Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

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Venture and finance

37 notes · Catalyst 27 · Critical Capital 5 · Steel For Fuel 5

  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. Critical Capital · 1 Sep 2026 What it takes to build in America again with Erin Price-Wright, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, investing in energy, mining and heavy industry for the firm’s American Dynamism practice; previously an engineer at Palantir Now that capital has arrived for factories, mines and grid hardware, what actually decides whether they get built in the United States?
  3. Critical Capital · 18 Aug 2026 AI is disrupting services. What does that mean for power demand? with Jake Saper, partner, Emergence Capital; enterprise software and AI infrastructure investor who began his career developing solar in India. The transcript renders his surname as both “Saper” and “Saber”; this note uses the dominant rendering. If AI starts to change how services such as law, accounting and insurance are actually delivered, what does that imply for how much compute, and how much power, the economy will end up needing?
  4. Critical Capital · 21 Jul 2026 The unprecedented opportunity for infrastructure investors with Jessica Bailey, Global Head of Infrastructure, Nuveen; previously co-founder of Greenworks Lending, and before that at the Connecticut Green Bank and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund What is actually driving the current infrastructure boom, and if capital is abundant, what will end up limiting it?
  5. Catalyst · 16 Jul 2026 When will quantum computing have its breakout moment? with Bob Sorensen, chief analyst for quantum computing, Hyperion Research How close is quantum computing to being genuinely useful, and what exactly does useful look like?
  6. Catalyst · 9 Jul 2026 Inside the AI power wars with Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, leads infrastructure and power research, SemiAnalysis Everyone can describe how the AI companies differ on chips. How do they differ on power?
  7. Catalyst · 1 Jul 2026 Inside the most sophisticated plan for solar geoengineering with Yanai Yedvab, CEO and co-founder, Stardust If cooling the whole planet costs about what one hyperscale data center costs, what would make it safe enough to consider, and who decides whether it happens?
  8. 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?
  9. Critical Capital · 28 Apr 2026 Atoms, bits, and the trillion-dollar manufacturing race with Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner, Eclipse Ventures; previously at Apple, then five or six years at Samsara Who wins when the digital economy runs into the physical one, and what would the United States have to do to compete again at making, powering and moving things?
  10. Catalyst · 22 Jan 2026 More 2026 trends: Solar costs, oil oversupply, and the startup slump with Nat Bullard, climate tech analyst and writer; co-founder, Halcyon Once you step away from data centers, what do the data actually say about where energy and decarbonization stood going into 2026?
  11. Catalyst · 8 Jan 2026 The VC case for ‘full stack deeptech’ with Ian Rountree, founder and partner, Cantos Which hard technology startups are actually investable at venture pace, and which ones are structurally set up to fail no matter how good the technology is?
  12. Catalyst · 4 Dec 2025 Who benefits from the AI power bottleneck? with Shanu Mathew, senior vice president and portfolio manager-analyst for US sustainable equity, Lazard Everyone in the AI and energy business says power is the bottleneck. Whose interests does that story serve, and how should you discount what you hear?
  13. Catalyst · 6 Nov 2025 Inside a $300 million bet on AI for physical R&D with Ekin Dogus Cubuk, co-founder, Periodic Labs; formerly Google DeepMind A year ago Cubuk was sober about using AI for materials discovery. What changed enough in twelve months to justify leaving Google DeepMind and raising $300 million to do it?
  14. 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?
  15. Catalyst · 4 Sep 2025 AMA: Geoengineering, nuclear, power prices, and more with Lara Pierpoint, managing director, Trellis Climate at Prime, and host of The Green Blueprint Listener questions put to two climate investors: what do they actually think about solar geoengineering, electricity prices, nuclear, the climate tech cycle, vehicle-to-grid and plastics?
  16. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  17. Catalyst · 4 Apr 2025 Specialized AI brains for physical industry with Sam Smith-Eppsteiner, partner, Innovation Endeavors Do physical industries need their own specialized AI products, or will the big general-purpose models eventually get good enough to do the job?
  18. 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?
  19. Catalyst · 30 Jan 2025 2025 trends: aerosols, oil demand, and carbon removal with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon (an AI company), and former chief content officer, Bloomberg New Energy Finance What do the data actually say about where energy and climate stood entering 2025?
  20. Catalyst · 16 Jan 2025 FOAK tales with Mario Fernandez, head of Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, Breakthrough Energy What does it actually take to get a first-of-a-kind climate project financed, and why is that still the hardest step?
  21. 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?
  22. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  23. Catalyst · 3 Oct 2024 DAC’s bumpy road to commercial scale with Andreas Aepli, chief financial officer, Climeworks The first commercial direct air capture plants are running. What does it actually take to get from there to commercial scale, and what has the one company that has done it learned along the way?
  24. 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?
  25. Steel For Fuel · 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?
  26. 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?
  27. Catalyst · 5 Sep 2024 The rise of climate adaptation tech with Katie MacDonald, co-founder and managing partner, Tailwind Climate Is climate adaptation a definable investment category in its own right, or does it expand until it means everything and therefore nothing?
  28. Catalyst · 23 Aug 2024 Hunting for geologic hydrogen with Pete Johnson, CEO and co-founder, Koloma Hydrogen forms naturally underground all over the world. Can we drill for it the way we drill for oil and gas, and is there any public evidence yet that a tappable resource exists?
  29. Catalyst · 14 Mar 2024 Climate tech’s tough year in the public markets with Shanu Mathew, portfolio manager and research analyst, Lazard Almost every climate tech market kept growing through 2023, so why did climate tech stocks fall so far behind the broader market?
  30. Catalyst · 8 Mar 2024 Will AI deliver the promise of a digital grid? with David Groarke, managing director, Indigo Advisory Group The last wave of smart grid investment did not deliver what it promised. Is the current wave of AI in the power sector any different?
  31. Catalyst · 6 Mar 2024 Shopify’s head of sustainability on the realities of carbon removal with Stacy Kauk, head of sustainability, Shopify What does it look like to be one of the first corporate buyers of durable carbon removal, and what does three and a half years of it teach you?
  32. 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?
  33. Catalyst · 11 Jan 2024 2023 climate tech venture investment trends with Kim Zou, co-founder and CEO, Sightline Climate Climate tech venture funding fell about 30% in 2023. What did that drop actually measure?
  34. 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?
  35. Catalyst · 12 Oct 2023 How has US industrial policy impacted climatetech investment? with Trevor Houser, partner, Rhodium Group A year after the Inflation Reduction Act, has US industrial policy actually moved money into clean energy, or is it still mostly announcements?
  36. 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?
  37. Steel For Fuel · 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?