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 606 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 124 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
House: Reaching a fully circular battery economy will take 50 years
“We can achieve 90, 98, 99% recycling rates on these, on, on these batteries, and over time, we'll get to the point where we do not have to mine them which is really, really exciting. But that will take more than a generation, unfortunately. We need a lot more …”
Bataille: Over 90% of captured CO2 must be permanently stored, not utilized
“The numbers I typically see is we will utilize less than 10% of it. Most of it has to go into deep storage, be it depleted oil and gas reservoirs with tight overseal, or into deep saline aquifers. Like, the vast majority has to go into permanent storage withou…”
Bataille: CCS is essential for cement due to lack of alternative chemistries
“We're going to need it for cement because there are no alternative chemistries coming down the pipe anytime soon, and there's a lot of buildings that need to be built.”
Bataille: Carbon removal is an admission we will miss net-zero targets
“We're probably going to blow past the deadline by about two decades, which means, you know, CDR is basically an admission of failure. That we did not mitigate fast enough.”
Bataille: Technical carbon dioxide removal will reach 1 to 5 gigatons annually
“The key CDR technologies, in my mind, will be direct air capture with CCS, because what CCS does is it takes the CO₂ taken by the direct air capture unit and pushes it back underground, and probably some forms of geological weathering, and it's going to be a b…”
Jenkins: Europe can normalize energy conditions by 2025 with lower gas use
“And so that, you know, by 20, 25 or 20, 26, you know, in the sort of three to four year timeframe, it should be possible to get back to sort of typical European, you know, conditions, albeit with dramatically lower oil and gas consumption, particularly gas con…”
Kann: Climate tech's next decade is electrochemistry vs. biology
“I think the greatest battle in climate tech over the next decade is going to be a race between electrochemistry and biology to solve our biggest climate problems.”
Hsu predicts someone will achieve fusion scientific breakeven during the 2020s
“If I were a betting person, I would say yes. I think somebody will achieve scientific break-even this decade, and possibly more than one.”
Quantum computers will outperform DeepMind's AI models at predicting protein folding
“DeepMind actually just released some really interesting papers on how they can predict, based on the sequence of amino acids, how a protein can fold. A quantum computer will be able to do that better. It just will”
Quantum computing will deliver breakout winners with shocking use cases by 2026
“And so I am highly optimistic that by within this decade for sure, we will have meaningful impacts from quantum computers. And I can imagine in the next three to five years we are going to see winners emerge with very specific use cases that are going to shock…”
Rutherford: Electric aviation is limited to flights of 300 kilometers or less
“But by our analysis, you know, it's really a market for commuter flights, and for flights of, you know, 300 kilometers or less for the foreseeable future, just because of the underlying mass penalties of the technology.”
Rutherford: SAFs will lead aviation decarbonization through 2040 before hydrogen potentially emerges
“You know, 2030, SAFs, definitely. 2040, I would also say SAFs. 20 50, it may shift to hydrogen.”
Kann: Political backlash against data centers will worsen over the next two years
“I would bet on this being the case for the next couple of years that it gets worse before it gets better. Partially because of the political timing that you described, it's just there currently where we stand today, there is no political advantage to being the…”
Tillis: State-level AI regulations could create an international pacing threat for the US
“Now we've got several dozen states that are regulating this. They're gonna lift up and do the same thing to AI to our detriment, and it could, it create a real pacing threat for us and international competition.”
Hade: Hyperscaler 'bring your own capacity' deals will surge within 48 months
“Definitely over the next like 36 to 48 months. My guess is bring your own capacity, right, which is sort of the umbrella term for everything I'm talking about is going to be a very, very, very quickly growing sector of this market, because when hyperscalers th…”
Quantum qubit scaling follows a near-exponential trajectory
“So if you look at What's happening in the sector, it is not a linear progression. In many cases, it is a near exponential kind of capability. So this idea of moving from 10 to a hundred to a thousand cubits is, it's going to happen faster than if you were just…”
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Gigascale campuses will pair tens of thousands of acres with hybrid power by 2030
“I think we're going to see more of that towards the end of the decade. More of those campuses with potentially tens of thousands of acres, gigantic campuses that are going to have gas, solar, Batteries. Maybe wind. But I think, yeah, that, that's going to be a…”
States use tech hyperscalers' ratepayer pledge to fight transmission tariffs
“In their complaints to FERC, for example, a bunch of states have cited that pledge, and I think that creates it's an opening for any time anyone wants to argue against however a tariff is getting structured, or a new transmission line, or whatever it might be …”
China is on track to export 12 million cars this year
“This year, they're on track to export twelve million cars. Twelve million.”
Sheldon-Coulson predicts AI hardware will shift away from failure-prone high-bandwidth memory
“There's lots of new accelerators that don't use as much high bandwidth memory and other components that are particularly failure prone, and that's where a lot of the industry will be going.”
Von Munch: Fusion startups will not see exits before reaching net facility gain
“Because I think the thing that's true is that you're not going to see an exit prior to that milestone.”
Linville: Buyers will renege on urea contracts if Strait reopens in off-season
“And I think a lot of the countries around the world will do exactly that. Just sit there and throw their hands in the air and say, I'm reneging on my purchase because I don't need it right now.”
