Breakthrough Energy

As cohort 2 wraps up our Breakthrough Energy fellowship, here are some stories describing the impact it has had on our innovators, many of whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with, like Caleb Boyd Kevin Bush Suzanne Zamany Andersen Mattia Saccoccio Ted McKlveen

🇳🇴 Europe’s premier energy conference ONS teams up with Munich Security Conference to ‘Imagine the Geopolitics of a Net Zero World’ What a way to kick off my participation at ONS in Stavanger, Norway. At a joint ONS-Munich Security Conference high-level roundtable, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on ‘A Critical Matter: Addressing Dependencies in Clean Tech Supply Chains.’ I started off by citing an IEA report on ‘The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transition’. Stunningly, the analysis shows that the production of many energy transition minerals is more (!) concentrated than that of oil or natural gas. For example, for lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements, the world’s top three producing nations control well over ¾ of global output. In 2019, the Democratic Republic of Congo and China were respectively responsible for some 70% and 60% of global production of cobalt and rare earth elements. The level of concentration is even higher for the processing of critical minerals, where China enjoys great dominance, processing 50-70% of lithium and cobalt and nearly 90% of rare earth minerals. NB: excellent to have a chance to see IEA’s Fatih Birol here at ONS to personally thank him for these superb insights and to discuss his organisation’s forthcoming conference on energy security, organized in collaboration with the UK government. As the theme of this ONS is ‘imagine’, I explained that even as the EU ‘imagined’ the European Battery Alliance, significant stumbling blocks remained, including the Chinese quasi export control of graphite to Sweden (graphite is critical for the production of lithium-ion cells in batteries, and Sweden is home to Europe's flagship battery company, Northvolt). That is why I proposed - in addition to *i*magine - two additional i’s are needed when it comes to public policy: ‘*i*mplementation and *i*mpact. It's in the latter two where Europe tends to have serious deficiencies. In terms of generating impact and ensuring a more resilient supply chain, several excellent proposals were made, including: ➡️ Certification ➡️ Standardization ➡️ Diversification ➡️ Substitution ➡️ Transparency ➡️ Recycling (on industrial scale) ➡️ Pricing in the cost of dependencies (and potential weaponization of critical minerals) ➡️ Working to increase acceptance of home-grown industrial projects, especially in mining Huge thanks to my stellar panelists Leila Benali, PhD., Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development of the Kingdom of Morocco; Kadri Simson, European Commissioner for Energy and Anders Opedal, President and CEO of Equinor. #ONS24 #ONS2024 Photo credit: Erik Krafft

Channel News Asia recently interviewed Bill Gates and Ashley Grosh at #BESummit2024, where they discuss the pivotal role Singapore can play as a global incubator for deep tech innovation. Gates shares his insights on how Singapore's unique position and forward-thinking policies make it an ideal hub for transformative technologies. Meanwhile, Grosh delves into the practical steps needed to harness this potential and drive impactful change. Watch here: https://nt-z.ro/3XorQdn

Some of the best ideas start in a garage (or a dorm room). With Breakthrough Energy Discovery, these ideas have the opportunity to be nurtured into viable technologies that could bring us one step closer to solving the climate crisis. 

I recently had the privilege to attend the the Breakthrough Energy Summit bringing together a network of top-level business leaders, innovators, investors and global climate leaders dedicated to accelerating the green transition and achieving net zero by 2050. Key to achieving this is unlocking capital that drives innovation, tech development and deployment. Scope 3 emissions are a major contributor to climate change where the apparel industry share contributes to an estimate of between 2 – 8% of annual global GHG emissions. I highly recommend reading Apparel Impact Institute's latest report: https://lnkd.in/gqwrvk7v Apparel Impact Institute's mission is to reduce CO2e by aligning industry players and stakeholders around projects and investments to decarbonize the apparel supply chain. The technology and innovative solutions in large already exist, but the capital and necessary investment does not. By coordinating capital investment across philanthropy, industry, and debt & equity, we aim to enable the reduction of 100M tons of carbon by 2030! Apparel Impact Institute will be in NY #climateweeknyc 22-27 Sept so don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more about our work and on how you can support our mission! A huge thank you to Peter T., Julie Barger and Rodi Guidero with #BillGates and BE team for a fantastic summit. Attending the Breakthrough Energy was an incredible opportunity to meet likeminded innovators, investor and policy makers that believe change is possible!  I look forward to taking conversations I had forward, into new partnerships, commitments and driving a net zero supply chain.  #greensupplychain #netzero #sustainablefinancing Guidewheel Circ®GALY and many more..

