Reinventing Energy Services
Section 11 of “Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology” which will be released end of January. I will be posting a new section daily. Please share your feedback as this is a work in progress.
Key drivers: Scientific talent & long view funding.
The best minds getting PhD’s are not going into energy or cleantech today, which poses the fundamental problem. People realize it is hard to get funding, and for that reason, we are not seeing as many startups as we’d like to see. Cleantech is very capital intensive, and although there was a period of too much exuberance in the area, now it is met with investor disinterest. While it will slow down innovation long-term, hopefully, it won’t stop it altogether.
Organizations like Breakthrough Energy Ventures are trying to address this. There are a number of audacious fusion projects to unlikely geothermal energy projects. This is the hardest area for me to visualize breakthrough step impact progress in. I am still hopeful and feel that many high-risk projects with high probability of failure must be attempted. Though 5–10–20 percent improvements are still fundable, 500–1000 percent change innovations are less clear to me. There are many areas in which it must be attempted: From fusion to geothermal to storage to new materials and new agriculture and food.
That is likely the way to providing seven billion people a rich lifestyle as defined earlier without destroying the planet, depleting its resources (can we produce 10x the steel, copper, glass, cement, or use 10x less of each), and the irreversible climate change. Stationary, low carbon low cost power is a major need and extremely hard to find solution to. Nevertheless, a much worse option from trying and failing will be failing to try. I have personally failed at trying to do this and had only limited success. Others like Tesla and Waymo/Google have provided role models that are changing the transportation industry forever. I have long invested with the philosophy that while most people in business reduce the risk of failure to the point where the consequences of success are inconsequential on society (but they can make money for their shareholders which they are obligated to do). I’d rather invest in the sparser space of higher probability of failure but the where the consequences of success are consequential. There is as much profit and increased social impact to be gained here though with higher variability. Additionally, AI may help accelerate progress in energy. design quantum computers or at least fusion reactor containment structure, or find a solution for dark matter physics. Perhaps, it could help in designing more energy-efficient buildings or design cities that align more with structures in nature (highly recommend reading Scale by Geoffrey West ).
I am hopeful that a few breakthroughs, with fusion and geothermal (where linear cost for deeper drilling instead of exponential cost per foot when drilling at depth is the key breakthrough needed) being my best candidates, will help us over the new few decades.
**This is a section from “Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology”. To read the previous section, click here.