Linville: Prolonged Hormuz closure through autumn will trigger global fertilizer rationing
“If we get to the fourth of July and the straight is still closed, if we start up with my youngest is a freshman high school, be a sophomore in the fall. If he goes back to school in the fall and the straight is still closed, we have lost so much supply out the…”
Vahdat: Interactive AI models will require geographically distributed inference infrastructure
“So as these services become more interactive, as they become more efficient, and that, that is still going to be a journey. We're not there today. You're going to want to have geographic locality. That's also going to impact reliability, because again, you can…”
Emerald and NVIDIA to deploy 100MW power-flexible AI factory in 2026
“I think later this year, as you know, Emerald and NVIDIA and some other partners, Digital BLT, Epri, Dominion, and PJM, we will put together the world's first, ah, A hundred megawatt commercial scale AI factory that is truly power flexible. It's custom designe…”
McAvoy: Scramble to power data centers will probably last three years
“So you were going through this kind of like chaotic phase at the moment, and it'll last for like probably like three years where whatever you can put together to get yourself online, you are going to do it.”
Shafer: Nevada will likely not agree to host a nuclear repository again
“I would be surprised if Nevada ends up stepping forward into this space again as far as, you know, there's conversations with respect to that being of consideration, etc.”
Kann predicts his four-year-old son will never get a driver's license
“One of the bets is that he will never drive a car. He'll never get a driver's license. I mean, he's growing up, you know, in kind of suburban Bay Area, California, so take that into account, because this is a specific bet to my son. But, you know, I think 12 y…”
Roberts predicts the concept of distinct distributed energy resources will fade away
“You and I know that the way the long-term evolution is that basically everything that is plugged in is gonna become a resource eventually. Like, the notion of DERs as a kind of distinct category, I think, is just gonna kind of fade away, because eventually, li…”
Kann predicts US energy startup funding will boom and triple in 2026
“So I think we're going to see, this is going to be a return to a boom, this is my prediction right now, where, yeah, we were at two billion last year, down from eight billion in twenty-twenty-two. I don't know that we get back to eight, but like, Will it tripl…”
Bullard: Tech CapEx has likely not peaked and will rise next year
“This is probably not the peak. Like, most of the estimates based on what companies themselves are saying for their estimated CapEx have a higher number for next year, right?”
Cyber-physical AI applications will require edge computing for low latency
“So I agree that there will be cases where we will need those really low latencies, and that is going to require edge computing much closer to the user, so we have much shorter internet delays, network delays.”
If AI scaling slows, repurposed central GPUs will cannibalize edge data centers
“And if it turns out that maybe there are diminishing returns from training larger and larger models, or maybe we run out of data because we've exhausted all the data that's available on the internet. When those things happen, it may be that demand for these GP…”
Software agents, rather than human queries, will drive most AI inference workloads
“I think increasingly most of the inference workload will come from other software agents.”
Black: New Mexico's sovereign wealth fund will probably surpass Alaska within three years
“It's, it is the second largest in, in the U.S., only behind Alaska, and we think we'll probably surpass Alaska in the next three years or so.”
Sridhar: Off-grid data centers will not return to the grid
“I think once they get used to this and understand all the advantages of this digitally purpose-built on-site power, they are not going to switch back.”
Kann: Co-located gas power will remain a minority of new data centers
“I think it's going to end up being the minority of new data centers, not the majority of new data centers.”
Kann: Generating capacity is not the primary bottleneck for near-term load growth
“There also though has been a lot of good data to suggest that generating capacity in the next few years is not the dominant
Like, there is enough capacity in enough places to deliver the kind of load growth for the next few years that the grid will need.
So I …”
Kann: Transformer manufacturing capacity will expand and bring down lead times
“I do think we also will see a lot of new transformer manufacturing capacity come online in the next few years. It's, the lead times are gonna come down, and I think we'll see a wave of new technology.”
Kann: Upstart hardware companies will help bridge the transformer supply gap
“I think there's going to be a wave of upstart companies, whether they're doing traditional oil-filled transformers or solid-state stuff like Heron is doing. I think they're going to fill in a lot of the supply gap in the next few years”
Kann: The nuclear reactor market will consolidate into a three-OEM oligopoly
“I personally think in the long run, nuclear probably ends up looking like gas turbines look today, which is there, you know, in the gas turbine world, there are basically three Three OEMs that control like 70, 75% of the market. It's an oligopoly, essentially.…”
Rathi: The nuclear reactor market will remain fragmented via national champions
“I think there'll be national champions and more of them, whereas Siemens GE and Mitsubishi are more than national champions.”
Dell: ERCOT power market volatility will eventually rebound due to load growth
“When volatility is high, people want to build a lot of batteries, and a lot of batteries presumably dampen volatility, and when volatility is low, people don't want to build a lot of batteries... Load growth is likely to still march up. Solar additions are lik…”
O'Neill: H.R. 1 and current federal policies will raise electricity costs
“H.R. One and some of what the administration is doing are gonna raise electricity costs for all.”
Lubershain: Every major utility could deploy hundreds of megawatts of DERs soon
“Could every utility, every major utility in the country within five years have a several hundred megawatt DER program, instead of it just being a few that have a several hundred megawatt DER program? And in a few places where, where you're, you know, have a li…”
Lubershain: Cost-effective battery systems will rely on Chinese cells for longer
“Not, not the cells, right? Those have gotten really cheap, but the full systems need to get cheaper if they're going to be really cost-effective resources. That probably means some portion of the battery, like the cells, at least for a while longer, is coming …”
Virtual power plants will soon bridge grid capacity for large data centers
“So it does take some work to get it, and you're right, no one's done it at a, at any real scale yet but I think we're gonna see it pretty soon.”
Land constraints will keep on-site renewables a niche data center solution
“That's still going to be a relatively small percentage of the overall market because we can't put everything in West Texas, right? We still are going to have The tendency to want to be closer to major metros where that sort of land availability is going to be …”