Our co-founder and CEO, Sarah Lamaison, PhD, had the honor of delivering a talk at the Closing Plenary of the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London a few months back. In this talk, Sarah dives deep into the often overlooked but crucial ethylene industry—a $200B market that plays a vital role in everything from plastics to consumer goods and automotive parts. Currently, ethylene is built by breaking down fossil fuels, contributing over 800M tons of CO2 annually. Dioxycle is changing the game by using renewable electricity to build ethylene from recycled carbon emissions, potentially abating over 1% of global emissions. Sarah also shares her journey of building Dioxycle alongside David Wakerley, PhD, and how the support from Breakthrough Energy has been instrumental in their progress. We were honored to have Sarah share our vision on such a prestigious stage. Watch her video below! #BESummit #ClimateTech #Sustainability #Innovation #WomenInChemical #WomenInClimate

Australia's push towards renewable hydrogen is facing a reality check, as detailed in a recent Cipher News article by Bill Spindle. The article explores how Andrew Forrest, an advocate for green hydrogen, has scaled back Fortescue's aggressive hydrogen production goals. This shift underscores the challenges of producing clean hydrogen at scale, even in countries like Australia with abundant renewable resources. Read more in Cipher: https://nt-z.ro/4fWfZu2

Scaling a nascent industry like Direct Air Capture feels like solving a big puzzle. You need to make all the pieces (customers, investors, suppliers, etc.) fit together to achieve the ambitious growth required for net zero.    As we‘re looking to deploy Project Dawn with a capacity of 20,000 tCO2/year in 2026, we really see the need for true pioneers as partners.    That’s why we were excited to welcome the Breakthrough Energy team around Ashley and Francisco to our facilities in Ismaning this week.    The Breakthrough Catalyst program (link in comments) is one of the few initiatives taking the lead on FOAK financing. They support the most promising technologies in this crucial step of scaling up from pilot stage to commercial readiness.    We gave them a tour around our lab and showcased our Hydrolyzer stacks and absorber modules – the heart and lung of our DAC system. And we talked about the challenges and opportunities of this next step in scaling our technology to an impactful scale.    Thanks to UnternehmerTUM Philipp Gerbert, Lars Eiermann, for making this valuable exchange possible.   Phlair. Enabling a carbon-negative future.

Great way to kick off la rentrée: Strategizing about a clean technology that’s ready for prime time at COP29 How wonderful that my first meeting after the summer holiday was with Bruce Douglas, CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance and one of the key architects of the ‘Tripling Renewables’ target launched at #cop28. Luckily, it is now dawning on Leaders across the globe that such a target needs to be complemented with sizeable increases in #energystorage. This is not a ‘nice to have’ but one of the foundational pillars for achieving a fully renewable power grid, and therefore a successful #energytransition. That is why Bruce and many others are now working towards a global energy storage target to be launched at #cop29. What’s genuinely puzzling is that the EU lacks a dedicated #storage strategy - this despite making renewables the backbone of its energy transition. Has it not occurred to anyone that the wind may not always blow and the sun not always shine? Knowing that for many observers ‘storage tech’ is a broad, indiscriminate bucket, it’s important to realize that there are different approaches, all of which deserve policy attention, funding, demand and offtake. Using some of the Breakthrough Energy Ventures portfolio companies as examples, here is an overview:   ➡️ Mechanical Storage: Quidnet Energy is advancing geomechanical pumped storage, which stores energy in underground reservoirs, offering scalable solutions for diverse locations.   ➡️ Electrochemical Storage: Form Energy is pioneering iron-air batteries that provide 100 hours of electricity, enhancing grid resilience. ESS, Inc. is developing flow batteries with long-duration capabilities, while Our Next Energy (ONE) is pushing the boundaries of lithium-ion batteries, vital for short-term, rapid-response storage.   ➡️ Thermal Storage: Malta Inc. is revolutionizing energy storage with molten salt technology, converting heat back into electricity on demand. Rondo Energy, Antora Energy, and Fourth Power are leading with high-temperature heat storage solutions for industrial use.   ➡️ Chemical Storage: Chemical storage technologies convert surplus renewable energy into chemical forms, like hydrogen or synthetic gas, for long-term storage and flexible use, playing a critical role in balancing the energy grid. At COP 28, the EU was instrumental in driving the ‘tripling renewables target’. For COP29, there’s talk of calling for a six-fold (!) increase in global storage capacity. Given that these technologies are more nascent and less widely deployed, there's a lot of catching up to do. Even in the absence of a storage strategy of its own, the EU should embrace this target wholeheartedly. The benefits will extend beyond #climate because new, sizeable #markets will be built, #resilience be strengthened and #innovation be powered. Sounds to me like the perfect hallmark for the forthcoming Clean Industrial Deal? 🤔

Climate tech is often called “Tough Tech” — and it’s tough for a reason. Putting cement and steel in the ground, watching market cycles move against you, while elbowing your way into entrenched industries, is just tough!! What gives you conviction to go on this 10-15 year journey? 🤔 A thoughtfully built techno-economic model is a relatively inexpensive crystal ball to help understand (and guide!) your economic viability. And as an early-stage team, you need to own these models and build your own intuition -- that was one of my biggest takeaways from my work with Breakthrough Energy Fellows teams. Tomorrow at 2:30pm ET, I’m joining Cameron Halliday, Emre Gençer, and Alex Prather to share our perspectives on TEA / LCA and more, but the real work (and the real insight) comes when you dive in yourself! 📅 Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/ekPyhHAV Thanks Newlab for pulling this crew together! 🙌🏼