Stoked that I got the opportunity to be on one of the podcasts that I admire and learn from most.
@CatalystPod
@shaylekann
and
@DanielWoldorff
invited me on the Catalyst podcast to discuss climate tech performance in the public markets!
@_LatitudeMedia
I wish everyone that spouted off on the ICE vs. EV debate had to simply acknowledge first that most of the energy you put into a gasoline car is wasted and EVs are far more efficient at converting energy to motion. This is a simple, objective fact.
Perspective: Lithium we mine today and that we'll need to mine by 2050 compared to other major mined materials today like Iron, Aluminum, and Copper. Measured in kilotonnes.
Great visual.
Bain:
-Data center boom could require $2T+ in new energy resources globally
-US utilities face 7-26% generation increase by 2028, biggest challenge in decades
-44% of US load growth from data centers thru '28
-Utilities need 10%+ revenue requirement to fund required capex
I’m not a huge festival/concert person in general but tbh having a live stream with a better view and being able to watch in the comfort of your home is elite >>
#DreamvilleFest2023
@burnaboy
killed this!
This is such a great & under-appreciated point and can extend to the entire global energy value chain today. Many people don’t understand the complexity, size, and depth of operations that go into producing, delivering, and ensuring safe/affordable/reliable energy supplies. This
Great visualization by
@BloombergNEF
which shows the estimated 2022-31 energy transition spending in both the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Segments into emissions categories and includes specific subsets within each.
Personal news: I accepted a role at an asset manager as a VP in Sustainability & Net-Zero Research working with the US public equities team! Taking a few weeks off to recharge but start in July. Excited to be working in a climate-focused seat. Why I'm pumped about net-zero? 1/n
“The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.
McKinsey upped their data center forecast: now expect "83GW is up from ~56GW in from the prior September 2023 modeling. Overall McKinsey now forecasts US data center energy consumption in terawatt hours (TWh) rising to 606TWh in 2030, representing 12% of total US power demand.
The IKEA Foundation, a philanthropy funded by IKEA owner INGKA Foundation, announced plans to deploy €600 million in climate funding by 2025. Key areas of deployment: stimulating a shift to alternative and plant-based proteins, and reducing methane emissions in agriculture.
"In fact, [heat pumps] are so efficient at converting power to heat that even if the power grid ran entirely on *gas*, heat pumps connected to it would use *less* than directly gas-powered furnaces do"
@GernotWagner
in
@climate
"world’s largest copper producers have warned that there is a lack of mines under development to deliver enough to keep pace with the energy transition... warning comes as miners struggle with falling metal prices because of weakness of the global economy and cost inflation,
Desalination is becoming more affordable due to cheaper solar power. New plants cost $400M for 500K m³/day, translating to ~$0.30/m³. Energy costs are as low as $0.07/m³ (using $0.025/KWh solar). The Hassyan project in Dubai promises water at $0.37/m³, compared to €1/m³ in
For the first time, US Census Bureau reported 'data centers' as a separate category in its construction spending reports.
"In May, U.S. data center put-in-place (PiP) construction spend was running at an annualized seasonally adjusted rate of $27B. That compares to $16B a year
Big sodium-ion news week: "Northvolt made a breakthrough... sodium-ion battery that has no lithium, cobalt or nickel... validated battery at critical level of 160 watt hours per kg, an energy density close to that of the type of lithium batteries"
Incredible presentation. My favorite slides below. 🧵
Manufactured technologies (e.g., solar and wind) enjoy cost learning curves; (fossil) commodities don’t... which also means they grow faster. Even neutral actors modeled in linear terms. But change has been exponential.
The cleantech revolution - it's exponential, disruptive, and now.
Our annual presentation looks in detail at the story for renewables, electrification and efficiency.
"Battery prices are back to a declining trajectory in 2023, after an unprecedented year of increases in 2022.
@BloombergNEF
's annual battery price survey has found that the volume-weighted average price for lithium-ion battery packs dropped to $139 per kWh in 2023, a 14% decline
Have you ever been curious about how public asset managers are trying to figure out implementing Net Zero across portfolios? Bunch of approaches all with their own nuances and pros/cons. GFANZ portfolio alignment released updated guidance - 140 pages. Here are some highlights.🧵
According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), data centers currently represent 2.5% of U.S. electricity consumption. [At higher end of estimates], data centers could move to 7.5% of all electricity. >60% of DCs in MISO, CAISO, PJM, & Southeast.
The average age of an installed transformer in the United States is 38-40 years, and the suggested lifespan of a transformer is 20 25 years. Currently, more than 70% of U.S. transformers are aged more than 25 years (DOE).
