Electrified - Issue No. 42
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Electrified - Issue No. 42
305 Pages of Energy Transition Data on a Friday Night
Hi friends,
We’re thinking of all of you on the West Coast currently dealing with wildfires and their side effects.
If anything, they underscore the importance of the mission we’re all on together.
Let’s dive in.
This week, DNV-GL released its annual Energy Transition Outlook. The report is 305 pages long and is a statistical analysis of the energy transition to date with projections until 2050.
Since this post is much longer than my normal posts, I’m including a link below to my blog to avoid cluttering today’s newsletter.
Additionally, you all have varied interests, so inside the post, I've sectioned out each set of notes with a toggle list. If you click the arrows, each section expands in more detail.
👉🏻Breaking Down DNV-GL’s Energy Transition Outlook
Electrified Podcast
Last week, we launched episode one of the Electrified podcast. We’re available on all major platforms.
🎙Feed
Our first guest was Julia Pyper, co-host of Political Climate and contributing editor at Greentech Media.
She sets the tone perfectly for future episodes and personifies our goal of discussing the energy transition with the brightest minds without shying away from nuance.
Links:
— Natural Gas is the Rich World’s New Coal
— Why Climate Activists Should Take Their Victories Where They Can Find Them
— Early Winners and Losers From BlackRock’s Shift on Climate Change
Go deeper:
1.
Just a few years ago, natural gas was hailed as vital for the transition toward an economy that runs on renewable energy. But the sentiment is changing and the fuel is going the same way as coal, its dirtier sibling shunned by governments, utilities, and investors.
“Gas companies have underestimated that the public opinion is changing rapidly,” said Stansbury. “Coronavirus lockdowns have had a role in that change, as investors are also stepping back and rethinking how things should be done.”
— Natural Gas is the Rich World’s New Coal
2.
In any event, it is not even clear that climate policy, according to Hoyle or otherwise, will be the most important factor. That’s because climate change is an emergent feature of global industrialization and modernity, influenced by long-term demographic trends, structural transformations, shifts in the sectoral composition of economies, global trade, technological change, and enormously complicated feedbacks and interactions among all of those factors.
— In Defense of Muddling: Why Climate Activists Should Take Their Victories Where They Can Find Them
3.
In the first half of 2020, more than 50 companies felt BlackRock’s disapproval over their lack of progress on climate change — including Chevron, ExxonMobil and German utility Uniper.
A spokesperson for BlackRock tells GTM that another 191 have "been put on watch" and can expect pushback in the boardroom in 2021.
— Early Winners and Losers From BlackRock’s Shift on Climate Change
Recent Investment Activity
SenseHawk, a Saratoga, Calif.-based solar infrastructure intelligence platform, raised $5.1 million in Series A funding. Alpha Wave Incubation led, and was joined by return backer SAIF Partners.
SparkMeter, a Washington, DC-based provider of grid management services, equipment, and software solutions, raised $12M in Series A funding from Clean Energy Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Goodwell Investments, Alitheia Capital, Total Energy Ventures, and others.
EnerVenue, a Fremont, CA-based maker of metal-hydrogen batteries for large-scale renewable and storage applications, launched with $12M in seed funding led by Dr. Peter Lee, Chairman of Towngas, an energy company in Asia, and included Doug Kimmelman, founder of Energy Capital Partners.
ThoughtWire, a Canada-based developer of a Digital Twin Technology platform for smarter built environments, closed an $11.5M funding from Yaletown Partners, BDC Capital, Canadian Business Growth Fund, Greensoil PropTech Ventures and EDC.
Ubicquia, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based small cell and smart grid startup, raised $30 million in Series C funding from backers like Fuel VC.
Terabase Energy, a Berkeley, Calif.-based solar digital startup, raised $6 million in Series A funding. SJF Ventures led the round.
💰Any deals we missed or you would like us to share? Submit them here.
What I’m thinking about
“Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000000001% of what’s happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.” - Morgan Housel
See you next weekend,
Kevin