The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 1,873 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Yao: CATL's CEO projects sodium-ion taking half of the LFP market
“Robin Zhang, the chairman and CEO of CATL, announced basically last November that he expects Sodium Mines to take up to half of LFP's market share.”
Kimber: AI data centers will never offer flexible power load
“Every second you aren't running that at a hundred percent capacity factor is enormous amortized cost, right? So that it's just, it's one of those things where it's like, you'd be a fool to turn it down. You have to at some points because operationally, you kno…”
Kimber: AI inference will ultimately draw far more power than training
“I think now what we're seeing is that inference in the aggregate is actually probably a much larger draw than the training in the long run.”
Bullard: China's apparent oil demand likely peaked in 2023
“In terms of apparent demand, which is what the statistic is called, and it's basically looking at refinery runs in, in China, it's, looks like it's peaked at some point in 23 and the new data that was published as of yesterday morning shows that actually, stat…”
Grunwald: Feeding 2050 Population Needs Two Indias' Worth of New Land
“If, even if we continue to increase farm yields at the same rate they've increased throughout the Green Revolution we're gonna need another two India's worth of land, which essentially means, you know, gonna bye-bye Amazon and Congo rainforests, you know, very…”
Grunwald: Going vegetarian is climate-equivalent to only cutting beef due to dairy
“Going vegetarian is usually about the same as just cutting out beef, because vegetarians tend to eat more dairy.”
Fernandez: $70B infrastructure funds hold 15-year zero-loss records across all projects
“There is 70, 60, seventy billion dollar infrastructure funds that have a 15 year track record that have never lost money on any project they've invested in.”
Lafarge: Doubling grid capacity is the baseline, not a high-end scenario
“Even if you haircut the forecast growth in data centers and manufacturing by 80 or 90%, you still double the grid. And something I think we need to say more as an industry is doubling the grid is not the high-end reference case here. It's not the sort of what …”
Scheyder: Direct lithium extraction has never worked at commercial scale
“Which has never actually worked on a commercial scale but there's a lot of money being poured into it by researchers across the globe.”
Jaffe: Chinese state industrial policy created CATL, now the world's top producer
“The emergence of CATL, which was essentially a company that was really invented in the back rooms of the industrial governmental complex in, in China about 12 years ago that, and it essentially just, you know, it followed the plan perfectly and is now the larg…”
Jaffe: Northvolt doomed itself by attempting six gigafactories simultaneously
“What they ended up trying to do was build, essentially build six gigafactories simultaneously, which is just an impossible task to handle. And I think that the, you know, that, that the concept of build, build, perfect, and then repeat was not applied. And the…”
Frith: Lowest battery spot prices will rise while average prices continue falling
“I think, you know, unfortunately, we're probably going to see prices increasing, you know, moderately in, in the next kind of year or so, I would say, or kind of, let's say two years out, we'll probably see higher prices than we're at today. But I don't think,…”
Frith: Normalized US LFP cell production is 8% costlier than China
“For a LFP cell produced in China, 35 gigawatt hour facility you're looking at around kind of 68 dollars per kilowatt hour. So this isn't kind of optimized for these super low prices that we we're seeing today, but Assumes a kind of LFP material costs of about …”
Frith: Northvolt's yield struggles inflated costs and lost BMW's contract
“Northvolt started manufacturing cells on its plant around the end of twenty-twenty-two, I believe. So, kind of, we're coming up to two years now. And if the, you know, media reports are to be believed, they're still having a huge issue with yields. They can't …”
Bredariol: IEA estimates global flare combustion efficiency at 92%, not industry-claimed 98%
“We at the International Energy Agency estimate that the combustion efficiency of flares globally is at around 92%. That's a much lower number than what you might hear from the industry. They will often refer to 98%, but it's in line with several scientific stu…”
Johnson: Geologic hydrogen extraction costs should match natural gas extraction
“If you can find hydrogen under the ground, the reality is you should be able to produce it from a volumetric standpoint at a similar cost that we produce natural gas out of the ground.”