"The extended-range Lightning’s 131 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion pack boasts almost 10 times the capacity of a Tesla Powerwall, an $11,000 home backup battery that can’t be driven to the supermarket. The Lightning is 'a mini powerplant for your home'(EVP Engineering from PG&E),"
JPM highlights what utility companies have said about data center prospects
-PJM Utilities (collective): ~50 GW datacenter load growth identified (some duplication)
-Exelon (EXC): 6 GW+ expected datacenter growth; Illinois: 5 GW in engineering phase, 13 GW in prospect phase
While we're at it, this is also true for all combustion of fossil fuels. Most of the energy burned becomes waste heat! I wish more people knew that when arguing this stuff. Imagine on a first principles basis arguing that the optimal state is one that wastes 2/3 of the output.
Breaking: First Solar today announced it entered into two separate Tax Credit Transfer Agreements (TCTAs) on to sell $500 million and up to $200 million, respectively, of 2023 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) 45x tax credits to Fiserv. Under the terms of the agreements Fiserv will
Don't forget that the scale of battery metals/minerals mining and extraction is miniscule compared to the scale of extraction that legacy fossil fuels require in terms of equivalent tonnes of annual production.
Wolfe from their conference: "high level, rough approximation of the economics: for a 1 GW data center, which would require $30-35B of capex (the largest four companies in the market have had annual capex of $30-50B to give a sense of the size of a 1 GW data center investment).
"Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon all publicly announced power purchase agreements, or PPAs, for clean power last month. Microsoft snapped up by far the largest capacity, with a whopping 1,580 megawatts of contracts signed. The PPAs signed by Google, Meta and Amazon, which
We said goodbye to my father today. George Mathew, known by Sunny to friends & family, was truly a one of one. From being born to unimaginable hardships in India, to coming to America with only $20 in his pocket ($7 of which that he spent on beer in London), to becoming a
BNEF thinks $3/kg subsidy for green H2 projects is worth ~$1.91/kg dollars on a levelized basis. Can bring down avg. US cost of green hydrogen down to $2/kg by 2023. By 2030, they think levelized value of PTC would actually be > their base view for unsubsidized green H2 costs.
Solar and battery storage to make up 81% of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2024... Developers and power plant owners plan to add 62.8 gigawatts (GW) of new utility-scale electric-generating capacity in 2024 per
@EIAgov
Don't forget that the scale of battery metals/minerals mining and extraction is miniscule compared to the scale of extraction that legacy fossil fuels require in terms of equivalent tonnes of annual production.
New industry data shows the first three months of 2021 saw the addition of over 5 gigawatts of new U.S. solar power generating capacity, the largest first quarter ever via
@Ben_Geman
Wild stat!
RBC: "Increasingly, we are hearing about 1GW datacenters, which according to Constellation Energy, could cost ~$7-$10 billion to build and potentially another ~$20 billion to populate the facility with chips, power infrastructure, and other electrical equipment."
@ArashMarkazi
How does anyone watch him all year and think he’s a good coach? Nonsensical lineups, scoring droughts, no strategic use of time outs, players don’t respect his basketball prowess… it’s perplexing he has a job and honestly see no good reason he keeps it.
"Predictions don’t always come true. There’s no guarantee there’ll be a market for all the oil, gas and coal countries could produce. The chart shows how the U.S. Energy Information Administration missed the shift away from coal and toward wind, solar and natural gas"
Wow!
"~85% of new residential solar deals in CA now include batteries, a senior vice president for Sunrun, said at the Evercore ISI Global Clean Energy & Transition Technologies Summit in New York on Thursday. That’s up from 20% before new net-metering policies took effect"
‘Report from the Clean Energy Futures project — a collaboration among researchers from Harvard, Syracuse, Georgia Tech & others — found that a U.S. transition to 80% clean electricity by 2030 would cost $342 billion… but it would produce a net benefit of more than $1.4 trillion’
Some things are harder like cement, steel & airplanes, but we know how to decarbonize the power sector, so let’s get on it with, I tell
@NPR
@Marketplace
.
WSJ picking up a geothermal piece! Chevron, BP, and Devon are part of a group of fossil-fuel cos investing 100s of millions of dollars in modern geothermal startups and projects. Uses same tech employed by frackers, but look for underground heat vs. O&G.
Backpacked in the PNW this weekend, specifically The Enchantments near Leavenworth, Seattle. Breathtakingly beautiful.
Nice reminder to unplug every once in a while and connect with yourself and nature. Even better, came back to civilization to news of the IRA passing!
"McKinsey, BCG and S&P Global Commodity Insights all project electricity demand tied to data centers to increase at a compound annual growth rate of between 13% and 15% through 2030."
