Speaker 1: With La Launce Segle and from London and Gerard read
Speaker 1: from Berlin.
Speaker 2: This is redefining energy Today.
Speaker 3: On Redefending Energy Joad, we're going to talk about climate tech.
Speaker 4: Whether it's alive, dead or it's gone through a huge transformation.
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Speaker 3: Back to the show, and for that we have a
Speaker 3: fantastic guest, a person we've been following four years, Tim Zoo.
Speaker 3: She's a leading climate tech analyst, founder, investor, and she
Speaker 3: has co founded Sideline Climate formerly called CTVC, which provides
Speaker 3: data research and market intelligence to tens of thousands of organizations.
Speaker 3: Fantastic guests.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let us and I've been following them since they
Speaker 5: started up and they did great analysis, great reports, and
Speaker 5: it's a pleasure to have her on board.
Speaker 3: Let's bring it on the show.
Speaker 5: Where came listen, It's a pleasure having you on the show.
Speaker 5: Really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 1: Excited to be on the show. Longtime listeners, Kim, I'm.
Speaker 3: Going to ask a very simple question, what is climate
Speaker 3: tech into twenty six?
Speaker 1: Simple question, not so simple answer. We started a newsletter
Speaker 1: on climate tech at the beginning of twenty twenty, right
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, where I would say the definition for
Speaker 1: climate tech is quite different. Historically, the way we've looked
Speaker 1: at it is technology solutions mitigating the climate crisis from mitigation, adaptation,
Speaker 1: removal standpoint, with the understanding that the demand driver is
Speaker 1: really around decarb getting to net zero. That definition as
Speaker 1: a whole hasn't necessarily changed, But I think the underlying
Speaker 1: demand driver for what's driving a lot of these verticals
Speaker 1: and sectors that we call climate tech. We really think
Speaker 1: of climate tech as a theme, not an industry. It's energy,
Speaker 1: it's builds environment, it's transport, it's food and ad, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of these core verticals. But now the demand
Speaker 1: driver for these solutions are no longer purely net zero
Speaker 1: purely decarb. In my mind, the demand drivers really come
Speaker 1: down to where we see physical supply shortages relative to demand,
Speaker 1: and that today is happening in primarily power driven by
Speaker 1: AI and data centers. We're seeing that in some manufacturing
Speaker 1: and resources related sectors like crotopriminerals, and we're also seeing
Speaker 1: that in areas like manufacturing robot and we're actually seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of investment going into those solutions like nuclear,
Speaker 1: like grid tech, but it's no longer because of decarb
Speaker 1: net zero that's driving those investments.
Speaker 5: Begs the question why do we even use the phrase
Speaker 5: climate anymore?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a question I ask myself not every day,
Speaker 1: but often, because I do think we helped coin this
Speaker 1: term climate tech back at the start of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: There's been clean tech one point zero. There's been many
Speaker 1: iterations of clean and climate tech, and I think often
Speaker 1: this word climate tech can isolate the key players that
Speaker 1: we need to drive these industries forward. There's an inherent
Speaker 1: assumption that in climate tech, the reason we're talking about
Speaker 1: these technologies, these solutions is because of climate, when in reality,
Speaker 1: the way the world works, these solutions that fall under
Speaker 1: this climate tech umbrella it's not driven because of climate.
Speaker 1: It's driven because there's a need from a security standpoint,
Speaker 1: from an affordability standpoint, and also from a sustainability standpoint cheaper, better, faster, cleaner,
Speaker 1: and just having that climate label on it all, just
Speaker 1: having the assumption that everything is because of cleaner can
Speaker 1: sometimes isolate a lot of the investors, the corporates, the
Speaker 1: policymakers who want these solutions to scale. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of what the industry that we've been tracking has been
Speaker 1: coming to terms with over the last two years that
Speaker 1: just purely looking at this from a climate standpoint no
Speaker 1: longer really helps the solutions scale. In fact, sometimes it
Speaker 1: harms these solutions.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm sort of hearing and I don't have the answer,
Speaker 5: but I'm going to give you a challenge, which has
Speaker 5: come up with a new phrase, we move from clean
Speaker 5: tech to climate tech. And I think it's just you
Speaker 5: set it yourself there there's a need for a new phrase.
