Are you by chance wondering what actual climate tech news you missed while you were focused on the Presidential election and decorating for Halloween? You are in luck – here’s a summary in this month’s Cleantech Roundup.
We’re going to touch on US energy demand, and what it means for nuclear power and direct air capture; All things batteries, and an industrial decarbonization deployment close-to-home.
An Amazon Web Services facility in Northern Virginia. Credit: Nathan Howard | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Energy Demand: Atoms, Bits, and Electrons
Continuing on a spate of nuclear news, Amazon announced $500 million in commitments to develop small modular reactor nuclear generation facilities in different parts of the US where it has intense energy demands for data centers. Support for expanding nuclear power (both re-opening existing facilities and developing new small modular reactor facilities) has bipartisan support and is a rare climate policy area where there may be continuity between administrations.
With the load growth and demand for clean power coming from data centers, one segment that is on the losing end is Direct Air Capture facilities, which require large amount of completely carbon free power to do their engineered carbon removal work.
In an era with transmission and interconnection constraints, NIMBY pushback, and difficulty scaling renewables, things that involve huge new renewables demand (like DAC) are likely to continue to struggle and may not be the best option long term (because although clean energy is and will be cheap, it will be needed for many other things). This is one reason Evergreen tends to be more interested in carbon removal approaches that are lower energy intensity and/or utilize energy more efficiently.
US Batteries
US Battery production is on track to undercut China on cost by 2030, if the IRA tax credits remain in place (hat tip portfolio NanoGraf for flagging this in their newsletter).
Speaking of batteries, US utility-scale battery capacity hit an inflection point several years ago and is ramping dramatically – check out this hockey stick style chat:
I also learned a new german word from this article: Dunkelflaute
“Batteries can smooth out some of that variability from those times when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. The Germans have a word for this sort of drought: Dunkelflaute,” said Moura. “So if you have a four-hour storage battery, that can get you through a Dunkelflaute.”
Also speaking of batteries, friend of Evergreen’s Tyler Lancaster, Partner at Energize Capital, is featured in this Latitude Media story on the continued dominance of lithium ion battery chemistry and where he sees emerging opportunities for innovation.
Exciting Local Industrial Decarbonization Project
Furno Materials, a portfolio company of our friends Energy Capital Ventures, was recently awarded a $20 million Department of Energy grant to build a modular low carbon cement production facility on site with Chicago area cement company Ozinga (this is at the place you can see while you are stuck in traffic on the Dan Ryan just north of I-55 with all the red cement trucks parked).
i,Product Launch
Tesla revealed new products, including their autonomous taxi, the Cybercab; they also revealed the Tesla Robovan concept, a 20 person autonomous shuttle; as a long time fan and advocate of autonomous minibuses, I am intrigued, although when these product will actually be available is less clear. As the author of this article noted, “Kids who were born the year Musk first promised the imminent arrival of coast-to-coast autonomous driving are now in fourth grade.” Also, for your dinner party conversations, internet observers noticed a more-than-passing resemblance to equipment in the 2004 sci/fi action film i,Robot.
Rare Earths
China continues to control and restrict the supply chain for rare earth minerals, needed to make semiconductors as well as various clean energy equipment like wind turbines and electric vehicle motors. This remains a major supply chain threat for a number of industries in the US.
Rules
The Supreme Court left in place Biden administration rules on methane and mercury pollution while arguments play our in court (although writing this with the hindsight of the election, these will both presumably get pulled by the Trump administration)
Speaking of rules, the FAA published final rules for ‘powered lift aircraft’ aka flying taxis. After some back and forth, seems like they ended up in a placethe emerging industry is okay with.
Remote Control Cars
Credit: REUTERS
Last year I mentioned the company Vay, which implements vehicle teleoperations (still driven by a human, but they aren’t physically in the car. At the time, I said “I think teleoperations is actually more interesting over the next few years and perhaps longer.” That will probably turn out to be wrong (as autonomous vehicle pilots in the US are now conducting more than 100,000 rides a week in a few western US cities, although still frequently assisted by remote human support systems), although I remain bullish about the approach – and I’m not alone! The company recently raised $37 million to roll out more deployments in Europe.
