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 2,090 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 24 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
Thomas: US climate rules target financial impact while EU requires double materiality
“Everything in the U.S., even California, it's all about financial impacts. In the EU, it's much more comprehensive to understand where the impacts outside as well as what's the impact financially to your company.”
Thomas: SEC limits greenhouse gas reporting to Scope 1 and 2
“And then also greenhouse gas emission reporting, and that's just scope one and scope two reporting, and doesn't include all public companies. It's just large accelerated filers and accelerated filers That have to report their scope one and two.”
Matthew: Top-tier lithium producers guided to negative free cash flow
“And if you look at a lot of what was said in this recent earnings season, a lot of the companies, so like a lot of the ones I just mentioned are what we'd call tier one producers. So they have the lowest cost assets in the world. So, you know, if anyone's maki…”
Groarke: Half of the utility workforce will retire in 10 years
“50% of the workforce is going to retire in the next 10 years. You can see that happening right now. So you have this kind of field technicians are leaving, right?”
Mills: Pad-mounted transformer lead times reach as long as two years
“But those pad bound transformers, both single phase and three phase, still pretty darn long. I've seen things as long as two years right now on either.”
Mills: Building a new transformer plant costs $100M and takes 1-2 years
“And then if you really had no equipment availability, and you had to add a new facility or a new line, you're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, well, hundred million dollars of investment in order to get that facility stood up. And then the lead time to…”
Alfred Johnson: Transferable tax credits average 92-94 cents, beating LIHTC pricing
“The average credit price that we found in the sample was 92 to 94 cents, and this is better average pricing than we see currently in the thirty-seven-year-old Lytec market”
Johnson: 2023 clean energy tax credit transactions will reach $7B-$9B
“If you trust our numbers, then it's something like seven to nine billion that will transact, but it's capped. And there was more demand than supply. There is still more demand than supply on those 23 credits.”
Bullard: US ESG reports with data tables dropped to 54%
“So the number of reports that had an ESG data table, okay, like, to my mind, the minimum good grace you could give an analyst reading has gone from 76% to 54%. The number of reports that had a press release has gone down from about 76% to 50%. And now, only 20…”
Bullard: Europe holds 84% of global sustainable assets under management
“Europe is 84% of the almost three trillion dollars of assets under management, sustainable assets under management at the end of last year, and the U.S. Is 11%.”
Bullard: Global per capita greenhouse gas emissions peaked in the 1970s
“And the result is that on a per capita basis we had all greenhouse gas emissions peak in the 19 seventies. In particular methane and nitrous oxide emissions were peaking in the 19 seventies. CO₂ emissions didn't peak, but Into well into this century per capita…”
Kann: US solar PPA prices rose despite falling module prices
“There is a rational way to reconcile the fact that on one hand, solar module prices have continued to decline, while on the other hand, at least in the United States, the cost of solar PPAs has increased during that same period, right?”
Kann: Projected 2030 battery recycling capacity exceeds scrap supply by 5x
“According to the numbers that circular energy storage compiled will be in 2030, will be at about two million tons per year of combined end of life batteries and production scrap versus ten million tons or so of capacity for material recovery and processing. So…”
Cantor: Tesla Model Y was the world's top-selling vehicle in 2023
“The Model Y, at least according to Tesla, was the top-selling vehicle in the world last year, bar none at about 1.2 million EVs delivered.”
Cantor: US public EV charger installations fell to 27,000 in 2023
“So in twenty-twenty-two, about 41,000 public charging connectors were installed, and last year it was closer to 27,000 new net public charger, public charging connectors were installed.”
Brooke: US agricultural methane emissions exceed all fossil fuel methane combined
“Between interior fermentation and manure management in the U.S., that's more methane than our natural gas systems, petroleum systems, and coal mining combined.”
Brooke: Efficiency improvements can abate 20% of projected livestock emissions growth
“The projections are about 20%. We can debate about 20% of the emissions that were expected to increase By this improvement in efficiency. It's actually one of the largest sectors of, ah, marginal abatement that we, that we've modeled.”