Speaker 3: If I look at the story of investing in that
Speaker 3: there are my perception and you're going to tell me,
Speaker 3: because you are doing the research with the ring numbers,
Speaker 3: if my perception is good or not. Is that in
Speaker 3: the capital location people used to go big on green molecules,
Speaker 3: so they would put money in biofuels, or in hydrogen
Speaker 3: or the most absurd and stupid and ridiculous and one
Speaker 3: hundred percent share of burning money carbon management, whether it's
Speaker 3: burning shareholders money or burning government money, because this is
Speaker 3: a continuous scam. Two green electrons. So that's my perception.
Speaker 3: So you have the numbers or just just me babbling.
Speaker 1: When we look at climate tech investment in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five relative to the prior years, a pretty surprising, at
Speaker 1: least on paper surprising start is there is a big
Speaker 1: increase in climate tech investment. And when I say climate
Speaker 1: tech investment, I'm talking mostly about venture and growth a
Speaker 1: police in mostly looking at private markets. Twenty twenty twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, we saw a massive boom from like thirty
Speaker 1: billion up to sixty billion, doubled year every year. Then
Speaker 1: twenty three onwards that investment has really decreased, come back
Speaker 1: down to kind of thirty forty billion. Surprisingly, in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, we saw an eight percent uptick from twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, which on paper, you're like, wait, a second
Speaker 1: policy has not been favorable to climate. How has investment
Speaker 1: in climate tech increase, and the majority of that increase
Speaker 1: has come from the energy and specifically the electrons side
Speaker 1: of the equation. It's coming from this new demand driver
Speaker 1: AI data centers, six hundred and sixty billion dollars of
Speaker 1: hyperscalar capex going into needing to build out the data
Speaker 1: center and compute layer, which means that we need more
Speaker 1: electrons both from a generation and from a transmission distribution standpoint.
Speaker 1: And so we're seeing all of that uptick right now
Speaker 1: in climate tech investment coming from the green electron side.
Speaker 1: Historically there was a lot coming from the green molecule side, hydrogen,
Speaker 1: low carbon fuels, really focusing on the transfer rotation side
Speaker 1: of energy. Now it's all flowing into the electron side
Speaker 1: of energies. So I think we've seen a real shift.
Speaker 1: And my personal take here is it also just makes
Speaker 1: a lot more sense. If we're using this framework of better, cheaper, faster,
Speaker 1: cleaner electrons, you can check a lot of those boxes
Speaker 1: a lot faster than molecules.
Speaker 5: By the way, you mentioned the hydrogen there did not
Speaker 5: not blow up about one hundred years ago with the
Speaker 5: Hinden work.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I think we're in like every ten years
Speaker 1: due to the hydrogen. Hydrogen it kind of dissipated, let's
Speaker 1: call it in twenty twenty five. So yeah, twenty thirty five,
Speaker 1: we could have a looking forward, all right, we'll have
Speaker 1: a tenure date.
Speaker 3: For hydrogen right now. There is one project that makes
Speaker 3: a lot of sense. It's in Paraguay, is to make
Speaker 3: green ammonia from the Equosu dam because I know the
Speaker 3: story of the construction and the financying of the equest Sudam.
Speaker 3: In fact, Paraguay as an allotment of that dam, but
Speaker 3: they never use it because it's such a small economy
Speaker 3: and they're going to produce really rereneumonia there and they
Speaker 3: have a bush and everything that's very serious and that's
Speaker 3: going to replace fertilizer. But that's the exception. Will most
Speaker 3: confirm the rule now question and regard numbers because we're
Speaker 3: going to talk about numbers. We love numbers here. But
Speaker 3: for instance, when you have twenty thousand R and D
Speaker 3: engineers at COTL, when you have one hundred and ten
Speaker 3: thousand engineers at BYD, do you account for their R
Speaker 3: and D budget or what you're tracking. It's really like
Speaker 3: more external sources because there's a lot of research in
Speaker 3: climate tech going inside those Chinese giants.
