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Gustavo Torres spent the better part of seventeen years in energy work before coming to Fervo Energy in 2023. At firms like DLA Piper and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, the young lawyer built out experience doing global projects, domestic and international oil and gas deals, project development, infrastructure, joint ventures, and complex EPC and O&M contracts, all in the energy space. So you might ask, why would he wind up at a fledgling alternative energy company?
More specifically, what would entice a thoroughbred energy lawyer to take a chance as something like employee number forty-two at a company that hadn’t even completed its first commercial pilot project when he joined? It was just promise and possibility.
“I saw an organization with amazing potential that needed help to professionalize its operations to their fullest,” explains Torres, vice president and general counsel at Fergo Energy. “I previously worked for a private equity firm where I often needed to build legal departments and professionalize small businesses. These may be unglamorous blocking and tackling moves, but they’re what let you scale up and go from being a great idea to a company that can successfully execute.”
Since joining Fervo, Torres has done the behind-the-scenes work that makes a good organization great: tracking and mitigating risk potential, addressing insurance needs, negotiating fundraising and credit documents, executing major construction contracts, and developing new operational agreements for a fledgling business that often run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
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And the potential, the promise? It’s the next evolution in geothermal energy, one not reliant on natural formations of the earth to create power. Traditional hydrothermal power relies on naturally occurring fracture networks and water that travels through these fractures to help generate steam that is converted into energy. The difficult part is that barring exactly perfect natural conditions, the process is difficult to replicate.
Fervo Energy has perfected the art of engineering its own reservoirs, no natural wonders required.
“We don’t need to find the perfect location, because we build it,” Torres explains. “And there is far less energy waste than in a more traditional setting because we’re able to create the flow and maximize the sweep of the reservoir.”
“Gus does an excellent job of seeing around corners, getting ahead of issues, and implementing thoughtful long-term planning for Fervo’s future growth,” says Sarah Morgan, partner at Vinson & Elkins. “He and the rest of the Fervo management team are on the front lines of very exciting and important developments in the energy landscape, and we are thrilled to be supporting Gus and the Fervo team.”
The lawyer’s focus on creating a clean and sustainable future is especially poignant when considering what got him into law in the first place. His father was diagnosed with cancer in the early nineties, and the sole breadwinner of the family was initially denied disability benefits.
Torres’s father worked in refineries in a pre-OSHA era, where PPE and safe operations weren’t much of a consideration. The family was certain the otherwise nonsmoking and healthy father had gotten sick on the job, but at the time, protections were limited. Torres wanted to make a difference and be someone who could help people like his father. While his law career may have taken him on a different path, he’s now working with a company that is helping enable a future that is more sustainable, less reliant on fossil fuels, and where health, safety, and the environment are valued above everything else.
The lawyer is now a father himself and enjoys teaching his kids the same things his dad taught him. During COVID, the general counsel’s kids learned how to restore an 80-series Toyota Land Cruiser. While Torres can be proud of his children learning to weld and change out brakes, he admits that he wasn’t planning for it to become a full restoration.
“It was just supposed to be a minor suspension upgrade; I really should have gotten a second opinion before I bought it,” Torres says, laughing. “But it was COVID, and I got to drag my kids into this two-year project. Talk about scope creep. This was the definition of it.”
Pair classic cars with a long-running love of black-and-white photography, and Torres isn’t just a high-performing lawyer, he’s a renaissance man.
Growing a Movement
Gustavo Torres joined the board of the Houston Hispanic Bar Association in 2016, and he’s helped the organization become something greater. Torres explains that when he joined, the organization was operating, as so many nonprofits do, on year-to-year funding. An annual gala raised enough money to operate until the following year.
“We wanted to find a way to elevate our prominence and achieve our full potential,” Torres explains. “One of the first things we did was work to create a meaningful endowment so we could build something, and also give away much more than we were previously capable of doing.”
The endowment goal was $500,000, and the group hit that goal well ahead of schedule and extended the goal to $1 million. This year, the organization gave away around $100,000 in scholarships, and he expects that number will likely be close to $120,000 this coming year.
The nonprofit is also providing public interest stipends for lawyers who want to do public service work but can’t always afford to do it for free. Additionally, the group has engaged in various pro bono activities at some of Houston’s local community centers, including a senior day.
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