SLB’s Celsius Energy™ has received a 2024 BloombergNEF (BNEF) Pioneers award, recognizing the innovation of its geoenergy heating and cooling solution. The Pioneers awards identify groundbreaking technologies that have the potential to accelerate global decarbonization and halt climate change.

Twenty-three finalists were selected in four challenges or categories for the awards. Celsius Energy received the award for the Decarbonizing the construction and operation of buildings challenge. The Celsius Energy solution uses geothermal energy as a natural resource to regulate the temperatures of buildings and significantly drive down their carbon footprint.

“To get on track with the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) Scenario, the global heat pump stock would need to almost triple by 2030, to cover at least 20% of global heating needs,” said Cindy Demichel, CEO and cofounder of Celsius Energy. “At Celsius Energy, we are developing an industrial, scalable ground source heat pump (GSHP) solution that democratizes access to geothermal energy. Our innovations enable us to address the market for thermal renovation of buildings in urban environments and to develop long-term performance guarantee models. This award honors the commitment of a team determined to accelerate the decarbonization of buildings.”

“BNEF set up the Pioneers award 14 years ago to recognize, and by doing so to accelerate, the progress of climate-tech innovators,” said Claire Curry, selection committee co-chair and global head of Technology, Industry & Innovation research at BloombergNEF. “The work of these decarbonization innovators is more important than ever in this critical decade: the search for new climate solutions has never been as urgent. Our winners this year span, among other things, technology breakthroughs in clean fuels, methods of advancing building decarbonization, and new routes to accelerate the deployment of renewables.”

The Celsius Energy solution employs a unique pyramid-shaped well design, which reduces the surface footprint for the install. Conventional geoenergy heating and cooling installations typically require a surface footprint about the size of a football pitch, whereas the Celsius Energy solution requires only about two parking spaces. This drastically reduces the physical area needed for construction, making the Celsius Energy solution adaptable to new construction and renovations, especially in dense urban areas. The combination of the unique well design with a GSHP and an innovative digital control system has been proven to reduce up to 90% of a building’s CO₂ emissions and about 70% of its energy consumption for heating and cooling, including its hot water needs.

The 2024 BNEF Pioneers awards is the 15th annual program that has identified game-changing technologies or innovations. BloombergNEF is a leading provider of forward-thinking primary research and analysis on the trends driving the transition to a lower-carbon economy.

This award is the most recent win in a series of other SLB recognitions. In 2023, SLB was recognized with the SEAL Sustainable Service Award for the Celsius Energy solution. In 2020, Celsius Energy received the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label from the Solar Impulse Foundation.