Speaker 1: We're doing a lot more coverage on China. I'm also Chinese,
Speaker 1: so I do feel personally interested in this topic. Last
Speaker 1: November went on a trip and visited this atl MBID
Speaker 1: companies and factories, and you go to these factories and
Speaker 1: they have walls and walls of patents that they've developed
Speaker 1: across batteries, across solar, across evs, all these things. And
Speaker 1: even to me, like last time I was in China
Speaker 1: was in twenty eighteen, that was a surprise. Historically, the
Speaker 1: Western narration of clean tech and climate tech has been
Speaker 1: all the innovation happens in the West and then China
Speaker 1: takes it and scales it or copies it, depending on
Speaker 1: who you speak to. That to me has fundamentally changed.
Speaker 1: China is no longer just the world's factory focusing on
Speaker 1: the kind of ten to one hundred. They're making a
Speaker 1: very dedicated effort and they're succeeding, especially in a lot
Speaker 1: of these clean tech climate tech sectors and going further
Speaker 1: upstream into the zero to one. And to your point,
Speaker 1: it's not venture capital, it's not VC investors in China
Speaker 1: that are funding most of this, it's a combination of
Speaker 1: government capital, local government capital, industry funds that they'd set up.
Speaker 1: It's a combination of state owned enterprises and a combination
Speaker 1: of these corporates plus some private markets capital that's really
Speaker 1: funding this stuff. So in our climate tech investment numbers,
Speaker 1: we're not tracking corporate R and D, we're not tracking
Speaker 1: that type of capital. We're mostly looking at private markets investment,
Speaker 1: so we're not looking at government capital at least in
Speaker 1: those numbers. But if you were to look at where
Speaker 1: a lot of the innovation in China is happening, it's
Speaker 1: really stemming down from the five year plans. The government
Speaker 1: at the top is setting the national goals over the
Speaker 1: next five years, and from twenty twenty to twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: during the pandemic years, there were a lot of dedicated
Speaker 1: goals centered around new energy EVS, solar batteries, those are
Speaker 1: the big three, and from twenty twenty to twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: the Chinese private markets, Chinese vcs had some of the
Speaker 1: best outcomes, the best exits with COTL, with a couple
Speaker 1: other companies including a battery storage company, and to them
Speaker 1: that was the big clean tech climate tech years. And
Speaker 1: most of that innovation has now been happening at these
Speaker 1: companies like CTL and Buid and others, as opposed to
Speaker 1: startups that are necessarily building the innovation.
Speaker 5: Can we jump on that point? There is an interesting
Speaker 5: one because if I look at say Europe, we actually
Speaker 5: formerly probably had the Chinese approach, which was innovation took
Speaker 5: place in these big businesses and big institutes. That model
Speaker 5: as sort of I don't know, as maybe it's broken
Speaker 5: down and we're now moving to this I call it
Speaker 5: this American approach, but that ain't working for us either.
Speaker 5: So I'd be very interested just to hear your approach
Speaker 5: on Europe and how you see Europe in between that,
Speaker 5: the American approach to innovation and the Chinese approach.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I've been privileged to be able to
Speaker 1: straddle some of these geographies, like born and raised in
Speaker 1: the US, have lived in London for the last three years,
Speaker 1: and then parents and family from Asia, so have been
Speaker 1: able to kind of get a glimpset at these different
Speaker 1: markets and how they operate. I think the advantage of
Speaker 1: the US is capital, no doubt, right. The advantage of
Speaker 1: the US is that there's just a lot of capital there.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of private markets capital there. In particular,
Speaker 1: the birth of private equity was in the US, and
Speaker 1: so that's their advantage, along with Silicon Valley and bottoms
Speaker 1: of innovation. I think unless you have that advantage of
Speaker 1: endless capital, it's really hard to go only the kind
Speaker 1: of purely capitalistic private markets route, private innovation route. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, China is the other end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: where it's more socialist, communist in nature, and they can
Speaker 1: go the top down government approach where they say, okay,
Speaker 1: over the next ten years, we're just going to focus
Speaker 1: on doing these three things really well, and then everyone
Speaker 1: underneath bottom up will kind of rise to the moment.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't create that more organic innovation, that more
Speaker 1: organic scientific R and D. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: some of these Chinese markets have struggled to do that
Speaker 1: zero to one because it's been so top down that
Speaker 1: there isn't that encouragement of that scientific, almost academic R
Speaker 1: and D that you do have in US and that
Speaker 1: you do have in Europe that don't always meet the
Speaker 1: goals of what the governments, what the national has said.
