Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

Source · Essays

Steel For Fuel

Andy Lubershane's newsletter. The name means displacing fossil fuel with the steel in turbines, panels and reactors. Essays of very uneven length, roughly monthly.

Written by
Andy Lubershane
Published by
Substack
Notes
56
Span
Mar 2023 – Sep 2026
Reading
~78,000 words

2026 9

  1. 21 Sep 2026 For AI, energy is nothing, and energy is everything (reprise) by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How much could an AI data center pay for electricity before the computing stops being worth doing?
  2. 5 Aug 2026 On data centers and energy “affordability” by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Are data centers the reason American electricity bills are going up, and is the country facing an affordability crisis?
  3. 6 Jul 2026 Data centers need the grid — so we have to make the grid better by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If the grid cannot connect AI data centers fast enough, is building a power plant next to each one the way out?
  4. 18 Jun 2026 The next industrial revolution and the “art of life itself” by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If AI is the next industrial revolution, will it be one that makes existing work more efficient, or one that gives us capabilities we did not have?
  5. 1 Jun 2026 Riding the Electric Supercycle by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If every input to the power system is getting more expensive at once, why is that the setup for a durable investment opportunity rather than a squeeze?
  6. 21 Apr 2026 Be greedy (for electrons) when others are fearful by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners With American electric vehicle sales falling sharply after the federal tax credits expired, is this the moment to retreat from the electric vehicle supply chain and from charging?
  7. 8 Apr 2026 Duration is all you need by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Once short-duration batteries have covered the daily peak, what kind of storage does the power system still need?
  8. 13 Mar 2026 The robots are coming by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why should anyone building energy infrastructure care about robotics, and how far has the field actually got?
  9. 3 Mar 2026 The Return of the Energy Transition by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What would it take to get the energy transition moving again after a bad year for it?

2025 16

  1. 11 Dec 2025 Fusion, and other fusion-level bets: Part III by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If we stop burning hydrocarbons, what stores and moves energy in their place, and which bets on that are big enough to matter for the next century?
  2. 24 Oct 2025 Fusion, and other fusion-level bets: Part II by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Besides nuclear, which energy technologies could remake civilization’s energy supply the way fusion is supposed to, and what would have to go right for each?
  3. 8 Oct 2025 Fusion, and other fusion-level bets: Part I by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is fusion actually worth a civilizational bet, given that fission already delivers most of what fusion promises?
  4. 11 Sep 2025 Finally, the right time for Distributed Energy Resources by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why did distributed energy resources underdeliver for a decade, and what has changed enough to make this time different?
  5. 16 Jul 2025 On linemen, robots, hands, and brains by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Can robots relieve the shortage of skilled manual workers, such as utility linemen, that is starting to constrain the energy transition?
  6. 7 Jul 2025 The EV revolution will NOT be subsidized by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If the United States withdraws its electric-vehicle subsidies and mandates, does the transition to electric cars stall?
  7. 30 Jun 2025 Full Steam Ahead by Addison Stark, CEO and co-founder, AtmosZero Why is industrial steam still raised by burning fossil fuel, and what would it take to change that?
  8. 16 Jun 2025 Why does nobody know how much energy AI will consume? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why do the analysts watching data centers disagree so widely about how much electricity those data centers will consume, even a few years out?
  9. 28 May 2025 An Ode to “Physical AI” by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Which branch of artificial intelligence will actually move the physical things that energy and climate depend on?
  10. 28 Apr 2025 So you want to revolutionize the energy system? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why has the energy sector proved so resistant to revolutionary companies, and what separates the ones that work?
  11. 17 Apr 2025 Steel for Fuel, Tariffs for Steel by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How much do American steel tariffs burden the energy transition?
  12. 7 Apr 2025 The price of power grids by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What is happening to the price of the physical equipment power grids are built from, and what follows if it stays high?
  13. 27 Feb 2025 Autonomy is real now by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Have autonomous vehicles actually arrived, and what would that mean for the energy system?
  14. 9 Feb 2025 A tale of two energy superpowers by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Will geopolitics, and specifically conflict between the United States and China, derail the energy transition?
  15. 31 Jan 2025 Is Sodium the new Lithium (ion)? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is sodium-ion about to displace lithium-ion?
  16. 10 Jan 2025 Is the future of low-carbon industry off grid? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If off-grid solar can already power a data center at grid prices, does the same logic put the future of low-carbon manufacturing off the grid too?

