On the heels of one of the biggest funding rounds in the Bay State this year, Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced its second major partnership with a global energy company.
The Devens-based fusion company, aiming to make a “star in a jar” capable of generating 400 megawatts of power, announced a power offtake agreement worth more than $1 billion with the Italian-based energy company Eni.
The commitment from Eni marks the second major purchase of power from CFS by a large company in the past three months. In June, Google committed to purchase 200MW from the Arc power plant.
“The problem of energy is a big problem in terms that the need is increasing, and there has to be very clean, decarbonized energy,” said Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi in a briefing. “Because our target is to provide decarbonized energy to customers, this is exactly what a fusion plant can provide us.”
Commonwealth Fusion Systems will provide the energy to Eni from its Arc plant in Virginia. Descalzi says the energy from the project will not be used to support its own operations but will be supplied to the grid.
The global energy company began as an oil and gas company but has evolved into an integrated energy company with investments in decarbonization and sustainability efforts. The energy company has been a shareholder with CFS since 2018.
Bob Mumgaard, the co-founder and CEO of CFS, said the new partnership with Eni will further advance CFS’s commercialization efforts. The CEO said that the interest from customers demonstrates the viability of fusion energy.
“This is showing in concrete terms that people that use large amounts of energy, that know the energy market, that they want fusion power, and that they’re willing to contract to pay for it,” Mumgaard said during the briefing.
The fusion startup currently has two projects in the U.S.: its commercial ARC plant in Virginia, and its SPARC plant in Devens, Massachusetts, where the company is headquartered. The SPARC device is intended to demonstrate that the company can create commercially viable energy from fusion.
The ARC plant is designed to produce 400 megawatts of electric power and continuously deliver that output to the grid, according to Benjamin Byboth, Director of Business Development and Strategy at CFS.
ARC is still obtaining its initial permits, but Bob Mumgaard expects the plant to be operational by the 2030s.
Mumgaard said during a press briefing that the commitments to its two new partners enable it to continue developing and innovating on its ARC plant, despite an unspecified timeline for activating the device itself.
“I hope one day we’ll look back and say that was really a key enabling part of how bringing multiple parties to the table in a way that provides contractual certainty, but also in a way that makes it so that their best sides show up,” said Mumgaard during a press briefing.
At the end of August, CFS raised $863 million from existing and new investors, including Nventures, the venture arm of chip giant Nvidia. The latest round brings the total capital raised to date to almost $3 billion.
Despite the almost billion-dollar raise, Mumgaard says the company has always been “clear-eyed” about the fact that this project will require funding. During the press briefing, Mumgaard noted that the company will continue to look for opportunities to scale its technology through the private sector and strategic partnerships.
“Ultimately, it would be a big shame that we, as a humanity, don’t get fusion power because we couldn’t figure out how to make the accounting move well,” said Mumgaard.