Speaker 1: I think Europe's advantage here is that it can bridge
Speaker 1: between these two. It doesn't have to pick one or
Speaker 1: the other. I think Europe has the advantage of really
Speaker 1: fantastic academic innovation, really fantastic scientific innovation. You look at
Speaker 1: some of the universities here in the UK, Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial,
Speaker 1: you look at EAT Zurich. There's a ton of incredible
Speaker 1: innovation happening at these universities. There is the private markets
Speaker 1: here as well, although it's not as scaled up as
Speaker 1: the US. But I also think there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to have that top down, longer term government focus than
Speaker 1: in the US, which is kind of behold into these
Speaker 1: four year election cycles that now swing back and forth.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, can eure ap step up to
Speaker 1: seeing the advantages of how the China model has worked
Speaker 1: as well as seeing the advantages of that bottoms up
Speaker 1: innovation and sort of academic ecosystem that the US has
Speaker 1: midwork and come up with its own version that takes
Speaker 1: the best of both worlds.
Speaker 3: I like the way you think, and you introduced without
Speaker 3: even knowing it the powerful driver of serend deputy, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of R and D which comes a
Speaker 3: bit by accident or just people meeting each other and
Speaker 3: not necessarily a dog cut. How clever it is. You
Speaker 3: know in the ministry say okay, we're going to do this,
Speaker 3: We're going to do that. But even sera deputy works
Speaker 3: in China because you know, we took to a Chinese
Speaker 3: expert and they said that the electric two and three
Speaker 3: wheelers were not in the plan. So they say, okay,
Speaker 3: we're not doing it. But some guys, entrepreneurs, they found
Speaker 3: out that the economics were great and it was developed
Speaker 3: outside the plan. And sometimes I mean you see the
Speaker 3: plan for new Care and they are five years late,
Speaker 3: and you see the plan for if it's there are
Speaker 3: five years ahead. So I mean the plan, yeah, we
Speaker 3: can debate for hours. Now you talk about players, okay,
Speaker 3: because we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker 3: So what are the players? Always the same new names?
Speaker 3: So what's the ecosystem?
Speaker 1: The players that have been driving this climate tech innovation
Speaker 1: and deployment cycle has definitely shifted over the last six years.
Speaker 1: When we started tracking the space in twenty twenty, we
Speaker 1: were really looking at the emergence of these climate tech vcs.
Speaker 1: I mean we literally called the newsletter Climate Tech vc
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty to twenty twenty two, we saw
Speaker 1: this big emergence of this new kind of player that
Speaker 1: came to the table of venture investors, primarily early stage
Speaker 1: venture investors who wanted to back companies, startup solutions that
Speaker 1: were working on this climate challenge. Then twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty four, i'd say we saw the emergence
Speaker 1: of the growth and more infrastructure stage emerging for this
Speaker 1: category investors like just Climate General Atlantics, Beyond zero fund
Speaker 1: Decarbonization Partners between Tamassa and Black Rock tpgu guys. So
Speaker 1: you started to see this emergence of the more growth
Speaker 1: infrastructure asset class. Brookfield included in that that weren't just
Speaker 1: investing in solar and wind, but looking at some of
Speaker 1: these more emerging solutions. And that was also when we
Speaker 1: started Siteline, when we went from just being a newsletter
Speaker 1: to being a broader market intelligence company tracking these capital flows,
Speaker 1: helping to advise a lot of these investors. But also
Speaker 1: increasingly now this new wave we're seeing is more of
