Ramez Naam
Founder & Managing Partner, Planetary VC. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorauthorexecutiveengineer@ramez ↗rameznaam.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
After 13 years leading teams at Microsoft, Naam became widely recognized for modeling exponential cost declines and learning rates in clean technology. He is an award-winning science fiction novelist and the founder of Planetary VC.
2shows
2appearances
29statements
9resolved
9supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
12said about them ↓ Everything Ramez Naam said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Naam: Wilderness no longer exists; preserving ecosystems requires active human management
“There is no such thing as wilderness on planet Earth anymore. We have modified the climate such that if you're, if it's a forest, if it's a coral reef, if it's a wetlands, It doesn't exist in the same climactic band that that natural ecosystem evolved in. And …”
Naam: Solar electricity costs will drop 4x by reaching one-third global generation
“So my personal forecast is the cost of solar electricity will drop by another factor of four. By the time electricity is, by the time solar is about a third of all electricity generation on Earth.”
Naam: Continent-scale transmission is the most underrated clean energy technology
“The most underrated of those technologies is super long duration transmission. That is probably the one that... Ultra long distance, like coast-to-coast, continent-scale transmission. It's probably the one that has the best upside and the most certainty that w…”
Naam: Space launch costs are dropping faster than solar power costs
“Space launch is getting cheaper faster than solar. Only, only two things in history have gotten cheap faster than solar to date, which are computing and gene sequencing or gene printing. But right now, we're in a phase where the cost of space launch is actuall…”
Naam: IRA spending will reach trillions due to uncapped subsidies
“It's not four and fifty billion dollars of federal spending a year. It's like trillions. Because the IRA is not a pool of money. It's a per unit subsidy. And forecasters always do what? On unit forecasts, they always underestimate it, right? So the actual size…”
Naam: Clean electricity will beat fossil fuels if permitting opens up
“Like, in an open playing field, if it's easier to build pipelines and transmission lines, Clean electricity is going to win.”
Naam: Total fossil fuel use and emissions will peak by 2030
“And I think we'll have peak total fossil fuels and peak emissions sometime later in this decade, ah, towards 2030.”
Naam: Odds of limiting global warming to 1.5°C are minuscule
“But the bad news is we have missed 1.5 degrees C, and I don't know how to say this anymore clearly, because there are people that will tell you that we might hit it. The odds of that are minuscule.”
Naam: Deep tech startups no longer need commercial scale to exit
“It's no longer the case that we have to wait all the way until we have a product commercially on sale or at scale for this to produce an exit.”
Naam: App-based software businesses have weaker moats than hard tech
“We used to believe that, or companies like, again, I'll say Uber or WeWork, we thought, oh, they have natural network effects, they're gonna have a gigantic moat but it turns out switching costs for consumers are actually pretty low, and maybe lower, And some …”
Naam: Mass-produced factory cleantech will maintain rapid learning rates for decades
“I do think there's lots of reasons, not in every single cleantech, but in those, the ones we make in factories, mass-produced in high volumes, that those will have a very, very rapid learning rate for decades to come.”
Naam: Laser space solar is BS because lasers cannot penetrate clouds
“Lasers are BS, because lasers don't penetrate clouds and rain, so why would you do it?”
Naam: Global sales of gasoline-powered cars peaked in 2017 or 2018
“Sales of gasoline-powered cars peaks? Anybody have a guess? 2017, 20 18. It happened already.”
Naam: Global meat consumption will not decrease and will keep rising
“Like, forget about reducing meat consumption. It ain't going to happen. Meat consumption is going to keep going like this and this.”
Naam: Hydrogen cars and trucks will not be cost-competitive with EVs
“Hydrogen-powered cars and trucks? Forget about it. That's been clear for a decade. That's not going to be cost-competitive electrification.”
Naam: Aviation will probably never adopt hydrogen-powered planes
“We'll probably never make hydrogen-powered planes. They don't make any sense.”
Naam: Uber, Lyft, and WeWork burned more capital than cleantech
“If you look at, you know, some real darlings of The tech VC world, companies like Uber, or Lyft, or WeWork, you see companies that have burned through an enormous amount of capital, far more than most cleantech companies ever have or ever will.”
Naam: SPACs generated more upside for deep tech than other investments
“I think it's a fair case to be made that SPACs have generated more upside for deep tech in climate tech and in other sectors than they have for any other Type of investment”
Naam: 12-hour energy storage will definitely be solved
“Like, 12 hour storage, I'm convinced, is like, that's going to be solved.”
Naam: Floating offshore wind is massively underrated for deep-water regions
“I think offshore wind has a huge role to play, and floating offshore wind is one of the most underrated technologies, because in deep water, you basically can't do bottom out offshore wind. So around Japan, or the U.S. West Coast, I think floating offshore win…”
Naam: Beaming space solar with microwaves requires kilometer-square arrays
“The way to actually do it is microwaves, but the problem with microwaves is if you want to hit a target on Earth, you need these kilometer square arrays in space, and no one's ever built anything of that size in space.”
Naam: Energy will be cheaper in the long run relative to income
“I think there's every reason to believe that in the long run, energy is going to be cheaper for people than it is today, certainly as a proportion of income.”
Naam: Sulfur aerosol emissions currently offset one watt per square meter of warming
“Today if you look at IPCC's numbers, all greenhouse gases account for about three watts per square meter of warming. That's human activity. The sulfur aerosols we're already emitting from ship fuels, from diesel engines, from coal plants, low altitude, they ca…”
The other half of the tape: Ramez Naam's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 11 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Stephen Lacey 7Shayle Kann 3
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Catalyst 7
the Green Blueprint 5
2023 12 mentions in 11 episodes 1 per episode
- How will we power all those green factories?
- New frontiers of clean energy emerge
- Fixing interconnection
- Stopping geoengineering, by accident
- The food-energy nexus
- Inflation headwinds for offshore wind
- The carbon market’s quality problem
- Keeping copper from limiting the energy transition
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ramez's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GREEN BLUEPRINTLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Planetary VC | 1 | 20 | 100% 5/5 | full record on the Green Blueprint → |
| CATALYSTLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Planetary VC | 1 | 9 | 100% 4/4 | full record on Catalyst → |