Redefining Energy

Talking about nuclear is tough. In the left corner, a besieged and opaque industry only delivering carefully crafted talking points; and in the right corner, most of the energy economists and financiers that are ignoring promises never met. One can’t escape the feeling that the nuclear industry operates in a parallel universe where models don’t match reality, where actual numbers don’t match forec...

This episode is done in partnership with SolarPower Europe. There is a lot of media around Utility solar, but the real solar revolution is happening one rooftop at the time. In China, the EU and Australia, Rooftop and C&I account for more than 60% of all solar installations (In the US, it’s only 30%). No need to restructure the Distribution network: it’s energy at the point of need. So, we wanted...

Energy Efficiency is not sexy, it’s under the radar, hard to invest in. We are talking about small unit amounts, with aggregation problems, credit problems, standardisation problems. But the whole sector is undertaking a quiet revolution: with the price explosion of retail energy, efficiency is now on everyone’s desk. In the US, Sunrun has managed to securitise portfolios of rooftop solar using te...

The future of storage is so bright that investing in in the vertical and its adjacencies is the opportunity of a lifetime. At the same time, buyer beware - there are many Theranos-like investment opportunities lurking out there in our vertical. You've got to be very smart to minimize the losers in your portfolio…or, as the great Michael Lewis would say, adopt a “Moneyball” approach. Where are the...

Subsea interconnectors are a very discreet sector, it entails decade-long developments…but are developing fast and have become critical to increasing renewables penetration and enhancing energy security. They were originally developed around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea by TSO (Transmission System Operators) but have now caught the interest of large private infrastructure investors. Those HVDC...

After the fiasco of “Better place” in 2013, a much-hyped Israeli start up that proposed battery swapping for cars, everybody thought that the concept of battery swapping was dead. Against all odds, an exceptional Hong Kong Chinese American entrepreneur decided to be a contrarian and launched Gogoro as Better Place collapsed. But Horace Luke’s angle was to focus on two-wheelers, which are so presen...

Elon Musk calls Lithium supply the “limiting factor” for electric vehicle adoption globally. Lithium is the key material for the Energy Transition and is currently enjoying a “white gold” rush. The supply has significantly gone up multiple fold in the past seven years, up to 500,000t/y in 2022; still, demand is expected – according to Benchmark Minerals Intelligence – to grow another four to five-...

There is not a single day when we don’t hear about new funds being raised to finance the Energy Transition. As very few funds are listed on Exchanges, and it is estimated that more than 2/3 of the Energy Transition is currently financed on private markets, for which there is limited public available information. Today, we attempt to lift the veil on those VC (Venture Capital), PE (Private Equity),...

Over the past few months, energy prices have gone through the roof, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put energy security on the front burner. We can legitimately ask ourselves: Are high energy prices and the need for energy security tanking or boosting the Energy transition? Of course, we now are seeing the fossil fuels lobbyists making victory laps, telling “we told you so”, “forget about net...

How to survive a war when you are a Utility in Ukraine? Thanks to Eurelectric which organised the introduction, we have the honour of welcoming a hero of the Energy world: Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, one of the top integrated Utility in Ukraine. During an intense conversation we talk about war, destruction, and sufferings, but also about resistance and resilience. Maxim praises its workforce as...

Decarbonising Heat is a significant challenge on the road to Net-Zero, Climate Resilience and Energy Security. It is also a very complex problem as there are several categories of heat that require different technical solutions. While Heat Pumps can (and will) provide low grade heat, the options for high grade heat are evading electrification and will continue to rely on burning molecules. Several...

The deployment of Li-Ion batteries has exploded in recent years and is expected to enjoy a 30% annual growth until 2030. But those very critical pieces of hardware need a brain to fully function, and that is where software kicks in. In fact, they are two layers of software: the operating system, monitoring the functioning of the battery and the cloud system that interacts with the global electrici...

The war in Ukraine is a total gamechanger. Beyond the personal drama and misery inflicted on millions of human beings, it triggers a tremor in the world of Energy of a magnitude not seen since the Oil shocks of the 70’s. As Energy Security becomes front and center, Gerard and Laurent try to understand the short-term implications on the Energy landscape. Are we moving away from the energy transitio...