Speaker 1: the corporate and also government stack coming into play. We're
Speaker 1: at this period in climate tech where it's less about
Speaker 1: backing a lot more of the same innovation. Do we
Speaker 1: need another SMR reactor type? Do we need another hydrogen electrilizer?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Like we've been at it for six years, it's less
Speaker 1: about funding early stage investment and innovation in some of
Speaker 1: these existing solutions that have been able to scale over
Speaker 1: the last six years, and it's more about, Okay, what
Speaker 1: of these markets are actually needed, Where is their demand,
Speaker 1: where is their willingness to pay, and what of these
Speaker 1: solutions actually have the cost curve, the scalability, the deployment
Speaker 1: models to meet the problems we have today. And so
Speaker 1: where we're seeing the players come to it's more the corporates,
Speaker 1: the policy makers, the infrastructure investors that are needed to
Speaker 1: take these solutions to scale. And that's actually what we
Speaker 1: saw in our recent Capital Staff report, where we oftentimes
Speaker 1: track the capital allocators and how LPs are starting to
Speaker 1: deploy capital inn to these gps. And one really interesting
Speaker 1: step that came out of that was in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: we saw that pool of overall funding the asset allocators
Speaker 1: go from twenty percent to VCS to then eight percent
Speaker 1: to VCS, So a lot more capital now is flowing
Speaker 1: into the infrastructure side of the equation than the early
Speaker 1: stage innovation and VC side of the equation. These infrastructure
Speaker 1: investors aren't just looking at solar and wind anymore. They're
Speaker 1: looking at nuclear, They're looking at things adjacent to data centers.
Speaker 1: And so it's not that everything's going to get funded
Speaker 1: from climate tech from what the VC is backed, but
Speaker 1: we're going to see some solutions emerge. Geothermal is a
Speaker 1: good example of that as well. OK.
Speaker 5: I like what you say here because that's what I
Speaker 5: see in practice.
Speaker 3: What I see is.
Speaker 5: It's not about technologies anymore. It's about scaling these technologies.
Speaker 5: And actually the good news is because Iron myself with
Speaker 5: Lurano being veterans in this space, and I've obviously seen
Speaker 5: the seen tech one point zero and the blow up
Speaker 5: of that. But the difference now is really these technologies
Speaker 5: are low cost obviously batteries solar, but there's a whole
Speaker 5: pile of other technologies in and around that that are
Speaker 5: doing that. I'd love to get your view on what
Speaker 5: excites your most about these Like, if you look at technologies,
Speaker 5: which one you sort of say the one to look
Speaker 5: at the next five years is this?
Speaker 3: What is it? Please before you answer, don't say the
Speaker 3: one that excites job the most which Areta center in space.
Speaker 1: Love it. In my mind, those were cool. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it excites me just yet. Here's my thesis
Speaker 1: over the next couple of years, when we look at
Speaker 1: the clean tech wave solar wind batteries, it's amazing how
Speaker 1: those have come down the cost curve and in a
Speaker 1: way like that was the lower hanging fruit when we
Speaker 1: think about overall decarbonization and net zero. Now we're in
Speaker 1: a period of not just decarbonization net zero, but we're
Speaker 1: also in a period of growth or not just trying
Speaker 1: to bring this stuff down or trying to bring this
Speaker 1: stuff down while so growing the overall pie, nuclear geothermal,
Speaker 1: those are exciting because you have like new interest in
Speaker 1: clean firm generation sources. But where I get really excited
Speaker 1: is not just the generation side of the pie, but
Speaker 1: really the transmission, distribution and demand side of the pie.
