Green Success Stories sat down with Simonas Valadkevicius, Founder and SEO of Lavastream, a Lithuanian renewable energy company that develops geothermal power production and electricity storage assets in Lithuania and Poland. Simonas describes his dramatic turnaround from oil and gas to renewable energy, and the enormous potential of geothermal as a zero-emission climate-friendly energy solution. He looks forward to a time when coal and natural gas are remembered as an archaic way of generating energy, and invites others with oil, gas, and commodity trade experience to join him on this meaningful journey.
Tell us a bit about your sustainability journey.
My career in oil and gas was disrupted along by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Both were a wakeup call for me. I was managing oil product trade and infrastructure projects in the Baltic region, and one day I made a decisive turnaround. Led by values-based decisions, I shifted my career towards climate tech. I tried my hand at carbon credit trade, but did not see much of an impact. During that time my close friend Lev Ring had been developing Sage Geosystems, I tracked their development since 2020, the year they established their business. After some time I realized that their technology perfectly fits the energy challenges the Baltic region has, and can help address those challenges fast. More than that – Lithuania has one of the strongest geothermal anomalies in the region, where hot dry rock is in relatively shallower geology than elsewhere. Thus, in late 2023 I made the decision to start a geothermal and long-duration storage company called Lavastream, which aims to disrupt the baseload power market by replacing import of power and locally produced polluting power sources including oil shales and natural gas.
Tell us a bit about the product or solution you offer.
At Lavastream we develop geothermal power and heat power plants, as well as long-duration geopressured power storage facilities. Thus, we have three business units – zero emission heat, zero emission power, and power arbitrage. To make that happen, we aggregated geothermal energy production, drilling, and energy management technologies. Without Lavastream, top geothermal technology companies will struggle to scale. Lavastream is at the position to fundraise local capital, navigate institutional risks, identify areas with top geothermal potential, manage local stakeholders, and achieve more efficient and faster growth.
Share a green success story with us – how have you helped customers or other businesses in the fight against climate change?
Today we work with Lithuanian and Polish municipalities, greenhouse companies and other industrial heat users who were planning their power infrastructure development based on biogas or biofuel. No matter what the regulations say, there are still emissions and deforestation involved when using biofuels. By presenting geothermal opportunities we transformed their outlook and currently we have a few projects in the pipeline together. One of the projects is in Klaipeda, where with the first project we aim to provide up to 15% of heat demand of the thermal network, enabling the municipality to reduce usage of natural gas and biomass. Another project is with a top greenhouse company where all their new greenhouses will be 100% zero emissions by using geothermal energy.
What would you do with $1 billion dollars?
$1 billion dollars would enable a significant transformation of the Baltic energy market. By drilling circa one hundred geothermal wells, and installing numerous power plants with aggregate capacity of roughly 300 MW of power, we could eliminate the most environmentally impactful local power source – oil shales. The next couple of billions would enable a turnaround of power trade patterns in the Baltics. Instead of being a net power importer, we could become a net power exporter and supply the German and Polish markets with zero emission power.
What do you envision your industry looking like in ten years?
I work on a vision where coal and natural gas are remembered as an archaic way of generating energy with no way of return. Geothermal might not work everywhere, but we can combine it with long-duration storage, perovskite solar, and in some cases nuclear energy.
What would you like readers to take away from this article?
Anyone with oil and gas and commodity trade experience can make an impactful decision to work in climate tech and make a big difference
How should readers get in touch with you and/or your organization?
Feel free to reach my by email at sv@lavastream.energy or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonasval/.
Kudos
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