Sean Voigt’s Post

Love this post. We’re past politics on tariffs. It’s time to move forward, not look back. The solar supply price decreases we’ve enjoyed in the past *will* be curtailed by tariffs and other protective measures going forward. No matter who is in office, solar supply chains will be subject to much more scrutiny and that will mean costs decrease more slowly. One of the reasons for this shift is that we’ve succeeded! Renewable and storage is no longer *just* a mission critical piece of our climate change mission. It’s now *also* an absolutely essential part of national security, and a foundational component of literally every other industry. But multiple priorities inherently equals tradeoffs. We’re shifting away from a single global, unregulated, short-term efficient supply chain to a more robust, and diverse, but less price efficient supply chain. The good news is as an industry we can handle it. We’re past the tipping point and still improving our deployment capacity quickly. While the move to supply chain onshoring and friendshoring is going to be an uncomfortable transition, there are good things for the industry at the end of the rainbow. More stability in supply. More innovation in tech. Greater distribution of the benefits of renewable careers. For those of us who are in a position to influence these discussions, its time to move beyond advocating for a return to the past. We’re going to be one of the largest industries in the world for a very long time. It’s time to start thinking like one. How can we build a new type of industry: -An industry that maintains the innovative spirit of our past, but let’s go of the gold rush mentality that’s caused so much value destruction and individual hardship. -An industry that goes beyond commodification, to enable resilience and security and independence. -An industry that produces not just power but abundance. It’s time to grow up, and we’re ready.

https://lnkd.in/e7E5Vg4P "Semiconductors are the basic building blocks of microchips. These technological marvels are in everything from lightbulbs and toothbrushes to cars, trains and planes, not to mention the vast array of electronics that have become integral to many people’s daily lives. The 21st century chip manufacturing industry has been described as “at least as significant geopolitically as oil was in the 20th.” But semiconductor manufacturing requires vast quantities of water to keep machinery cool and wafer sheets free of debris, and the unfolding climate emergency puts the industry at risk. Despite the industry’s dependence on water, little attention has been paid to how changing environmental conditions may impact it. Reporting by journalists and think tanks tend to overlook climate as a risk factor for the future of the industry. Yet, globally and regionally there are signs of trouble. Taiwan, for example, produces about 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors and has been experiencing a significant drought since 2021."

What is Sovereign Capability? Our resources are sovereign. On the land, under the earth, above our heads. Here, the rights of land owners interface with capitalism and regulation to anneal something approximating to the highest and best use of land (hopefully, long term and sustainable). Extraction, Development, Sequestration, Renewal. Power, Water, Food, Carbon.  Intergenerational responsibility. AI and Cyber and other critical technologies are needed to protect sovereign interests; more so now than ever in the deglobalising world; in the sphere of advanced warfare; with the imperative of asymmetric capability. AUKUS Pillar 2. Bring on a genuine regional player in Japan (they live here). Bring on Made in Australia. Our research institutions and VC funds can be sovereign - when they incubate economic complexity and better mousetraps for new jobs. Bring on more Canva success. Reinvest please ! Public and Private capability (money, enabling regulation, public sector programs) all work in these areas. See my little rough schematic. And sometimes, the agile ones work in the overlap.  A good example is Quinbrook’s work up and down the energy resilience and usage “stack”. They are doing great things. But Patria Emptor.  Sovereign Beware ! The world is more plural than we fancy it. And shifting. The boom in generative AI will need a lot more electricity, transformers, generators and a myriad of other electrical and cooling widgets. And new ways to compute (like hybridisation with Quantum). And new ways to chip. Datacenter power capacity growth will accelerate from a 12-15% CAGR to a 25% CAGR over the next few years. Global Datacenter Critical IT power demand will surge from 49 Gigawatts (GW) in 2023 to 96 GW by 2026, of which AI will consume ~40 GW (source:semianalysis.com) The AI and High Performance Compute buildout represents significant risks and opportunities for sovereign nations. There is a real power crunch coming soon. Brute force of 9nm foreign chips next to a nuclear plant is one way, but… What I am seeing - and comments welcome - is that globally the Sovereign Wealth Funds are working in the true intersection.  #sovereign #manufacturing #quantum #datacentre #sovereign capability #advancedmanufacturing #AI #renewables #energyresilience

