Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

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Batteries

32 notes · Catalyst 18 · Critical Capital 1 · Steel For Fuel 13

  1. Critical Capital · 15 Sep 2026 What it costs to make power cheap with Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO, Base Power If you treat home electricity as a commodity rather than a premium product, what actually sets its price, and what does a company have to do to drive that price down?
  2. Catalyst · 30 Jul 2026 Why C&I storage is finally taking off with Tim Hade, senior vice president, Voltus; previously co-founder and CEO, Brightfield Infrastructure Commercial and industrial storage, meaning batteries installed at a business’s own site, has never gone anywhere. Is that actually changing, and why would this time be different?
  3. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  4. Catalyst · 29 Jan 2026 The rise of permissionless DERs with James McGinniss, co-founder and CEO, David Energy What are “permissionless” distributed energy resources, and can batteries small enough to plug into a wall outlet ever add up to enough capacity to matter?
  5. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  6. Catalyst · 9 Oct 2025 How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B with Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO, Base Power Base Power just raised a billion dollars to put large batteries on houses and sell the electricity. Can a fleet of residential batteries really land a megawatt on the grid more cheaply than a utility-scale project?
  7. Catalyst · 18 Sep 2025 Is now the time for DERs to scale? with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Distributed energy resources were hyped a decade ago and mostly did not happen. Is this time actually different?
  8. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  9. Catalyst · 14 Aug 2025 The case for sodium-ion with Landon Mossburg, founder and CEO, Peak Energy Sodium-ion cells still cost more per kilowatt-hour than the lithium chemistry that dominates grid storage. So what is the bullish case for building grid batteries out of them?
  10. Catalyst · 24 Jul 2025 Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage with Colin Campbell, chief technology officer, Redwood Materials When is it better to put a worn-out electric vehicle battery back on the grid than to shred it for the materials inside it?
  11. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  12. Catalyst · 26 Jun 2025 GM’s big new battery tech push with Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery, propulsion and sustainability, General Motors General Motors says a manganese-rich cathode chemistry it calls LMR will give it close to high-nickel driving range at lithium iron phosphate cost. What is it, and why should anyone treat this announcement differently from every other battery announcement?
  13. Catalyst · 13 Mar 2025 An ode to electrochemistry with Yet-Ming Chiang, professor of materials science and engineering, MIT, and co-founder of Form Energy, Sublime Systems and other electrochemistry companies What is electrochemistry actually good at, and how do you tell which industrial problems are worth pointing it at?
  14. Catalyst · 20 Feb 2025 The promise and perils of sodium-ion batteries with Adrian Yao, founder of the STEER battery research program at Stanford; board member and former co-founder and chief technology officer of the lithium-ion manufacturer EnPower What would it actually take for sodium-ion batteries to beat lithium-ion on cost?
  15. Steel For Fuel · 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. Catalyst · 6 Jan 2025 Lithium’s wild ride with Ernest Scheyder, senior correspondent, Reuters, and author of The War Below Lithium prices rose steeply and then crashed. What actually caused each half of that, and what decides where the market goes next?
  17. Catalyst · 12 Dec 2024 What happened at Northvolt? with Sam Jaffe, principal, 1019 Technologies Northvolt raised more money than almost any private company in Europe to become its homegrown answer to the Asian battery giants, then filed for bankruptcy. What actually went wrong, and what is the right lesson to draw?
  18. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  19. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  20. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  21. Catalyst · 10 Oct 2024 Unpacking China’s cheap battery costs with James Frith, principal, Volta Energy Technologies How much cheaper is it really to manufacture battery cells in China than in the West, and what actually explains the gap?
  22. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  23. Catalyst · 19 Sep 2024 Can AI revolutionize materials discovery? with Ekin Dogus Cubuk, research scientist working on materials discovery, Google DeepMind Is materials discovery the killer application for artificial intelligence in climate tech, or is it much harder than it looks?
  24. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  25. Catalyst · 30 May 2024 Heavy duty decarbonization with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Batteries cannot move the biggest, heaviest things. So what fuels the trucks, ships and planes, and what actually decides the answer?
  26. Catalyst · 4 Apr 2024 Understanding the growing world of battery recycling with Dan Steingart, chair of the earth and environmental engineering department, Columbia University Battery recycling is technically well understood, so why is it such a hard business, and what would a recycler have to do to make it work?
  27. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  28. Catalyst · 13 Feb 2024 2024 trends: batteries, tax credits, and the cost of capital with Nat Bullard, independent climate tech analyst and writer, formerly chief content officer at BloombergNEF What do the 2023 data actually say about how decarbonization is going, and where have the binding constraints moved?
  29. Catalyst · 14 Dec 2023 What do you do with a 100-hour battery? with Mateo Jaramillo, co-founder and CEO, Form Energy What do you actually do with a 100-hour battery on the grid, and is there a use for one now rather than only in a far more renewable future?
  30. Catalyst · 7 Dec 2023 Update: What the new Treasury rules mean for EV supply chains with Sam Jaffe, senior director of business development, Addionics Now that Treasury has defined what counts as a “foreign entity of concern,” can an electric vehicle built on today’s battery supply chain still qualify for the $7,500 tax credit?
  31. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  32. Steel For Fuel · 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?