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 418 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
Bowe: EV charging future is about affordability and reliability, not breakthroughs
“I do think it's going to be a little less about totally fundamental breakthroughs on new kinds of charging, and as I said, just charging that gets out there is cheap, affordable, and it works.”
Jaffe: Window is closing for new battery startups to rival majors
“There are a handful of new battery companies like Northvolt in Europe and that are appearing, but this is really the last chance for that, for a new, a brand new startup battery company to be able to compete with the majors.”
Friedmann: The bioplastics market is too small to impact climate change
“So the entire plastics market is barely climate relevant. So if you're thinking about something that can deliver a big climate solution, bioplastics isn't it. You cannot balance the atmosphere's needs on making yoga pants and hoodies.”
Lubershane: Critical mineral supply is sufficient but concentrated, reshaping geopolitics
“There's rarer metals, lithium being the by far most obvious one. But also things like cobalt and zinc and nickel where You know, we see in most cases global supply being sufficient to meet the needs of the energy transition, but just an enormous concentration …”
Lubershane: Renewables alone cannot decarbonize power; high-density sources like nuclear are needed
“I believe that renewables are not all we'll ever need for power sector decarbonization. Like, I do think we need some additional form of very power-dense, you know, something that can replace coal power from a land use standpoint. Something on, you know, new, …”
Schroeder: Investors Must Treat Lithium-Ion Winning as the Null Hypothesis
“And I think, you know, so as an investor in the space, we always try to disprove this hypothesis, but I think the null hypothesis has to be lithium ion wins. And, you know, then you have to see if you can come up with ways that that's not the case, but you hav…”
Powell: US utilities view rooftop solar as a threat, creating hurdles
“In the United States, very much so in many jurisdictions throughout the country, certainly in the utility space, it's seen as a threat, not an opportunity, and so when you see it that way, there's more and more hurdles that get created to go through for a cust…”
Shah: Getting tire giants to sign clean offtake contracts requires an act of God
“One thing with Goodyear and Michelin that I've found fascinating is that, and they're all good people, but like, they have a venture capital arm, right? And they have like, contract for differences, renewable energy, electricity contracts that they've signed f…”
Lubershain: Blending hydrogen into gas distribution networks is almost entirely implausible
“I think it's an almost entirely implausible scenario at the distribution level. So once you get down to natural gas distribution systems where you've got you know, smaller pipelines going through cities and service lines going to individual homes and businesse…”
Lubershain: 100% Heating Electrification Would Cause Peak Energy Costs to Skyrocket
“One of the areas that I think it's important to preserve some kind of role for gaseous fuel delivery is probably going to be to serve that, you know, last X percent, I'm not quite sure what it is, of building heating load for which a pure electrification strat…”
Ransohoff: Carbon removal sector remains far off track to dent climate crisis
“I would say generally this field is not currently on track for carbon removal to make a material dense in the climate crisis. Like, even with the recent progress, even with all these companies that we're finding and funding and all the press and, you know, Str…”
Lubershain: Data center water concerns are mostly a red herring
“The number one reason is water consumption, which was kind of surprising to me. And it's actually, as far as I understand it, this is not an area of expertise for me, but I think it's probably a bit of a red herring in most places outside of very, sort of, wat…”
Lubershain: Data centers are the biggest factor driving global electricity demand growth
“So at a global level, data centers are one factor among many, but I'd say they're the biggest factor that is causing this global Growth in demand for electricity, which is happening so quickly now, especially because of data centers and the urgency with which …”
Janous: Tech companies' presentation of AI is driving data center backlash
“So I do think the, you know, the tech companies have, you A real issue around how AI has been presented, you know, and that is causing a lot of this backlash as well.”
Kann: Data centers entering a community tend to lower local electricity rates
“The objective truth, particularly today, is that a data center coming into a community tends to lower rates because nowadays, you
You know, the deal that the utility is striking with the data center is basically guaranteed to do that, sort of the whole point.”
Janous: On-site power plants make data center community backlash worse
“Do they really want a data center plus a power plant next door? That also seems like not the right solution. Like, I think that's, Worse than a data center connected to the grid.”
Kann: Critics calling the grid 'broken' do not understand utility operations
“But I will admit a little bit of frustration with a particular crowd That is constantly referencing the, quote, broken grid, unquote, that needs fixing, knowing full well that most of these people have absolutely no idea how utilities actually work.”
Tillis: US has entered a permanent populist era sustained by social media
“I believe that we have entered a permanent populist stage in this country, and I think that social media is the amplifier and the sustainer.”
Tillis: Solar Subsidies Must Sunset but Precipitous Cuts Cause Damage
“It's time for solar subsidies to find a sunset. The problem is they did it too soon, and they did it in a precipitous manner. There are a lot of collateral damage as a result.”
Tillis: Reshoring all supply chains to the US is unsustainable
“I just think Fortress America and bring it all back home is unsustainable. It's also not strategic with respect to geopolitical considerations.”
Tillis calls proposals for AI displacement compensation funds 'absurd'
“You've got people saying now that, well, AI is going to take all the jobs. Therefore, AI needs to create a fund to pay people who will no longer have a job. That is absurd.”
Current quantum benchmark claims rely on tests with no practical relevance
“A lot of organizations right now that are hoped to aspire to be, you know, significant quantum computing vendors are coming out with benchmark claims that in some sense are interesting, but somewhat confusing, and organizations will say, we have solved an inte…”
Early quantum benchmarks like boson sampling were terribly misleading
“Ok, there's no practical application for those kinds of things. So what you end up getting Are, in some cases, in the early days benchmarks that sounded interesting but were terribly misleading.”