"Any company that is net long power—that is, those that have more capacity to sell power than
Barclays: "Despite heat pumps being >3x more efficient, this often more than offset by retail electricity-to-gas prices also being >3x. Few European countries and even fewer US states have consistently had retail electricity-to-gas price ratios below 2.5x"
Wild stats from
@energy_said
:
-A transmission line in the developed world needs to acquire as many as 13,500 permits, while projects that struggle with right-of-way can take 15-20 years
-Distribution bottlenecks are suggested by US grid outages doubling since 2013
Does anyone know an Emma and Erick living in a basement apartment in DC? A gift card was sent to them but arrived in my DC mail. Only return info I have is “Grandma.” I’d like to get it to them!
The collapse of Greensill Capital is the first Big Fraud I’ve seen in the past 13 years with the sheer heft and star power to ripple through markets in a systemic way. Not since Madoff.
Great McKinsey graphic on 12 categories interconnected through dependencies in foundational science and system-level scaling that are required to achieve climate goals.
4 buckets:
1) Clean electrons & electrification
2) Clean molecules
3) Carbon capture & removal
4) Circularity
Got through the summary report of
@McKinsey
's Net Zero economy report.
Very well done. Read enough of these and you eventually get the same points (sectors, themes, everyone do their part, etc.) so will focus on some of the underappreciated/new points.
So blatantly partisan. What
@JigarShahDC
& team have done is nothing short of remarkable in such little time. Turned it into a power house for innovation & funding, while restoring the office’s reputation.
Also context for Solyndra below (<5% failure rate overall for high risk
Republicans are vowing to make 2011's Solyndra loan scandal "look like chump change" as they investigate Biden's $400 billion green bank.
Biden’s $400 Billion Green Bank at Risk as GOP Hunt New Solyndra | Bloomberg
🔓
US plan to become world’s cleantech superpower
"revolution is under way in sectors incl. solar, nuclear, carbon capture, & green hydrogen — goals are profound: rejuvenate country’s rustbelt, decarbonize world’s biggest economy, & wrest control of energy supply chains from China"
.
@BloombergNEF
: China Extends Dominance of Clean-Tech Supply Chains (Despite Onshoring Push): China's share of global manufacturing capacity is now above 80% in 11 clean-tech segments
"indicates how the country’s interstate highways could serve as pathways for the roughly sketched-in interregional high-voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnections that the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has found could enable a significant
WoodMack is tracking several hundred proposed data centers and as permits are captured, building a bottom-up power model by ISO. Figures below do NOT include proposed but only FULLY permitted sites.
BofA: "Gas turbine market data for 1H24 shows the highest orders in a decade in gigawatt (GW) capacity terms. In terms of actual units, orders were the highest since 2018... Gas turbine orders in 1H24 were up 24% y/y to 30.5GW. On a unit basis, orders rose 15% y/y to 195 units in
As of 6/28/23, investments announced under
@POTUS
:
-$100 billion in US battery manufacturing & supply chain
-$30 billion+ in US EV component & assembly
-$9 billion+ solar manufacturing
-$3.5 billion US offshore wind manufacturing facility, port, and vessel investments
America, we're listening. With historic investments in our electric vehicle manufacturing supply chain, the Biden-Harris Administration is investing billions to make EVs more affordable and practical.
Check out our NEW EV Investment map and more:
@CJHandmer
Cause it’s more about holding onto power & continuing grifts than it is getting things done, otherwise we would see that phenomenon.
Best case scenario, such an uphill battle to win a seat that most change in discouraged to avoid any change that could risk loss of it but meh
Woah: "JPMorgan Chase announced today a series of deals aimed at removing and storing 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, valued at over $200 million, marking one of the largest carbon dioxide removal (CDR) purchases to date."
"Microsoft record-breaking announcement that it will purchase 10.5 gigawatts of clean power from Brookfield Renewable Partners — the largest such deal ever announced — cements the tech giant as the second-largest corporate buyer of clean energy worldwide... Microsoft now trails
Surprised to see many mentions of price gouging in O&G on my timeline.
These are global commodities that compete on price & have long investment cycles. Price is set by global buyers and sellers and touch different parts of many different supply chains.
Doesn’t work like that.
This chart
@ramez
shared is incredible.
In the deck, he follows with: Solar prices are 50-100 years ahead of where the IEA expected them to be in 2010.
Both such powerful visualizations.
One of the core reasons I'm hopeful about the energy transition. Cleantech (in this case solar) keeps growing faster than all "reasonable" forecasts. (With inspiration from
@AukeHoekstra
and others.)
Random epiphany: Having a unique name is something you dread as a child and increasingly appreciate as an adult. I hated my name and let people mispronounce it for years. Now, my face lights up when I get to tell people about where my parents are from and why they named me it.
