Redefining Energy

Another year of explosive growth for the Solar Industry: production above 300GW, +45% yoy. What’s behind this staggering growth? How are the supply chain evolving? What are the “Fab four” and what new technology are they pursuing? Why are the prices not going down? How can the development of ESG in supply chain be assessed? How will the industry look in 5 years? So many questions for this booming...

The biogas/biomethane industry is now one of the promising segments of the Energy Transition: security of supply, renewables sources, local jobs, round the clock dispatchability; the industry ticks all boxes. Biogas can basically be made from any organic material, so the three big sectors are: 1) agricultural wastes (manures and slurries, crop residues) 2) food waste (from the processed food indus...

Geopolitics and Climate disasters have shown how fragile Energy flows and infrastructures have become. Moving electrons or molecules is becoming an ever-greater challenge in the drive to decarbonisation, affordability, and security of supply. Politics are always in the background, and the recent US Midterms elections have signaled the end of a full Democrat Congress which has been very active in f...

The war in Ukraine has triggered a dislocation of Energy markets, especially in Europe. This has led to a point a few months ago when governments had to bail out all Utilities which were caught on the wrong side of Energy Trades. Trillions of derivatives threatened to trigger a “Lehman moment”. How did we get there? Are the Energy markets the culprits or just the symptoms? Are they beyond repairs...

Offshore Wind was one of the great development successes of the past decade, growing in 10 years from a few pilot projects to a real industry. Two zones have been at the fore front: the North Sea (with 30GW as of 2021) and China (with +20GW). Better tech, burgeoning supply chain and infrastructure, and a dramatic fall in cost have created tailwinds for this industry. Offshore Wind is now a technol...

Decarbonising the shipping industry seemed very aspirational until recently. Lofty goals are out there: “The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set an ambition to reduce the carbon intensity of emissions from shipping by at least 40% by 2030, and 70% by 2050, compared with 2008 levels. To achieve this, the shipping industry needs to unite in taking urgent action.” While a lot of talks a...

In the past two years, we’ve seen a remarkable renaissance of the carbon markets. Some markets are of a “compliance” type - like in Europe - heavily regulated but limited in geography and scope; but there is limited prospect for an overall Cap & Trade worldwide as carbon markets were ignored in the US IRA - the largest Climate bill ever. So, what happens when a sector or a company is not covered b...

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...