Quantum algorithm development is underfunded by both government and academia
“The algorithm development phase of this is really quite complicated and slow, and unfortunately, to my mind, underfunded from both government and academic environments.”
Eliahu-Ontiveros: CoreWeave Lacks Credit Profile to Lease a Gigawatt of Capacity
“For a company like CoreWeave if they wanted to build a gigawatt of data center capacity, or most likely to lease it, that would be more, more likely for them. They're just not going to be able to do that. They don't have the credit profile to do that.”
Yedvab: Global solar geoengineering requires only five to seven injection locations
“You'd probably like a few in the, a northern hemisphere, a few in the southern hemisphere. I would say two or three on each hemisphere, and maybe one around the equator. Should be enough.”
Linville: Government market interventions and export duties worsen fertilizer shortages
“The more governments start to play a role in these free markets, the worse it gets. We've seen it with India with the way that they shield their farmers from global prices. We see it with Egypt putting a 90 dollar ton export duty on their nitrogen products.”
Cohen: Level 4 autonomous trucks currently require cameras, LiDAR, and radar
“From my perspective, for a vehicle, a truck, for example, you put on the road, you would want it to have camera, lidar, and radar to do a level four being, you know, driverless, to do a level four truck today.”
Hershman: Human labor is still faster than construction robotics
“On a one-for-one basis, you know, I can still use human capital and labor, right? To produce faster than robotics that are out there in the market?”
McAvoy: Solar and storage alone cannot fully power data centers
“They're not the answer. They are supplemental energy that can help, and they're kind of filling a gap until, you know, more jet generation comes online, and depends on what form of that jet generation can be.”
Shafer: Used nuclear fuel still holds massive untapped energy value
“I don't think about it as nuclear waste, I think about it as use nuclear fuel, because there's actually a lot of energy value with respect to that”
Shafer: States will successfully block nuclear waste transit if they oppose it
“If a state does not want you to move nuclear material through the state, it will find a way for you to not move nuclear material through the state”
Moskowitz: Chinese solar manufacturing yields cheap, durable, and high-quality products
“Solar panel manufacturing, especially to the extent that it's clustered in China, is, you know, these products are incredible. They last for a long time, they're cheap, they're, they are we continue to have them get better, but they're really, really incredibl…”
Kann: Edge computing latency advantage applies to very few AI applications
“Not for zero applications, but for very few does it seem that you need such low latency that edge has a big benefit over, you know, the sort of, like, regional hyperscale model that we have today.”
Frader-Thompson: Spending $20M on software before launching a VPP is backwards
“That is in contrast to some other plans that I've seen where we're saying like, let's build out twenty million dollars worth of software infrastructure before we even stand up a program, and that's backwards.”
EnergyHub CEO: Level 2 thermostat VPPs provide peaker plant value
“Like, the smart thermostat programs are at a strong level two in general. And at level two, like I said before, they are clearly already providing the value that a peaker plant would provide.”
Roberts argues distributed capacity is faster and cheaper than on-site generation
“I would like to see them get serious about exploiting distributed capacity. I think that's faster and cheaper than on-site generation if we can get the financial and institutional arrangements lined up the right way.”
Siegel: ERCOT forward market pricing cannot support new gas generation
“There was a big push through legislation to support new gas fire generation and ERCOT. I think if you look at forward markets, that's not supported by market pricing today. It may be supported by bilateral contracting opportunities, but when you look purely at…”
Kann: Rountree's Deep Tech Thesis Excludes Most Startups in the Space
“I think it's correct, but it also describes a world that honestly excludes the vast majority of startups in this space.”
Rountree: Khosla took market risk by investing in Impossible Foods
“Yeah, but he invested in impossible foods, forgetting that there was market risk there.”
Rountree: Defense tech startup wave was created by Anduril
“Look at this Defense tech wave. And now it's like the hottest area outside of AI. And that was more or less created by Andrew. And I'll give a lot of credit to Palmer, one of the four founders of that company for, like, completely reversing this trend.”
Battaglia: Data pipelines matter more than neural network architectures today
“I don't feel that neural network architectures these days tend to be the sort of exciting part. It's usually more of like the training and the sort of data how you handle the data and that kind of thing.”
Clements: DOE's proposed April timeline for FERC final order is unrealistic
“It's not realistic what authority does the, you know, the Secretary of Energy have in that case, the bully pulpit political pressure.”
Rathi: Sodium-ion batteries are overhyped due to massive lithium-ion cost declines
“Given the pace at which lithium ion chemistries have fallen in price, and the amount of manufacturing capacity that's been built around the world, if I look at Bloomberg NEF projections, sodium ion will make an impact, but such a sliver, even after 2030 years,…”
Kann: Sodium-ion battery hype is justified as CATL actively deploys them
“I think there is a degree of hype that is warranted, largely because it seems pretty clear that some of the big Chinese manufacturers, CATL included, are investing a lot in sodium ion and are actually deploying.”
Rathi: Advanced geothermal is globally overhyped due to drilling talent shortages
“The difficulty I feel like is that it's overhyped because the level of other types of talent and infrastructure that you need to deliver on advanced geothermal exists in the US, but will take a long time in other parts of the world to build. So engineers who c…”
Powin bankruptcy driven by mismanagement and chasing short-term growth
“It's, you know, still open question, but in my view it came down to mismanagement at Powen. They were chasing short-term growth and profits without putting enough emphasis on long-term risk management.”
Dell: Sunrun and Tesla struggle with volatile demand due to $20,000 systems
“I think the horror stories you hear about the solar coaster and, you know, the Sunrun and the Tesla stuff, and I've talked to all kinds of people who have worked there previously and now and whatever, like, they faced these kind of supply-demand challenges bec…”