BMO note 9/13: "Wood Mackenzie estimates suggest lead times for transformers at 78 to 127 weeks with pricing ~50% higher since the beginning of 2022. Circuit breakers and switch gear pricing and lead times have expanded to 151 weeks from 65 weeks and prices are 25% higher"
"Steel, aluminum and cement companies with the lowest emissions per ton of output outperformed peers by an average of 56% in terms of share-price gains over the past five years, and did so with 45% lower average emissions, according to our analysis of 90 global companies"
What is the best explanation of where all the US utility transmission & distribution capex get spent if so little transmission has been built in recent years compared to historical baselines? I know it's getting more expensive but where does the bulk of this $ get spent?
Here come the batteries in the US.
From Sunrun ($RUN) earnings yesterday:
-Nationwide attachment rates = 18% (+4% YoY)
-Recent sales activities closer to >30% attachment rates nationally
-In California, attachment rates are exceeding 80%
-Installed over 100 MWhrs in 2Q23
Some thoughts on power & and AI data centers:
1) Tech giants care about SPEED TO MARKET. ANY power > CLEAN power in that order. They also care about sustainability targets and will still pursue them but will not forego tech targets in name of sustainability targets.
Hydrogen tax credit draft leaked... might require hydrogen production operations to be powered by wind/solar/other clean w/in last 3 yrs. Also whether & when projects should face hourly time-matching requirements.
As IRA repeal risk rumors get louder given political winds, good reminder that many states (incl. majority R states) have benefitted!
Top 10 states receiving the most clean energy funding (projects announced from August 2022–August 2023) via data from
@USCleanPower
Several sources indicate the price of
#EV
#LFP
#battery
cells in China is falling below US$56/kWh; Leapmotor said the price can be further squeezed to US$45/kWh.
Both
#CATL
and
#BYD
have put battery pricing reduction strategies in place for 2024.
#battchat
Might get eaten alive here but have noticed this since I post energy charts both traditional and climate tech, the climate community has such blind spots/tunnel vision on anything pertaining to FFs (e.g., namely fossil/natural gas). Energy independence, global
We will never accomplish the energy transition if people can’t accept negative feedback about key decarbonization technologies.
Big pain point of energy/climate twitter imho. Folks get defensive any time negatives are brought up, even in good faith. It becomes tribal.
Lot of
New personal website just launched! This will house all the latest from me - media & public appearances, writing (goal to get back into it in 2023!), links to other socials, get in contact, +more.
Very excited to share with y’all! . Preview below 👀🔥🫡
Genuine Q: Has the US built anything remotely close to this scale/level of development over the last 15-20 years?
If so, which pockets and what about those markets/areas allowed for it?
“It may be banking & finance, rather than national governments, that precipitate a climate action tipping point”
@MichaelEMann
100% agree and while in early innings, starting to see more and more folks buy into this. Flows of capital can drive societal change meaningfully
Growing up I was always embarrassed by my heritage, which food plays a huge part. Felt like I should copy my friends
Nowadays as I embrace and take pride in my parents culture, I’m blown away by the creations my mom makes in the kitchen. From embarrassed to the envy of friends!
"China’s total electricity generation from solar and wind is enough to match the total electricity of some of the world’s largest economies [like Canada or Brazil]"
@_HannahRitchie
Like this chart b/c it doesn't focus on capacity installed but actual generation output.
Brookfield announced US office portfolio it manages will be powered by zero emissions electricity by 2026. 65%+ of its office space will transition by 2024, making Brookfield the nation's largest commercial real estate user of zero emissions electricity
Crazy stat from an MS Note: "Exxon Mobil has cumulatively captured more CO2 than any company, accounting for ~40% of the global total, holds an equity share in ~20% of global CO capture capacity, is developing a number of carbon capture and sequestration projects"
Grantham on Green Investing: “There may be a bubble that will affect this for a year or two, but it will come back bigger and better than other groups because of this tailwind. This is going to be the most important investment theme for the rest of your life.” probably accurate.
Barclays: "Hyperscalers report 6th consecutive year of 25%+ electricity/energy demand growth. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have all released their 2024 sustainability reports with everyone except Amazon disclosing electricity/energy use. Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft
As someone not well versed on Web3/decentralized computing, this ep was a godsend.
@naval
and
@cdixon
are gifted orators and this is a topic they obviously both know a lot about. Easy to digest and helps understand the long-term potential.
@tferriss
This isn't an argument saying all fossil fuels are bad. All energy is good-just cleaner and dirtier forms of it.
I'm acknowledging on a systems basis that the current status quo results in a lot of waste we can prevent and we should redesign where we have better solutions.
@historyinmemes
Game of Thrones, even with the poor ending of the final two seasons. First 6 seasons were nothing short of the best entertainment ever. Last two episodes of season 6 are the best pieces of visual entertainment made!
This is such an important and incredible read. I’ve re-read it a few times and
@ramez
articulates so many points so eloquently on the energy transition, how to wean Europe off Russian O&G, why the future is brighter than the past, etc
These 2 snapshots are so spot on. Must read!