As we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the seminal book by Jeremy Rifkin “The Hydrogen Economy” and the astronomical amount of non-sense it contained, we wanted to have a real look at the prospect of Green Hydrogen. Beyond bombastic claims such as “History will look back at 2022 as the year that hydrogen started to reshape the world”, we have decided to dig deep into the technology and pros...

Gigafactory: a term first coined by Elon Musk in 2013 when announcing the Tesla+Panasonic giant battery plant in Nevada. There are currently more than 260 Gigafactories planned around the world, but lots of them remain “PowerPoint factories”. So, how do you go from PowerPoint to Gigafactory? The answer might be in Norway, so let’s go to Norway. We are very happy to be joined by Tom Jensen. Tom is...

Delivering 24/7 carbon free power is the holy grail for infrastructure funds. Such progress requires a new approach to investing. New technologies need to be harnessed: Hybridization, storage, and data science. The ESG component is also getting additional scrutiny from investors. So, how will the state-of-the-art infrastructure fund of the 2020’s look like. We have the privilege of welcoming David...

Happy new year 2022 to all our listeners. In this Episode, its Nostradamus vs. Cassandra all over again: Laurent and Gerard review their 2021 predictions (Episode 42) and look forward to the future. How accurate were our two co-hosts’ predictions for 2021? 1) “The Empire strikes back”, legacy players in the Energy and Automotive sectors will bounce back 2) The unstoppable development of renewables...

2021 looked like an “annus horribilis” for the solar industry. Price increases, supply chain problems, threat of taxes on importations. Is the solar industry at the end of 2021 just doom and gloom? Absolutely not. The solar industry has grown an amazing 27% this year, and the trend will continue in 2022. We bring the best analyst of the industry, Jenny Chase, Head of Solar at Bloomberg NEF to go t...

EV charging is developing exponentially. It is now a 30bnUSD market per year, growing at a astonishing pace of 20%. More than 1.5m EV charging stations are now operational in the world, 50% in China, 30% in Europe. The US will catch up soon thank to the Biden Infrastructure plan that commits 7.5bnUSD to EV charging. But ultra-fast charging comes with technical challenges as the impact on the local...

As COP26 comes to a close, there has been a flurry of commitments to invest trillions of dollars in green technologies and carbon neutral projects. That is the core of ESG investing (or is it?). ESG investing has grown exponentially since the famous 2015 Marc Carney’s speech "Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon" and the 2020 Blackrock letter “Because capital markets pull future risk forward, we wi...

Renewables are developing very fast, but without a proper distribution system, the energy transition will soon stall. So, what does tomorrow’s green grid looks like? It seems like a dull subject, but the grid modernisation is the necessary condition of a successful roll out of wind, solar and EV Charging. What needs to change, what type of investment are necessary, not just from a deployment persp...

For the past decade, Natural Gas has been promoted as the “Clean, Reliable and Cheap” fuel to assist the Energy Transition. Well that cosy theory, heavily promoted by the fossil fuel companies, is collapsing in front of our eyes with the Gas crunch affecting Europe, Asia and Latin America. As of 6 October 2021, TTF (the Dutch gas hub) front month prices briefly touched 160EUR/MWh, 8 times higher t...

What are the technological options to compensate for – as the German say - the “Dunkelflaute” (dark doldrums), those winter weeks of low winds and low solar? That’s the code that will have to be cracked by Long Duration Energy Storage (above 8 hours and up to several days). Because, if no realistic solution is implemented in the coming years, we will still have gas peakers in the XXIIth century. G...

Steel and cement with their 2,000 mills and 3,000 kilns, together currently emit 15% of the world’s CO2. So far, they’ve been exempted from carbon trading or carbon pricing, which means no significant reductions have been implemented. But in a 1.5degree and Net Zero scenarios, they start to feel the pressure. We brought Dolf Gielen, Director Innovation and Technology at IRENA (International Renewa...

Methane is the largest source of greenhouse gas after CO2. The latest IPCC report has flagged the issue as “Code Red”. Until recently, Methane Emissions had not been universally monitored nor managed. Hence, how can Natural Gas legitimately claim that is it is a “bridge fuel” in the fight against Climate Change? Thankfully, the landscape is starting to evolve; and it’s about time, as methane emiss...