2024 19

  1. 16 Dec 2024 It’s time to build! (light water reactors) by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Should the United States expand nuclear power by repeating the large reactor design it has just finished, or by building small modular reactors?
  2. 9 Dec 2024 The geopolitics of electrification by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What does China’s rise to top passenger-vehicle exporter mean for energy geopolitics?
  3. 20 Nov 2024 For AI, energy is nothing, and energy is everything by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If energy is only a small part of what computing costs, why is the AI industry suddenly worried about power, and what should the power sector do with that?
  4. 4 Nov 2024 Why clean energy policy is probably more robust than you think by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is US clean energy policy as easy to unwind as an election result suggests?
  5. 29 Oct 2024 The US is a natural gas superpower by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What does American natural gas at this scale buy, abroad and at home?
  6. 24 Oct 2024 Some fun robot math by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How do humanoid robots compare with the people they would replace, on energy and on cost?
  7. 4 Oct 2024 From SaaS to Robots by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners If the software playbook that defined the last fifteen years no longer works, where should climate tech look for its software opportunities?
  8. 3 Oct 2024 The Age of FFOAK and The Better Mousetrap Fallacy by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Now that climate tech has plenty of promising technologies, is inventing more of them still the best use of capital?
  9. 2 Oct 2024 The end of the beginning for “climate tech” by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is the funding downturn in climate tech the beginning of the end for the sector?
  10. 24 Sep 2024 A chicken in every pot, a battery in every garage? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is a battery becoming standard equipment on a home solar system?
  11. 4 Sep 2024 Where have all the transmission lines gone? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners With new US transmission stalled, how much can technology make up the difference?
  12. 30 Aug 2024 HVAC: the next frontier by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Where does the next big block of building energy efficiency come from, as the stock of light bulbs left to swap out for LEDs begins to dwindle?
  13. 19 Aug 2024 Direct Air Capture and (machine) learning curves by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What does Climeworks’ first real-world direct air capture plant missing its design targets tell us about the technology?
  14. 7 Aug 2024 Batteries all the way down by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What does a Chinese battery cell price this low mean for everyone else?
  15. 1 Aug 2024 Locals Against Renewables by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How much do local restrictions matter, against everything else slowing renewables down?
  16. 26 Jul 2024 AI versus computing efficiency by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is computing hardware getting efficient fast enough to offset how fast AI is adding electricity demand?
  17. 12 Jul 2024 Will CCS make a lot of these other questions moot? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Can we deal with carbon dioxide by capturing it and burying it, rather than by replacing the fossil fuel that produces it, and so make the energy transition’s other big questions irrelevant?
  18. 3 Apr 2024 How will we move the big, heavy things? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How will we decarbonize the big, heavy things: trucks, planes, ships and trains?
  19. 27 Feb 2024 The electricity gauntlet by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners What happens to the electric power system when demand growth returns at the same moment that firm capacity becomes harder to add?

2023 12

  1. 21 Dec 2023 What’s the best use for our ‘waste’ biomass? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Of all the things that could be done with the biomass agriculture, forestry and food systems throw away, which is the best?
  2. 23 Oct 2023 Adolescence for renewables, retirement for oil by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Why did renewable power prices reverse after a decade of falling, and is the reversal temporary?
  3. 1 Oct 2023 What will we do with all the clean hydrogen? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Governments have committed enormous sums to producing clean hydrogen. Who is going to consume it, and for what?
  4. 23 Aug 2023 How will we keep warm in the winter? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How do we keep buildings warm in winter without burning fossil fuel?
  5. 6 Jul 2023 Some “complete bullshit” about AI and energy by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Would pursuing human-level AI break the energy system, and does the energy industry actually need models that big?
  6. 6 Jul 2023 Is natural gas a “bridge fuel”? A dead end? Or something else? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Is natural gas a bridge fuel, a dead end, or something else?
  7. 27 Jun 2023 Can wind turbines self-replicate? (And how will we make beer?) by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Can the electricity that wind turbines and solar panels produce be used to make the steel, cement and industrial heat that building more of them requires?
  8. 30 May 2023 A Tale of Two Nanettes by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners How much time does decarbonization actually have, measured on the scale of a human life, and what does that clock rule in or out?
  9. 8 May 2023 Four ways to store sunlight by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners As wind and solar grow, what replaces the buffer that stockpiles of fossil fuel have always provided, and what would a candidate have to cost to earn the job?
  10. 25 Apr 2023 Will the EV supply chain hold? by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Will the mineral and manufacturing supply chain behind electric vehicles keep up with the demand the energy transition places on it?
  11. 31 Mar 2023 When will we get serious about nuclear? (or something ‘nuclear-esque’?) by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners When will the world get serious about building nuclear power, and does the resource that fills that gap have to be nuclear?
  12. 31 Mar 2023 The ten biggest questions in energy & climate tech, Question 1 by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners Will the United States clear the path for a lot more electric transmission?