Johnson: Natural hydrogen fields require just 1-3 MWh input per ton
“Our best estimates for a natural hydrogen field is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of one to three megawatt hours of energy in to pull a ton of hydrogen out. So that's one to three megawatt hours of parasitic costs of, you know, running compressors and …”
Dell: No steel company is commercializing large-scale blast furnace carbon capture
“There's very little going on in the world of carbon capture in the steel industry right now. There are a there are no large-scale efforts to commercialize this technology. Like, there isn't a single steel company anywhere in the world that's like, we're gonna …”
Berdichevsky: Some US battery factory projects will get mothballed
“So I do think some of these projects are still, are not going to go forward at certain stages. You know, and that's kind of classic. A lot of times, you know, maybe half the announced projects end up getting built. The pipeline is way bigger than the demand to…”
Kann predicts US data center capacity will double by 2030.
“I'm on the oversight here. I'm betting that there will be more than 20 gigawatts of new data center capacity in the United States by then.”
Loo: Projections show ammonia will eventually be cheaper than e-methanol
“In the long term, if you look at the projections and the numbers, I think if costs were the driver, then the cost of ammonia is going to be cheaper than the cost of e-methanol.”
BYD's new hybrid technology delivers 2,100 kilometer range for under $15,000
“What they call the DM-F.O technology, which is an interesting technology in that it increased the fuel efficiency to around, like, 80 to 90 miles per gallon. And they made a lot of waves with this 2100 kilometer range claim, which has been verified by, you kno…”
Baglino: Over 90% of Battery Precursor Plants Discharge Sulfates Into Waterways
“All the precursor, almost, I want to say all, over 90% of the precursor in the world is for battery cathodes is produced in facilities where the wastewater, the, like, sulfates and that are in the wastewater of that process kind of can just go directly into th…”
Friedmann: Announced SAF plants cannot meet the 2027 global airline mandate
“If every Sustainable aviation fuel plant that had been announced were to be built, there would not be enough fuel for the twenty-twenty-seven target. Period.”
Grabow: Foreign shipyard workers earn more than Americans despite building cheaper ships
“Well, the data suggests, actually, that workers in South Korea and Japan and Europe, they make more than Americans, and yet the ships are still significantly cheaper, so that's interesting.”
Grabow: US-built container ships cost five times more than international builds
“By the 19 thirties, it was up to a 50% premium for U.S. Built ships. By the 19 fifties, a U.S. Built ship was double the cost of one built abroad. By the 19 nineties, it was triple the cost of one built abroad, and today, a U.S. Built container ship is somewhe…”
Grabow: Zero Jones Act-Compliant LNG Tankers Exist in the United States
“We can't transport it by water to other parts of the United States because there are no LNG tankers that comply with the Jones Act.”
Steingart: Redwood, Ascend, and Li-Cycle rely on scrap exceeding 20%
“Currently, all three of these companies are living off of gigafactory scrap, which is exceptionally high, over, over 20%, as I understand it.”
Lubbershane: Utilities are postponing coal plant retirements due to load growth
“The first thing that utilities are planning to build to manage their entry into the gauntlet is they're planning to not retire their coal power plants on previously agreed upon or decided upon timelines.”
Mills: DOE will compromise on proposed transformer efficiency standard
“They asked for public, the Department of Energy asked for public comment, and I think there was enough out there and enough concern expressed that I suspect a compromise position is going to come out. I don't think what they had originally released will actual…”
Cantor: BYD surpassed Tesla in quarterly EV sales in Q4 2023
“BYD hit all their targets last year in terms of sales, and they've surpassed Tesla in terms of fully electric vehicles on a quarterly basis in Q four.”
Cantor: Only 4% of the $5B federal NEVI EV charging funds have been awarded
“And if you look at the infrastructure law with the five billion dollars as a part of the NEVI program, according to our charging infrastructure team, only four percent of those funds have been awarded to charging infrastructure operators.”
Cabiyo: High-quality wood pellets require whole logs, not just waste residues
“You can't make good pellets out of treetops and branches and sawmill residues. You need whole logs to do that well.”
