries.com/
Nerds on Patrol [Episode 3] - Terraform Industries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9k3dHFJPEU

Steve and Casey discuss:

0:00 Introduction

00:31 Casey's early life and background, from Australia to Caltech

07:55 The academic path and transition to tech entrepreneurship

10:40 Terraform Industries

15:21 Solar costs, efficiency, and global Impact

24:25 A world powered by Terraform methane

31:27 The entrepreneurial journey: challenges and insights

35:01 Investor dynamics and strategic decisions for Terraform

41:28 The hard Reality of manufacturing and innovation

44:11 Navigating intellectual property and strategic partnerships

45:49 The moral and technical challenges of carbon neutrality

55:48 Looking ahead: Terraform's next milestones and the solar revolution

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.

Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.