Houston-based startup Fervo Energy has picked up $138 million in funding to propel its creation and operation of carbon-free power plants fueled by geothermal energy.

Fervos says the series C round will help it complete power plants in Nevada and Utah and evaluate new projects in California, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico, as well as in other countries.

California-based investment firm DCVC led the round, with participation from six new investors:

• Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), which contributed $20 million to the round
• Liberty Energy
• Macquarie
• Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment
• Impact Science Ventures
• Prelude Ventures

These six existing investors also chipped in money:

• Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund
• Breakthrough Energy Ventures, led by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates
• Congruent Ventures
• 3X5 Partners
• Helmerich & Payne
• Elemental Excelerator

Since being founded in 2017, Fervo has amassed $177 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The company employs 30 people.

Equipped with technology such as horizontal drilling and fiber-optic sensing, Fervo is tapping into reservoirs of hot rock beneath the earth’s surface to produce clean geothermal power.

“Power buyers are interested in geothermal power because they are actively looking for reliable energy sources that can address climate change and rising energy prices,” Tim Latimer, CEO of Fervo, says in a news release. “Our mission is to meet that growing demand by putting gigawatts of 24/7 carbon-free energy on the grid. This latest investment enables us to execute on those ambitious plans.”

In 2021, Fervo announced the world’s first corporate agreement to develop geothermal — a project to power Google’s data centers in Nevada. Also, the company recently signed a purchase agreement with East Bay Community Energy, a California-based provider of clean energy.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, geothermal holds the potential to power tens of millions of American homes and businesses. In 2021, geothermal represented about 0.4 percent of total U.S. electricity generation and about 2 percent of electricity generation from renewable energy, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says.

“Fervo is the right company at the right time,” says Matt Trevithick, a partner at DCVC. “The United States needs 200 [gigawatts] of reliable clean power to achieve a zero-carbon electricity grid. Fervo is poised to make geothermal as important as solar and wind to our energy future.”

Fervo’s partners include Houston-based Schlumberger, the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), and the federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.