Speaker 1: And before starting SITELINE and CTBC, I was an investor
Speaker 1: at Energy Impect Partners, which has a coalition of primarily
Speaker 1: utilities that they work with in order to invest in
Speaker 1: this space. And I remember five years ago bringing technologies
Speaker 1: like advanced conductors VPPs to ers, dynamic line ratings like
Speaker 1: stuff that weren't that cool back in the day to
Speaker 1: the utilities and they would say, this is cool, but
Speaker 1: the risk return ratio isn't here for me. Why would
Speaker 1: I deploy or do a pilot with a new grid
Speaker 1: tech company or a new conductor technology when I'm just
Speaker 1: worried about keeping the light Now they're worried about keeping
Speaker 1: them lights on, but they're also worried about all this
Speaker 1: demand coming to the table, primarily driven by data centers
Speaker 1: in AI, and they have a higher return ratio and
Speaker 1: a higher risk ratio. So they're actually interested now in
Speaker 1: piloting some of this demand flexibility grid tech type technology
Speaker 1: because there's just so much capacity coming online and they
Speaker 1: don't want to have to spend only billions of CAPEX
Speaker 1: to build out all the transmission and distribution infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: that also obviously increases electricity prices, increases rates. That's what
Speaker 1: accts me right now. It's this demand and distribution side
Speaker 1: of the electronic equation that I think people care about
Speaker 1: now because they have.
Speaker 3: To Kim Sideline is following the growth of data center
Speaker 3: on a very granular basis. So you have like so
Speaker 3: much fantastic data, what do you see opening in the
Speaker 3: next eighteen months because we've seen crazy number of flowing
Speaker 3: you know the rat what is the railt?
Speaker 1: The reality is, so we've been tracking at a very
Speaker 1: granular level every single data center globally coming online, with
Speaker 1: a pretty big focus candidly on the US because that
Speaker 1: is where a lot of the growth is right now.
Speaker 1: And we have tracked in twenty twenty six about sixteen
Speaker 1: gigawatts of announced data center load supposed to come online.
Speaker 1: Now twenty twenty five, we tracked five gigawatts of data
Speaker 1: center load that actually came online. When you look at
Speaker 1: that sixteen gigawatte pipeline though for twenty twenty six, about
Speaker 1: six gigawatts is actually under construction today, and know that
Speaker 1: it takes at least twelve to eighteen months to fully
Speaker 1: construct a data center, even after you had the interconnection
Speaker 1: in the permitting. So how realistic is it really for
Speaker 1: all sixteen gi wots to come online? A three x
Speaker 1: increase really in the pipeline. When we did our own
Speaker 1: analysis building a d REST methodology for all the components
Speaker 1: you need to bring data center online, the powering, the permitting,
Speaker 1: secure and credible tenants, we've estimated that out until twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: about roughly forty percent are actually likely to come online.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of speculative announcements today. Everyone is trying
Speaker 1: to sell to the hyperscalers, and so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of paper projects, we call them, where people have said
Speaker 1: we're going to do a data center, or people have
Speaker 1: filed to go into the interconnection queue. That being said,
Speaker 1: the thing that is most important right now is speed speed, speed, speed,
Speaker 1: then cost, then sustainability when it comes to data centers,
Speaker 1: and so the gating factor isn't demand. The gating factor
Speaker 1: is power constraints, speed to power, and we're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of creative strategies right now amongst the data centers,
Speaker 1: especially in the US, to bring these things online as
Speaker 1: fast as possible, So things like bridging power literally rolling
Speaker 1: in mobile gas generators because they can't get the greater
Speaker 1: interconnection and using that as a way to kind of
Speaker 1: bridge to getting that great interconnection, or leaning on things
Speaker 1: like batteries to help speed up their place in the
Speaker 1: interconnection cues. I personally don't think all the data center
Speaker 1: demand we're seeing will actually materialize all of the load
Speaker 1: that's been announced, But at the same time, a lot
Speaker 1: of these developers, hyperscalers are getting quite creative about how
Speaker 1: do we speed to power faster than we have before.
Speaker 1: You even see Google and Amazon now getting into the
Speaker 1: power developer gate. Right before they were just signing Rex
Speaker 1: and now Google bought Intersect Power for four point seventy
Speaker 1: five billion. Amazon bought up one of Pinegate renewables projects.
Speaker 1: So that's going to be the dynamic we'll start to
Speaker 1: see over the next eighteen months.
Speaker 3: When I look, I've just have something to say before
Speaker 3: do you ask the best question? Yeah, okay, speed sustainability
Speaker 3: has been thrown in the garbage by Sultan Eposcadoes. Or
Speaker 3: are advocating for masculine energy. Masculine energy, and when you
Speaker 3: advocate for masculine energy, I'm quoting mister Zukerberg and d Organ.