#BigTech and #NetZero – Tech leaders’ ambitious net zero targets (#Microsoft promised to be carbon negative by 2030, #Google and #Meta committed to net zero by 2030, and #Amazon by 2040) are under threat with the boom in power hungry LLMs and AI projects. Not only that, it also puts national governments’ targets at risk. #UK’s energy infrastructure, for example, aims to decarbonise power supply by 2030, but with electricity demand from the AI boom estimated to almost double (to >800TWh) by 2026, there is a definite risk of falling short. This is driving the revival in nuclear power. Tech companies are exploring #strategic #partnerships in the form of Power Purchase Agreements, while also bringing in outside investors. For example, Microsoft has struck a deal with Constellation Energy to revive the nuclear reactor in Three Mile Island (US) to gain access to carbon-free power. It also partnered with BlackRock to launch an infrastructure fund devoted to AI. Others are following suit and more of such innovative partnerships and financial strategies, supported by the policy framework, will be needed to stay on track. Benori offers bespoke research solutions to keep abreast of latest developments, investment strategies and competitor activities across all sectors. Benori’s #Sustainability solution supports clients in their #decarbonization journeys with an in-depth understanding of industry #bestpractices, #supplychain initiatives and benchmarking goals and activities against industry leaders and #competitors. Reach out to us at [email protected] or [email protected] to know more about our solutions. https://lnkd.in/gq3Re6u4

New climate tech deals & funding news... Nozomi Networks pulled in $100 million from a Series E Newly secured funds, obtained from Schneider Electric, Mitsubishi Electric, and Samsung Electronics, among others, will be allocated toward global go-to-market support and product development initiatives Amazon buys nuclear data centre campus for $650 million Talen will supply direct-connect, carbon-free power to the AWS data centre campus from Susquehanna, the nuclear power plant it owns next to the facility. AWS plan to develop up to 960 MW data center campus, with minimum contractual power commitments to Talen that ramp up in 120 MW increments over several years. Elaia and partners double down with new $60M deep tech The deep tech fund will focus on computing, industry and life science. Pure AI will fall under the first pillar, as will quantum and cybersecurity, but DTS3’s capital could also be invested in AI-driven chemistry and biology, for instance. “Future of industry” is even broader, including energy, climate tech and new materials. Bezos Earth Fund puts $60M into alternative protein research centers Jeff Bezos-backed philanthropic organization will put money into establishing university research centers that will work on improving the taste, texture and nutrition of meat alternatives. The Bezos Centers for Sustainable Protein, to be set up over the next five years, will also focus on bringing down manufacturing costs and finding new ingredients. What other exciting news are you seeing in climate tech? Links in comments

The A.I. climate dilemma NYTimes 10/22/24 Cleaning up the technology industry was supposed to be easy. Powering server racks and personal computers isn’t nearly as energy-intensive as making concrete or steel. So until recently, eliminating planet-warming emissions in the tech sector was expected to be relatively straightforward. Tech companies positioned themselves as climate leaders and boasted of their eco-friendly bona fides. But the sudden emergence of artificial intelligence is casting doubt on those assumptions. Big tech companies’ bets on a new generation of power-hungry computer chips and data centers are forcing them to significantly increase their power usage. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are investing in nuclear power. Energy demand, including from Google and Meta, is helping to keep a coal plant in Nebraska running. Natural gas providers are hatching ambitious expansion plans as they prepare to meet the new demand from the tech sector. At the center of the A.I. boom is Nvidia, the chip-making juggernaut that has, over the past few years, become one of the most valuable companies in the world. Nvidia’s chips are incredibly power-hungry. As the company rolls out new products, analysts have taken to measuring the amount of electricity needed to power them in terms of cities, or even countries. There are already more than 5,000 data centers in the U.S., and the industry is expected to grow nearly 10 percent annually. Goldman Sachs estimates that A.I. will drive a 160 percent increase in data center power demand by 2030. https://lnkd.in/d7GAecXt

GLOBAL WARMING IS A SOLVED PROBLEM. Let that sink in..... “That is like turning sunlight into usable energy via different fossil fuel mechanisms and motors. This is turning sunlight into compute, literally. And now that sunlight can come in the form of actual sunlight, it could come in the form of artificial sunlight, that's nuclear. It can come in the form of storage sunlight, that's fossil fuels, but this is the efficiency at which you turn sunlight into compute, and the dollars you pay for that ratio. Yes, and by the way, it is just interesting. It's one reason I was never that excited about wind, because turbines were really efficient. Whereas you could look 10 or 15 years ago, solar was terribly inefficient. I actually think it's awesome. It's a little sad to me, like all these kids are really worried about global warming and you have all these things about 20 year olds, I don't want to bring children into a warming world. Global warming is a big problem. It is a solved problem. It is solved because photovoltaic cell efficiency is compounding just under 10% a year, and battery efficiency is compounding 200 bps less than that. And if you compound that out, over the long term, not even long term, the world is going to run on sunlight directly.   Fossil fuels are just going to go away. It's because of economics, and it's because sunlight storage is going to be cheaper than every other way of providing power. It's just not going to be a problem for the next generation now. Maybe we had some tipping point and it's irreversible, and this and that.   Emissions are going to collapse in my lifetime, literally collapse. Obviously like pre industrial-age humans who were actually massive polluters, because the pollution per unit of firewood is really high and you needed fires, otherwise, you could get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. Now there weren't that many of them. It is possible that we're going to be back to Neolithic levels of emissions in my lifetime, assuming I can live a little bit longer because of AI. So that's an awesome and encouraging thought. That's good. And I just wish somebody was shouting out from the rooftops.” Gavin Baker is the Managing Partner and CIO of Atreides Management.  Gavin has worked at both Nvidia and Tesla. This quote from Podcast with Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s “Invest Like The Best” released August 27, 2024 https://lnkd.in/gXqhMG4C