Orbuch: High-quality carbon removal offtakes rival legacy voluntary market size
“Most of the dollars that have gone into the sort of market for higher quality removals are forward offtakes, right? Shayle Kann: Right. Shayle Kann: I guess that's true. Ryan Orbuch: So the cash is spent when the removal is delivered. And like, if you add up a…”
Orbuch: Carbon credit registries face structural conflicts when paid by suppliers
“The methodology creation itself is often conflicted, where the supplier is paying the registry to create a methodology for them, which has some obvious issues. Or they're using some other one that some other supplier created.”
US domestic battery manufacturing will reach 200 GWh by 2025
“And at that point, we're going to have the LG GM Ultium joint venture making over a hundred gigawatt hours of batteries throughout this country. LG Stellantis will be making 35 gigawatt hours. Stellantis Samsung STI will be making another 30. And then Ford wil…”
Nearly 60% of plant-based meat buyers are not substituting it for beef.
“What we hear from consumers is that about almost 60% of consumers who are buying plant-based meat are not substituting for beef. It's for a food other than beef, whether it's poultry, pork, seafood, eggs, non-meat, you know, pasta, pizza.”
Visioni: IMO 2020 sulfur cuts added roughly 0.05°C of global warming
“There's a few course estimates that, just based on Earth's sensitivity, say, suggested, says probably Alf, a 10th of a degree overall of increased warming.”
Vijendran: Central space solar beam will likely reach 200 watts per square meter
“Part of the beam, especially the central part of the beam, will likely be exceeding safety limits up to perhaps a couple of hundred watts per square meter.”
Vijendran: Full space solar system costs fell from $100B to $1B–$10B
“What was a hundred billion before, now you're looking at one to ten billion for a full system, depending on, on the scale you're looking at.”
Sylvera rates under a quarter of carbon credits in top three grades
“We would say of the credits on the market the minority have like a strong environmental integrity. So you'd maybe say around, well actually less than a quarter, we would rate in our top three grades. And now you would have very, very high degree of confidence …”
Lubershane: Form Energy's 100-hour battery will cost under a tenth of lithium-ion
“Form is on track to achieve a total installed cost. We're not talking about the cost of the materials here, but a total installed cost for a approximately a hundred hour battery system, which is basically a four day battery system that is in the ballpark of a …”
EPA rule mandates 90% CCS or 96% hydrogen for large gas units
“The basics are the really big plants, meaning 300 megawatt nameplate units or larger, running at 50% capacity factor or more, need to meet a Standard equal to carbon, 90% carbon capture by 2035, or 96% hydrogen co-firing by 2038.”
Hertz-Shargel: Many Bitcoin miners run even at $4,000/MWh power prices
“Some miners do have a price threshold which empirically is between 103 hundred dollars per megawatt hour but many have basically no threshold, and they will continue running up even into the thousands, up to 4000 dollars per per megawatt hour.”
Hertz-Shargel: Major Bitcoin mines are not signing offtake PPAs with new renewables
“So they are not signing new PPAs with new wind to as off takers to kind of make these plans happen. They're signing PPAs with retailers and utilities mostly conventional types of deals, such as being put on base interruptible rates. So, you know, it provides d…”
Jaffe: Treasury Classifies Constituent Materials as Minerals Subject to 50% Rule
“So I think what essentially what the guidance said was constituent materials, which is going to be any of these precursor steps up to the battery component itself, essentially falls under strategic minerals. As in the strategic minerals qualification. Now they…”
Lithium processed in China temporarily qualifies for EV tax credits
“If you are today shipping your spodumine to China to be made into lithium hydroxide then that's, if China does turn out to be a foreign entity of concern, that will disqualify that material for the tax credit. So right now, it is going to be qualified, but as …”
Replacing 209 of 210 US Coal Plants With Renewables Is Cheaper
“There is probably a recent report you probably saw that 209 out of the 210 coal plants that are operating currently in the U.S. Would be cheaper to shut them down and just invest in the capital cost of building renewable energy to replace them.”