Speaker 3: Aggression is good. That's what he said. So I'm gonna
Speaker 3: give them a taste of their own medicine and Meta,
Speaker 3: you're just a bunch of scoundrels. You're gonna triple your emissions,
Speaker 3: because that's what's gonna happen with their Louisiana campus. They're
Speaker 3: gonna triple their emissions. They don't want to report for it.
Speaker 3: They're gonna use whatever loopholes they can imagine. They're going
Speaker 3: to do their own accounting system. And at the same
Speaker 3: time they are lobbying to block any revision of the
Speaker 3: Greeners Gas Protocol. But that's skullduggery. Meta, you are a disgrace.
Speaker 3: You should not have an ESG department. Oh, Meta is
Speaker 3: confirming the system meticals, they don't give a rat sass.
Speaker 3: And at the end they invest one hundred eighty five billion,
Speaker 3: one hundred eighty five bion of AI, seven times the
Speaker 3: budget of the NASA. With that budget, NASA can go
Speaker 3: to the seven times okay, and they say, oh, we
Speaker 3: don't know how to track our emission on an hourly basis, scoundrels.
Speaker 3: I said it, Sorry, I had my rant. Job. Your
Speaker 3: last question came.
Speaker 5: I'm blaming you because you wanted to talk about data
Speaker 5: centers and that's what you do when you talk with
Speaker 5: data centers with Lauren's got to go around.
Speaker 3: No. I mean, you can put you as much as
Speaker 3: you want, that's your choice, but at least you need
Speaker 3: to report. That's the only thing I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Job lies, dumb lies, and carbon I think that's.
Speaker 3: Kim last question.
Speaker 5: You set up this business, and you set up this business,
Speaker 5: and I remember we had a chat. When you set
Speaker 5: the business up. You had this passion. You still have
Speaker 5: this passion. So what's this passion that's driving you? And
Speaker 5: give us a view of how you see the future
Speaker 5: that you're trying to create.
Speaker 1: When I first started the newsletter, we first started covering
Speaker 1: climate tech, my personal passion for all this always and
Speaker 1: always won't be around. How do we get to a better,
Speaker 1: more sustainable future for everyone. The thing that's driving me
Speaker 1: now despite all of the headwinds, policy challenges, geopolitical challenges,
Speaker 1: is that we need to continue, especially this climate and
Speaker 1: energy transition community, we need to continue to focus on
Speaker 1: the overall goal, which is better, faster, cheaper, cleaner. And
Speaker 1: sometimes when we focus too much on just the clean
Speaker 1: side of the equation, we lose sight of the better
Speaker 1: and cheaper and the way the world works, especially the
Speaker 1: way a lot of regions that aren't just the US
Speaker 1: and Europe, they need to think about energy holistically. And
Speaker 1: so what excites me is that there are now solutions
Speaker 1: that can tick off all four of those boxes. We
Speaker 1: have been funding solutions that can tick off more and
Speaker 1: more of those boxes that might not be ready today.
Speaker 1: Some of this like nuclear geothermal stuff might not be
Speaker 1: ready today, they could be scaling in three to five years.
Speaker 1: That is what excites me is that we actually have
Speaker 1: a path to solving some of these energy trilemma energy
Speaker 1: security challenges that we've talked about. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be easy, it's not going to be clean. There's going
Speaker 1: to be the metas of the world who are continuing
Speaker 1: to use solutions that exist today because they want to
Speaker 1: hit their AI targets. But we do have a path,
Speaker 1: and I think so much of what we've been tracking
Speaker 1: on the climate tech side of the equation has been
Speaker 1: the innovation has been the venture capital has been the
Speaker 1: early side. And not all of these solutions are going
Speaker 1: to work. Hydrogen is going through its bubble burst. Other
Speaker 1: things like battery or recycling, industrial decarbonization, carbon management are
Speaker 1: going through their bubble burst right now. But there are
Speaker 1: things that are emerging that I think will be the
Speaker 1: next solar wind dv's batteries in this current wave, and
Speaker 1: there are going to be solving problems that we haven't
Speaker 1: been able to address with our existing mature technology. So
Speaker 1: our job, our goal out siteline is not to just
Speaker 1: only track the innovation and BC side of the equation,
Speaker 1: but be pragmatic about the mature deployment of these solutions.