When the situation calls for a new system, the new system will eventually emerge. We can support it—and it will be painful—or we can choose not to support it, and the consequences will be worse. Extensive progress means copying something that already works somewhere and making it work everywhere. Intensive progress is harder because it involves doing something that nobody else has ever done. During the Cold War, the strength of the Western alliance did not derive from capacity but from the more innovative utilization of sophisticated technology coupled with the dynamism of a well-functioning market economy. Looking back, it's clear how the economy transformed from being intensively focused to becoming extensively oriented. Globalization became the ultimate platform for taking successful models from one region and implementing them worldwide. In the early Cold War era, technological advancements exemplified this shift. The 1950s saw breakthroughs in nuclear technology and space exploration. The 1960s brought the Apollo moon landings and early computers. The 1970s introduced personal computing and microprocessors, while the 1980s saw the rise of personal computers, the internet, and the Space Shuttle program. These innovations exemplify intensive technological developments that later went global. Today, a significant challenge with extensive progress is that copying successful models leads to diminishing returns. This creates the need for bigger and more dominant companies. Something which again, slows down development and innovation. These risk-averse companies, which seek to minimize competition by advocating for low interest rates, large subsidies, and cheap credit, are the ones doing the lobbying and are represented by our political leaders. The challenge ahead is that the level of global debt, inflation, and turmoil will cause interest rates to rise, forcing large companies to take an even more short-term perspective on their investments. This is the opposite of what we need going forward - Unfortunatly.

While Trump’s victory may signal a potential pause or shift in the approach to climate goals, the conversation around clean energy is likely to pivot. Rather than focusing strictly on achieving net-zero emissions, clean energies will turn into a critical component of national security, particularly in terms of energy independence and the race of AI. With AI innovation accelerating and China already leading in clean energy, the U.S. will need to ramp up its own power generation to stay competitive in AI space. Meeting AI’s massive energy demands will likely require a diverse energy mix. In this context, traditional fossil fuels could be prioritized alongside clean energy to ensure grid stability and capacity. The appearance of Elon Musk in Trump’s campaign is a big contradiction for traditional energy, however is clear that clean energy technologies will have a big supporter and influence in achieving US energy security, but may face heavier competition from traditional energy sources. Trump will need to balance the mix of energy sources to keep up with China’s lead in the energy and AI space.

News: Google turns to nuclear to power AI data centres Link: https://lnkd.in/ggUcFmDN October 2021: At YouTube’s Dear Earth event, Google CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized the urgency of addressing climate change, sharing personal experiences that highlight its impact, such as water scarcity and devastating floods. Despite these challenges, he expressed optimism, citing humanity's capacity for innovation and the increasing focus on climate solutions across various sectors. Pichai highlighted Google’s commitment to achieving 24/7 carbon-free energy for its data centers by 2030, showcasing advancements in sustainable building design at their California headquarters. He encouraged individuals to make small, sustainable choices in their daily lives, stressing that collective action can lead to significant change. Pichai concluded by urging listeners to remain impatient and driven in their pursuit of progress for the planet. https://lnkd.in/gFsBesHm November 2023: Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, compared artificial intelligence (AI) to climate change during his remarks at the APEC CEO Summit. He emphasized that AI, like climate change, is a global issue that will proliferate worldwide, and that there is a shared responsibility among countries to create regulatory frameworks. Pichai noted that if AI were to go wrong in one country, it could have repercussions for other countries, making local regulation challenging. He stated, "In some ways, it's like climate change and the planet... we all share a planet," highlighting the need for global cooperation in building safety measures for AI https://lnkd.in/gD3-FAGG Sometimes, looking at history to get a context of current affairs. #aigovernance #aiethics #responsibleAI