Johnathan Stone is a geophysicist by background, with a long history at BP of developing new technology projects in some of the most challenging environments around the world, from the Algerian Sahara to Azerbaijan and Indonesia.
In 2014, he started a personal shift to working on a low carbon future, prompted both by the birth of his daughter and by witnessing the environmental stresses that people were contending with in places such as Jakarta.
Additional studies in solar energy set Stone up well for working as a technical lead on a BP Ventures project. Stone even spent 18 months co-founding an internal startup related to offshore logistics.
In 2020, he took a course in venture finance at the Saïd Business School to help him “speak the same language” as investors. He joined the BP Ventures team in 2021 at a time when the company was making explicit its plans to transform from an oil company to an integrated energy company.
“Corporate VC provides me that nexus to really add value by taking my real-world tech skills, plus an 18-year network at BP, and combining it with an ambition to make a difference in what is a really significant challenge in the energy transition,” he says.
“Corporate VC provides me that nexus to really add value by taking my real-world tech skills, plus an 18-year network at BP, and combining it with an ambition to make a difference.”
Stone leads investments in two of BP’s five big focus areas: renewables and power and hydrogen. He has a personal interest in robotics and automation, but as a geoscientist he is also excited by the opportunities in subsurface technologies for long duration energy storage, carbon storage or expanding the use of geothermal energy to many more countries.
BP Ventures investment in Canadian geothermal company Eavor is a good example of what is becoming possible in the geothermal area, Stone says: “Geothermal is really interesting for a company such as BP, with all our sub- surface and drilling expertise.”