Speaker 1: What will work, what won't work? How will new demand
Speaker 1: drivers coming to the table influence this? And one thing
Speaker 1: me and my co founder always say is we want
Speaker 1: to be analysts, not advocates. But genuinely, I think there
Speaker 1: are pads for us to get there in the long run,
Speaker 1: even if it might happen a little slower than we
Speaker 1: all want.
Speaker 3: Well, Kim, thank you very much for all your hard
Speaker 3: work coming on the show and sharing your passion and
Speaker 3: your data. I encourage all our listeners who are not
Speaker 3: already following sideline to check on you. We're going to
Speaker 3: put some great links in the show notes and yeah,
Speaker 3: and we shure the best.
Speaker 1: Awesome, thank you, it's great joining.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And as I said, I'm much because I thank
Speaker 5: you very much. Again, it was superb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know this is a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: So John, now I'm still laughing, my friend, because I'm
Speaker 5: laughing at your runt, you know, but I agree with
Speaker 5: your rant, so I'm not going to disagree with it.
Speaker 3: I agree with your round. I agree. Look, thanks to
Speaker 3: Kim's statistics are already one of my three predictions from
Speaker 3: the beginning of the year, which is that half of
Speaker 3: the data centers will never be built. Look, I say things,
Speaker 3: but she's tracking them one by one. So that's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3: And we've seen recently the meltdown of Fermi that was
Speaker 3: a pump end up of an epic perspective. They managed
Speaker 3: to burn through one billion the guide they left to
Speaker 3: his one hundred million each. I mean, that is really
Speaker 3: a disgraceful data center industry, straight.
Speaker 5: For the public markets as well around.
Speaker 6: But you know, I will say, I keep making a
Speaker 6: point where we are definitely in a revolution and revolution
Speaker 6: lots of money to be made, and there was also
Speaker 6: lots of money that's going to be lost. And that's
Speaker 6: particularly the case I think we're saying in the data
Speaker 6: center of the AI space, you need to be careful.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And again we can see half of the
Speaker 3: data centers that never going to be built, or we
Speaker 3: can see the success of half of the at the
Speaker 3: centers which are being built despite the fact that people
Speaker 3: are missing transformers, people are missing to our byes, and
Speaker 3: still they manage to build them. That's where there's a
Speaker 3: lot of rethinking of how grits should be managed and
Speaker 3: all the reinvention around thers and VPPs and it's a
Speaker 3: fantastic moment for those technologies.
Speaker 5: I am totally rich I've heard and I particularly I
Speaker 5: think what we need to do is keep an eye
Speaker 5: on what's going on Texas, just because it's at the
Speaker 5: forefront of obviously fossil fuels in terms of gas massives
Speaker 5: are great soul and wind resources and a building data
Speaker 5: centers like nobody else.
Speaker 3: Of the world. Kimi is looking for a new name
Speaker 3: for climate tech. What I can tell you it exists already.
Speaker 3: It was gone by MBA. It's Eliqo Tech.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you're probably right on that ron. The
Speaker 5: tiny hesitation I had in that was the fact that
Speaker 5: it isn't just about electrification. There was also a clean
Speaker 5: element of stuff. And our part of it was thinking,
Speaker 5: you go back to clean tech, but you can you
Speaker 5: can never go back.
Speaker 3: We can come back, so clean electro tech and all
Speaker 3: the rest, all the green molecules. It's called money bonfire
Speaker 3: tech because the only question is who's going to lose
Speaker 3: money with green modicules. Is it going to be governments?
Speaker 3: It's going to be his shoulders is because the economics
Speaker 3: don't work, so somebody has to pay. Was electro tech
Speaker 3: pays for itself?
Speaker 5: That's true, well said. Okay, my friend, have a great
Speaker 5: week and look forward to chat next week.
Speaker 3: Absolutely you will. Cheers.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to
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Speaker 1: the platform of your choice.