Brooke: The 3-NOP feed additive consistently delivers a 30% methane reduction
“Generally, three NOP can deliver, and it has very consistently delivered, an average of about 30% reduction, absolutely, across the board.”
Brooke: Bromoform cuts methane up to 90% in beef cattle on feedlots
“We see that in beef cattle, So on a ration like a beef, beef feedlot ration, high grain, up to 90% reduction, massive reductions, but those animals are also producing less methane already, whereas in a dairy setting, that same compound is maybe going to achiev…”
Brooke: Selective cattle breeding can reduce methane emissions by 20-30%
“We find that there are low methane and high methane phenotypes, and we can, it's heritably tractable. We can breed for low methane phenotypes, and this could be 20 to 30% reductions while we maintain the same efficiency in, you know, in these high efficiency g…”
Brooke: US environmental claims for cattle feed require eight-year FDA process
“Here in the US, if you're going to make a claim about something, like it decreases methane emissions you have to prove that. And that really pigeonholes you into A new animal drug pathway, which is quite extensive. We're talking, you know, average of upwards o…”
Cabiyo: EU Deforestation Regulation will force full forest chain-of-custody tracking
“The EU deforestation regulation is gonna be probably kind of a game changer. We'll see how much the global effect is, but that'll force at least products that are coming into the EU to have full chain of custody tracking all the way back to the source, all the…”
Cabiyo: Post-Soviet Estonian forests face conflict between harvest maturity and social value
“During the Soviet era, there was a lot of agricultural land abandonment that turned into reforestation. And now a lot of those forests, 60 years later, a lot of those forests are maturing and what you have is you have forests that, you know, maybe they've been…”
Cabiyo: Diverting saw timber into biomass CDR reduces overall carbon storage
“Biomass fetch is a pretty high price, and you have shifting production away from saw timber for producing lumber into producing biomass. That means that you have less carbon storage because timber stores carbon. And that also means that you have lower carbon s…”
Kim Zou: Oxy's $1B Carbon Engineering buyout is the first DAC unicorn
“On the acquisition side, I think the one that Climatech investors and founders couldn't stop talking about this year was Oxy's acquisition of carbon engineering at a billion dollars, so the first unicorn we've ever seen in DAC and probably carbon removal.”
Zou: Transportation gets 30% of climate VC despite causing 15% of emissions
“We've tracked transportation accounting for 15% of total emissions. As per the IPCC 2019 report, but receiving 30% of venture and growth investment since 2020. Whereas on the other hand, you know, energy deals, or energy investment made up 22% of overall fundi…”
Kann: The historical voluntary carbon market suffered from vaporware and fraud
“Yes, there has been an enormous amount of vaporware and even some fraud in the historical voluntary carbon market.”
Jaramillo: Iron-Air Raw Materials Cost Under $1/kWh vs $30–$35 for Lithium-Ion
“One quick point of reference, you know, lithium ion active materials. So you pull the active materials out of the ground, you put them on the table, it's maybe 30, 35 dollars a kilowatt hour, unprocessed, right? Not turned into a cell at all. For us, it's less…”
Jaramillo: Wholesale power markets today do not price reliability
“They run their own internal markets, right? They're not part of a wholesale market. And so they can pretty precisely put a value on, on reliability, which the wholesale markets today do not do.”
Treasury rules classify 25% Chinese-owned entities as FEOCs, barring tax credits
“And that, that number is now 25%, so it can't be a Chinese ownership having, Chinese company having an ownership of 25% or more, or else it becomes a foreign entity of concern, and therefore disqualifies you for the tax credit.”
