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Select Quotes From This Episode:
“They are lost sheep with no owner. No one is ready for the orphaned well pocalypse. So I’m over here waving my flag...” –Kemp
“Let’s clean up the millions of idle gas wells, which I would argue is maybe the largest global impact from the oil and gas industry.” –Kemp
“We are cheaper than lithium ion on a dollar per kilowatt hour installed capacity basis.” –Kemp
“If I had any sort of guiding principle on who to pick, it was either capacity or evidence of agency.” –Kemp
“Most mature oil fields have a ton of electrical infrastructure in them. And every field in the United States is mature... there’s no real like, truly stranded fields.” –Kemp
How to Turn a Multi-Million Dollar Liability into a Clean Energy Asset
What happens when an oil well dries up? Usually, it becomes a “zombie” liability—sitting idle, leaking methane, and waiting to become an orphan that the state has to clean up. Kemp Gregory calls this the “Orphan Well Pocalypse,” and he believes no one is ready for it.
Kemp—CEO and Co-founder of Renewell Energy—joined me to explain his brilliant solution: converting these idle wells into mechanical gravity batteries.
By using the existing deep wellbores to raise and lower heavy weights, Renewell creates long-duration energy storage that doesn’t degrade like chemical batteries. It’s a masterclass in recycling infrastructure: taking a hole in the ground that costs millions to drill and turning it into a perpetual engine for grid stability.
In this episode, we dive deep into the physics of gravity storage, why this solution is cheaper than lithium-ion, and the unique business model that convinces oil companies to hand over their wells instead of plugging them.
Kemp also shares his journey from being a “token oil guy” at Stanford to building a deep-tech startup, and why the most valuable trait in early hires isn’t just skill—it’s agency.
If you want to understand the intersection of Oil & Gas legacy infrastructure and the future of CleanTech storage, give this episode a listen.
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📝 Show Notes:
Topics
Here are some key timestamps from the episode:
00:00 – Intro: Who is Kemp Gregory and what is Renewell Energy?
01:40 – The Origin Story: From tracking fracking globally to finding a new use for old wells.
04:13 – The “Eureka” Moment: Why not do two things at once (cleanup + energy)?
05:00 – The Scale of the Problem: 900k active wells vs. 2 million idle wells.
05:37 – “Lost Sheep”: Defining the difference between idle and orphan wells.
10:28 – The “Orphan Well Pocalypse”: Why government funds aren’t enough to solve the crisis.
14:15 – Technology Deep Dive: Gravity storage mechanics and why it beats Lithium-Ion on cost.
18:00 – The Pitch to Oil Companies: Turning a plug-and-abandon cost into a revenue share.
20:10 – Busting the Myth: Why “stranded assets” actually have great grid connections.
26:48 – Regulatory Landscape: How states are supporting this transition.
32:00 – Funding the Deep Tech dream: Grants, VCs, and the funding gap.
40:15 – Building the Team: Why “evidence of agency” is the #1 hiring criteria.
44:00 – Future Roadmap: Scaling up and the vision for the next 5 years.
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