Why We are Organizing Energy Week 2021
Anil Achyuta, Investment Director, TDK Ventures
With experience comes perspective, and after reviewing over 500 companies in the energy field over the past two years, we at TDK Ventures have gained some. We have taken a deep dive into each organization, not just the technology driving how they do what they do, but also the whys and motivations driving their pursuits. While each story is unique, together they paint a larger picture — that of the changing technology and tectonic shifts in the energy landscape arising from the huge adversity that is fossil-fuel dependence. Together with our partners, the TDK Ventures family wants to bring together the energy and cleantech communities and bring this story of energy transformation to the forefront. And who better to tell it than the academics, entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and venture capitalists who are joining forces to make it happen. Let’s start with the problem first. Fossil-fuel dependence is the present reality. The United States alone used almost 22,000 TWh of energy from fossil fuels in 2019, 81% of its total energy consumption1,2. China utilized a similar order of magnitude with almost 34,000 TWh, the two nations together made up the lion’s share of the world total of almost 140,000 TWh — or 84% of the global total energy (Ref. 2, see Table 1).
Fortunately, in our experience, this dependence has driven increased innovation, bringing at times disparate aspects of energy, mobility, and industrial sectors together to forge new paths in the energy space. Efforts are robust and far from limited to just renewable energies, but also include energy storage, carbon capture, hydrogen-fuel generation, and more, with huge strides in the fields of electric vehicles and battery-driven technologies. Investment in this collective energy-transition area has never been higher, reaching $500 billion in 2020, more than doubling in a single decade (Figure 1, Ref. 3).
Such investment is a testament to multidisciplinary innovators that have relentlessly attacked this very problem. Experts and entrepreneurs have risen to this energy challenge from all facets — academia and established industry to startups and company spinouts, and from fields ranging the spectrum from mathematics, economics, and data sciences to engineering, materials science, and electrochemistry. This profound coalescence of ideas into new technologies and products, or “deeptech”, is the driving force enabling world changing solutions to offset the fossil-fuel dependence challenge.
Why organize Energy Week?
We have already invested in more than 18 startups, and more than 80% of our portfolio is aligned to mobility, industry 4.0, and energy. However, while reviewing the technical space and seeing all the potential out there, we want to do more. With our network, we have an incredible opportunity to bring these innovators together as a community and provide a space where experts from all aspects of the landscape can connect and share their wisdom on the key challenges and opportunities in an open forum. To this end, we are organizing TDK Ventures’ first Energy Week. We wanted to bring together top minds and voices from across all aspects of energy transition; and the community has answered with overwhelming support. More than 30 of the top leaders in the battery and energy fields committed to contributing, including the support of over 100 startups and their founders. With such positive feedback and help, we are pleased to kick off Energy Week on Monday, October 18 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time and concluding on Friday October 22. In attendance will be distinguished speakers such as Bob Galyen (Founder of Galyen Energy), Shirley Meng (Co-founder of UNIGRID), Julia Song (Co-founder of ESS), Dipender Saluja (Managing Director Capricorn Investment Group), Hans Kobler (CEO of Energy Impact Partners), Sara Chamberlain (Managing Director of Energy Foundry), and many more (Figure 2).
How is Energy Week Organized and What do the Events Entail?
With the above-mentioned visionaries leading the way, we’ve brought together the cleantech and energy communities worldwide as our event partners. Through this extensive network we hope to reach energy enthusiasts from all aspects of the field. Some of our partners include the Volta Foundation, Battery Bits, Intercalation Station, New Energy Nexus, Stanford Energy Club, MIT Energy Night, Energy Innovation Network, MIT CEO, Greentown Labs, and Plug & Play, just to name a few. Every day will consist of two hours of round-table discussions with subject matter experts in the panel for the breakout session topics. Each panel has been specially selected to ensure dedicated representation from entrepreneurs, academics, and investors all with subject-matter experience.
Five different topics will be touched on in various breakout sessions with a theme for each day:
§ Materials/Processing/ Manufacturing, Monday, Oct. 18, 6:00~8:00 p.m. PT
§ BMS/Modeling/Battery Data, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 9:00~11:00 a.m. PT
§ Charging/Safety/ Infrastructure, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 9:00~11:00 a.m. PT
§ ESS/E-mobility/Grid, Thursday, Oct. 21, 6:00~8:00 p.m. PT
§ Mining/Battery Recycling, Friday, Oct. 22 9:00~11:00 a.m. PT
Each panel will use qualitative and quantitative voting from both panelists and audience to discuss the top opportunities and challenges in that area. For example, one could expect a healthy debate on whether battery materials innovations like silicon anodes or solid-state may drive widespread electric vehicle adoption versus new manufacturing techniques like dry electrodes, which helps reduce cost of batteries. We believe each panel will uncover many insights at the technology, market, regulatory, and policy level which would benefit the cross-disciplinary audience to think in a holistic fashion about our energy transformation.
We are all about open innovation and believe that problems of this level of gravitas needs to be an open access format. Attendees will be able to openly listen and discuss trends in the energy-transition sector; discuss how their companies and organizations have gotten to where they are; share the vision for where they are going; and have a chance to re-evaluate that direction, given active discussions with the community. This will be a unique experience where participants, listeners and speakers can engage directly. It is through this collaboration and connection that together we will all better understand the current state-of-the-art and learn or even build dynamic world-changing solutions for an ever-changing landscape and world-changing problems. Business is competition, but this is not a pitch, not a game to outmatch or outsell, instead we are organizing Energy Week to specifically nurture the purity of openness and collaboration, so together we can set a course towards impactful solutions to better society.
Hosted via virtual webinar, participation is free and open to anyone who cares about the energy space. You will hear from engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, and industry experts, and be invited to join the discussion. Times and sessions were set up to maximize convenience and consideration for everyone’s valuable time. A global audience of upwards of 5,000 individuals is expected.
In keeping our commitment to innovation and insight through deeptech, TDK Ventures as hosts will also be quantifying discussion and outcomes. At the end of each session, there will be electronic voting open to all participants to select top challenges and opportunities — providing real-time data and input from the energy community. After Energy Week, data and summaries from each discussion will be collated and shared with the community at large through blogs such as LinkedIn, Medium and WeChat, or quality videos to be made available on YouTube and Youku so that all participants will be able to takeaway and share the same insights and help drive progress. Using all of these outlets and help from our friends in energy and cleantech media — BatteryBits, Intercalation Stations, and others — we hope to share all of these resources with all of our audience whether they could make it to the event or not.
What is our hope?
TDK Ventures’ ultimate mission is to bring positive change to society and the environment. As such, we have worked diligently to support the energy transition space. However, we want and can do more. Our goal is for Energy Week to facilitate that. We hope that in bringing together our network and the greater energy-innovation community new funding opportunities, co-investment strategies, and novel areas of collaboration will open-up through conversations and ideas shared between academics, startups, industry experts, and venture investors.
We also hope Energy Week will spawn new government programs to leverage the work already done, and maybe we can use our “TDK Goodness” to spur public private partnerships at a global scale. Indeed, it is only on a global scale that we can fight fossil-fuel dependence and its associated climate change. Maybe ideas that come from Energy Week will do just that: change the world and save it for our children and grandchildren.
1 http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/fossil-fuels/
2 https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
3https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-transition-investment-hit-500-billion-in-2020-for-first-time/
Please see TDK Ventures Press Release: https://www.tdk-ventures.com/energy-week
