Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

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Cost curves

24 notes · Catalyst 17 · Critical Capital 1 · Steel For Fuel 6

  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 · 21 May 2026 A blueprint for scalable fusion power with Carrie von Muench, founding chief operating officer, Pacific Fusion After the 2022 ignition result, where is fusion actually standing on the road to a power plant that competes on cost, and which milestone should you watch next?
  3. Catalyst · 5 Mar 2026 Digging deep for super hot geothermal with Carlos Araque, CEO and founder, Quaise Energy Geothermal works only where heat sits near the surface. If you drill deep enough to find much hotter rock, can you actually reach it, get the heat out, and do it cheaply?
  4. Catalyst · 11 Dec 2025 Can AI revolutionize EPC? with Alex Modon, co-founder and CEO, Unlimited Industries Big capital projects are chronically late and over budget. Can AI change that, and is engineering even where the leverage is?
  5. Catalyst · 13 Nov 2025 Driving down the cost of green hydrogen with Raffi Garabedian, co-founder and CEO, Electric Hydrogen Green hydrogen’s hype cycle collapsed because the stuff cost far too much. What would actually make it cheap enough to beat the fossil-derived molecule it is supposed to replace?
  6. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  7. 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?
  8. Catalyst · 8 May 2025 The US nuclear groundswell with Chris Colbert, co-founder and CEO, Elementl Power The US nuclear market is clearly stirring again. Does a groundswell like this one turn into an actual wave, or into another 2007-style mirage?
  9. Catalyst · 27 Feb 2025 Cultivated meat industry faces ‘trough of disillusionment’ with Isha Datar, executive director, New Harvest A decade of venture-funded companies later, why is there still no cultivated meat on the shelf, and what would actually change that?
  10. 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?
  11. 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?
  12. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  13. 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?
  14. 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?
  15. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  16. Catalyst · 12 Sep 2024 The better mousetrap fallacy with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Which parts of climate tech still need a technology breakthrough, and which ones only need someone to build a lot more of what already works?
  17. Catalyst · 15 Aug 2024 The cost of nuclear with Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director, Good Energy Collective Why does a nuclear reactor cost roughly four times as much to build in the United States as in South Korea, and what would actually make American nuclear cheap?
  18. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  19. Catalyst · 27 Jun 2024 Going deep on next-gen geothermal with Roland Horne, professor of earth sciences and head of the geothermal program, Stanford University Of the next-generation geothermal approaches now nearing market, which are actually ready to scale, and what would it take for geothermal to work outside the few places it works today?
  20. Catalyst · 20 Jun 2024 Demystifying the Chinese EV market with TP Huang, pseudonymous writer covering Chinese electric vehicles, clean energy and technology on Substack What is actually going on inside China’s electric vehicle market: what drove the sudden acceleration, who is winning, and is the export threat the one Western tariffs are aimed at?
  21. Catalyst · 21 Dec 2023 Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets with David Yeh, climatetech investor and debt provider, most recently CIBC; previously the White House, the DOE Loan Programs Office and Generation Investment Management Why is financing the first commercial plant for a new climate technology so hard, and how do the ones that get built actually get paid for?
  22. Catalyst · 16 Nov 2023 The cost of nuclear with Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director, Good Energy Collective Building a reactor in South Korea costs about a quarter what it costs in the United States. Why, and what would actually make American nuclear cheap?
  23. Catalyst · 5 Oct 2023 Climatetech startups need strong techno-economic analysis with Dr. Greg Thiel, director of technology, and Dr. Melissa Ball, associate director of technology, Energy Impact Partners What is a techno-economic analysis actually for at an early-stage hard technology company, and what do people most often get wrong when they build one?
  24. Catalyst · 10 Aug 2023 Beaming 24/7 solar from space with Sanjay Vijendran, lead for the Solaris initiative on space-based solar power, European Space Agency Is beaming solar power down from orbit a serious energy option, or is it still science fiction?