Freyr, Northvolt, and Volkswagen redirected European battery plant developments to the US
“We've actually seen a shift, in some cases, a shift of battery plants that were planned for Europe where they said, we're gonna stop developing this and instead turn to building a plant in the U.S., Fryer did that, Northvolt did that, and a couple others, and …”
Nickel represents the largest mineral value share in most EV batteries
“For most of these electric vehicle batteries of all of the minerals is going to be nickel. And then lithium and cobalt probably fall in second, but the single biggest number to shoot for is the nickel itself, and that's a problem because most nickel is coming …”
Lithium processed in China qualifies for EV tax credits pending FEOC enforcement
“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 …”
Woolley: Current US and European EV peak capacity equals three nuclear power stations
“Well, right now, so, like, if there's about thirteen million electric vehicles across Europe and the US, so, like, eight million and about five million in the US and so that's about 13 gigawatts at peak of load, which is probably, in the US, right now, untappe…”
Lovering: US and Finnish nuclear projects reached ~$8,000 per kilowatt
“The Vogel project, which just finished in the U.S., is, is probably at the high end. I think the project that just came online in Finland is probably up at this level as well. It's about 8000 dollars per kilowatt, so four times more.”
Lovering: China Builds Nuclear Power at Roughly $2,500 per Kilowatt
“We can say China's probably building at about 2500 dollars per kilowatt, so not quite as cheap as South Korea, but, you know, nowhere near the U.S., and again, that's probably because they're building a lot of the same design.”
Lovering: The nuclear island is only 12% of total AP1000 plant cost
“The actual, like, nuclear Component was called the nuclear island, so it's like the reactor, the pressure, containment structure. That's only like, 12% of the total cost, so that nuclear part is very small.”
Lovering: Microreactor developers are shifting to build-own-operate PPA models
“And then some other companies, particularly more on the microreactor side, are looking at doing more like a build-own-operate model, where they'd be selling electricity through a power purchase agreement, which, you know, looks very different. So the company w…”
Kann: Northern Virginia data center power queue exceeds current grid capacity
“Northern Virginia, where, like, there is a, the queue for new load coming from data centers alone, I think, is larger than the entire capacity of the system today in that region.”
Hade: Islandable switchgear adds a 25% to 30% capital cost premium
“It's like a 25 to 30% premium to install the switchgear you need to be able to island.”
Hade: Microgrid ITC was only appropriated for two years, leaving one usable year
“The IRA included what's called the microgrid investment tax credit, which allowed the switch gear that is islandable to receive a 30% tax credit to sort of help bridge that gap. Unfortunately that was only appropriated for two years, and we still don't have th…”
Hade: Economic 24/7 commercial resilience currently requires fossil generation
“I think if you think about an economically viable way to provide commercial and industrial facilities with the type of resilience that most of them are looking for, you're using fossil gas or natural gas or freedom gas plus solar and storage or diesel or propa…”
Hade: 95% of C&I loads are sub-2MW, but soft costs prevent microgrids
“Ninety-five-ish percent of commercial and industrial loads are below two megawatts, right? But almost all the microgrids are built above two megawatts, and the reason for that is not technology cost, it's all soft cost, right?”
Pantano: US faces a 204,000-unit heat pump water heater gap by 2025
“So our, according to our calculations nationally, again, to that twenty-twenty-five deadline, we need 810,000 heat pump water heaters in total installed across the country. We're on pace for 613,000, which leaves about 204,000 or so as a gap in terms of what w…”
Houser: A third EV manufacturing hub is emerging in Nevada and Arizona
“What is surprising is we're starting to see this third EV manufacturing hub emerge in the U.S. Southwest, which has never really made cars before. Arizona, Nevada, tied to California, and a lot of the innovation economy in California, and it's, it appears to b…”
Houser: Only $4.6B of $80B in emerging climate tech announcements has materialized
“So of that eighty billion in announcements, only four billion of that, 4.6 billion, has actually turned into steel on the ground so far over the past two years, right? So it's a big, that's the place where the gap between announcement, as you say, announced In…”
Houser: U.S. wind investment and capacity announcements declined over past two years
“So the pretty troubling one is wind, where investment and announcements in new wind capacity have been declining for the past two years.”
Thiel: Synthetic fuels require $1/kg hydrogen and $100-$200/ton CO₂ to compete
“For a fuel, if you want to get anywhere close to economically competitive, you know, subsidies decide, you have to have hydrogen that's going to be on the order of a dollar per kilogram, and you have to have CO₂ that's in that 100 to 200 dollar per ton range, …”