NET Power Q2 Earnings Call Highlights

NET Power is shifting Project Permian’s near-term focus to unabated, behind-the-meter natural-gas generation for data centers and industrial customers seeking fast, reliable power, while preserving the option to add carbon capture later. Project Permian could support approximately 1 to 1.5 gigawatts across multiple phases. Its reliability design may combine gas turbines, reciprocating engines and battery storage, targeting 99.9% uptime; nearly 200 megawatts of equipment could be secured for the initial phase. NET Power ended the second quarter with about $310 million in cash and investments and no debt, but will need project financing, partner capital, additional equity or a combination to fund construction through commercial operations. The company has not set a timetable for an offtake agreement. NET Power said it is redirecting its near-term development strategy toward unabated, behind-the-meter natural gas generation as prospective customers prioritize rapid access to reliable power for data centers and other large loads. Chief Executive Officer Danny Rice said the company spent the past four months engaging with prospective power buyers, including hyperscalers, data-center developers and industrial companies. The consistent message, he said, was that customers need “speed, scale, and reliability” and are willing to pay a fair price for those attributes amid constraints on power supply and grid interconnections. NET Power will retain carbon capture as a future option but does not expect to install post-combustion capture during the initial phase of its Project Permian development in West Texas. Rice characterized the shift as a change in sequencing rather than a departure from the company’s longer-term clean-power ambitions. Project Permian Redesign Focuses on Co-Located Load Project Permian is being redesigned to serve co-located customer demand, with the ability to add carbon capture in later phases if customer requirements, economics and financing support it. Rice said the site could support roughly 1 gigawatt to 1.5 gigawatts of generation across multiple phases, while the initial phase will be sized according to current customer contracting demand. The company said it intends to pursue off-grid or behind-the-meter generation that does not rely on the broader power grid or an interconnection queue. Rice said grid constraints have become increasingly prominent not only in PJM and MISO, but also in ERCOT, where he said interconnection queues are extending into the 2030s. Rice said the company believes the West Texas location offers advantages for both near-term gas generation and a potential future carbon-capture retrofit. The project remains near high-voltage transmission lines that could enable a future grid connection, he said. NET Power also continues to work with Occidental Petroleum, or Oxy, on land rights and retains a potential future pathway to sell captured carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery. “We build the power first,” Rice said, “and we capture when it makes sense.” Reliability Design Combines Multiple Generation Technologies President and Chief Operating Officer Marc Horstman said NET Power is targeting “three nines” reliability, or 99.9% uptime, for its behind-the-meter projects. The company’s contemplated configuration includes battery energy storage, reciprocating engines and gas turbines, designed with redundancy so that maintenance or an outage at one unit would not interrupt customer supply. Horstman said the company’s modeling indicates that a single large generation unit would not meet a 99.9% uptime target because planned maintenance by itself could exceed the allowable outage window. A portfolio of small...