Italy-based Eni and US start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) have signed a power offtake agreement worth more than $1bn extending their longstanding strategic partnership to commercialise fusion power. Under the power purchase agreement (PPA), Eni will acquire power from CFS’s planned 400 MWe ARC fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia, with grid connection expected in the early 2030s. This is the second offtake agreement that CFS has signed in three months for its first grid-scale fusion power plant. In July, Google signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for 200 MWe from the ARC power plant.
The PPA follows CFS’s $863m Series B2 round earlier in September in which Eni increased its investment in CFS. Eni was among the first to invest in CFS in 2018 and today is a strategic shareholder. In 2023 the two companies signed a Collaboration Framework Agreement to accelerate fusion energy development. The collaboration includes operational and technological support; project execution through the sharing of methodologies learned from the energy industry; and relationships with stakeholders.
CFS has raised almost $3bn in capital since it was spun-out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2018. It will use the funds to complete its SPARC tokamak under construction in Devens, Massachusetts. It will also progress development work on its planned ARC power plant in Chesterfield.
“The agreement with Eni demonstrates the value of fusion energy on the grid. It is a big vote of confidence to have Eni, who has contributed to our execution since the beginning, buy the power we intend to make in Virginia,” said Bob Mumgaard, Co-founder & CEO of CFS. “Our fusion power attracts diverse customers across the world, from hyperscalers to traditional energy leaders, because of the promise of clean, almost limitless energy.”
Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi noted: “This strategic collaboration, with a tangible commitment to the purchase of fusion energy, marks a turning point in which fusion becomes a full industrial opportunity,” said. “Eni has been strengthening its collaboration with CFS through its technological know-how since it first invested in the company in 2018. As energy demand grows, Eni supports the development of fusion power as a new energy paradigm capable of producing clean, safe, and virtually inexhaustible energy. This international partnership confirms our commitment to making fusion energy a reality, promoting its industrialisation for a more sustainable energy future.”
In April, CFS said it had begun assembling its SPARC tokamak, which had been under development for years. CFS began by manufacturing SPARC’s superconducting magnets based on large-scale prototypes. To keep the magnets cold enough to perform well, CFS houses them inside a larger chamber called cryostat that insulates them from the outside world with a vacuum. The cryostat base is 24 feet in diameter and weighs 75 tonnes. A police escort shepherded the cryostat base along its preplanned route to Devens.
CFS has already installed ancillary equipment around SPARC. This includes the systems to power and cool the tokamak’s super-strong magnets, the diagnostic sensors to monitor the fusion process, and the heating system to turn SPARC’s hydrogen fuel into a plasma for the fusion process.
SPARC is expected to produce its first plasma in 2026 and net fusion energy shortly after, demonstrating for the first time a commercially relevant design that will produce more power than consumed. CFS announced its plans to build ARC in December 2024. As part of this effort, CFS reached an agreement with Dominion Energy Virginia to provide non-financial collaboration, including development and technical expertise as well as leasing rights for the proposed site of ARC, which the company will independently finance, build, own, and operate.
The US Department of Energy’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) programme awarded CFS three new grants in August 2023 to fund research & development projects with the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, and University of California at Los Angeles. The INFUSE award programme is intended to accelerate fusion energy development through public-private research partnerships. CFS has received a total of 21 INFUSE awards and has past or present collaborative projects with12 US National Labs and universities.
Commenting on the agreement with ENI, Latitude Media noted that the ARC technology “is not yet operational – and much could change for either company in the at least five years before CFS plans to have its ARC plant up and running”. It added: “At this point, the size of the contract arguably says more about the growing demand for new clean firm power in a moment of unanticipated load growth from data centres, electrification, and onshoring than it does about the readiness of fusion itself…. However, actually getting the ARC plant operational on CFS’s early-2030s timeline will depend on a huge amount of capital, and for the company to achieve continuous fusion – a milestone that has so far remained out of reach for the industry.”
