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 169 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 10 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
Lubbershane: New gas plants are the only near-term option for gigawatt loads
“I mean, if you do need to serve gigawatt scale new loads within, like, let's say the next three, maybe even up to five years, it's really hard to find, to think of another option that will really work, especially if that's, you know, more than very low capacit…”
Lubershain: Most utility service territories have no spare grid capacity left
“In most utility service territories, it's not the case that there's a lot of headroom left on the grid. There's no more headroom left in the grid. There's no more spare capacity in most places, which means that oftentimes you will have to build new power gener…”
Lubershain: EPRI found data centers already slightly lower average customer bills
“And when you do control for other variables that might bias the analysis Epri found that basically, on average, data centers are lowering customer bills a little bit already. So we are seeing, it's not a major impact, it's something like six percent, but data …”
Lubershain: Electricity rates will rise for most people in coming years
“Data centers are absolutely going to be pushing up rates, and other factors, right, in the supply chain. Rates are going up for most people in most places, I think, in the years to come.”
Lubershain: Data center demand shock creates systemic price inflation across electricity delivery
“There's a demand shock and supply chains, like basically every step in the supply chain for equipment, For the electricity system to deploying that equipment and getting it online and hooking everything up is bottlenecked and cannot keep up with demand. And be…”
Lubershain: Special local tariffs cannot prevent data centers from raising systemic power costs
“We're adding a bunch new costs to the system at a global level that there's very little that, basically nothing that your friendly local utility or data center developer can do about, no matter what kind of, you know, special tariff or agreement they negotiate…”
Lubershane: Retail electricity prices will outpace inflation, driving broader inflation
“I have a very high degree of confidence that moving forward, because as you said, all this stuff is, is leading indicators prices are going to rise faster than inflation overall, and because electricity is sort of a Foundational good for the economy. They'll a…”
Lubershane: Multi-year data center growth will force large-scale off-grid power adoption
“And if this data center boom continues for longer than the next three to five years, if it's really a robust trend that is gonna, you know, be, Decade plus, you know, for the foreseeable future, then I don't see any other option besides going to something like…”
Lubershain: The nuclear industry cannot sustain a Cambrian explosion of reactor designs
“There just can't be a Cambrian explosion of new reactors. The, Industrial logic of the nuclear industry just doesn't lend itself to that. I think best case scenario, it's bad for the industry if you end up with, you know, four or five competing reactor designs…”
Lubershain: Geothermal deployment will not truly take off until the 2030s
“I think that the inflection is, is going to be much slower and happen over the next five years, and that geothermal will really be positioned to take off more so in the 20 thirties than in the late 20 twenties.
That's my bet at the moment.”
Lubershain: Ford is moving ahead with $3B Michigan CATL-licensed plant
“Ford has basically said, we're moving ahead with this three billion dollar battery plant in Michigan, where they're licensing lithium iron phosphate technology from CATL, the Chinese battery giant.”
Lubershain: New nuclear power will not scale in US until 2035+
“I don't think we're gonna see, we might see a little bit, you know, in the 2030, early 20 thirties time frame, but I think for the most part we're talking 2035 and beyond when we, when we'd actually have new nuclear power at scale coming online.”
Lubershane: US obsession with novelty created dependence on China's manufacturing scale
“And I think, you know, comparing the US and China, part of the issue with the US is, you know, we really do kind of tilt towards this mindset of novelty and, you know, boldness and daring and restlessness, which are definitely huge assets and strengths for the…”
Lubershane: Startups 20-50% better than lithium-ion repeatedly get crushed
“It's kind of amazing now for over a decade, there's almost a continuous stream of companies I feel like I've seen across a wide range of different approaches to building a mousetrap to store energy that have always been in the 20 to 50% theoretically better th…”
Lubershane: Gen-III+ nuclear reactors are all the industry needs
“So-called Gen-III technology or, you
Gen three plus technology, which is very much an incremental improvement over the light water reactor designs that have come before, is really, in my opinion, all we need.”
Lubershane: Serial deployment of 1-3 reactor designs beats novel nuclear
“If I were the omnipotent energy czar of the country or the world, I would pick
One, two, maybe up to three designs, and deploy them serially and, you know, say we're gonna do 10 of these, and we're gonna see how it works out, maybe 10 of each and we're gonna s…”
Lubbershane: 3x battery density improvement won't make electric aviation viable
“And so I think most people who've taken a serious look at aviation and even considering major step changes in battery density, let's say a three times improvement in density, From where we are today, there's just a vanishingly small share of total flight miles…”
Lubbershane: Battery electrification is not practically feasible for maritime cargo ships
“You can only imagine what kind of additional electric infrastructure would be required to power, you know, large cargo ships at a port and not just providing shore power while they're parked, but actually giving them enough energy to make a journey across the …”
Lubbershane: Maxing out global cellulosic biomass solves only half of aviation demand
“Even kind of optimistically, if you were to max out that resource globally,
And all of it were to go into the aviation fuel market, especially given the growth we're expecting to see in demand for aviation fuel.
we're still talking about probably solving abou…”
Lubbershane: Expensive synthetic fuels make sense to preserve existing vehicle and hub infrastructure
“The more I think if you take decarbonization really seriously, then most likely that is the biggest constraint, upgrading those really expensive heavy duty vehicles, long lived vehicles and long lived hub infrastructure. And probably it does make sense to find…”
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.”
Lubbershane: Building new natural gas is the easiest near-term option for utilities
“So for any electric utility, for any load serving entity, grid operator who has to meet rising demand in the next, let's call it two to three years, even up to five years, the easiest, most straightforward thing to do at this point is to build new gas fire gen…”
Lubbershane: North America will significantly expand natural gas generation
“I don't see a way that we make it through this first phase of the gauntlet without adding a significant amount of more natural gas fire generation in North America.”
Lubbershane: Surging electricity demand makes a nuclear energy renaissance all but certain
“I think that the gauntlet makes it all but certain that that's one pathway we will turn towards.”
Lubbershane: Renewables and Storage Cannot Provide Multi-GW Firm Power by 2026
“If you need new gigawatts of firm, twenty-four-seven power, like, in the next three years, there's nothing that can really supply that from renewables and storage.”
Lubershane: Decarbonized grid storage needs will fall closer to 47 days
“So, you know, between the minutes of energy storage we have today and 47 days, I think we're going to fall probably actually ultimately closer to the 47 days level, ah, than even minutes, hours, or just a few days worth of storage.”
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 …”
Lubershain: Electrifying heat could triple cold-climate peak electricity demand
“And so what this might do in cold climate environments is, is Basically shift peak demand from the summer to the winter and increase the peak by about three X.”
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: Decarbonization will trigger intense competition for waste biomass
“You need new dedicated land growing crops for that biomass, and I, you know, jury's still out, right, but I'm skeptical we're going to see that happen, and what that means is actually you have a run not, not on new land, but probably a run on what's called, wh…”
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, …”
Lubershain: Home Gas Appliances With Upstream Leaks Are Worse Than Coal
“If you are to burn natural gas in in an appliance in a home, for example, like a home boiler or in, in, in an oven And you take that two and a half percent leak rate upstream as a given, then it's actually even a little bit worse in the next 20 years from a gl…”
Lubershain: Gas utilities face a death spiral as volume declines
“And what that's manifesting in partially right now is like threats to natural gas where, you know, there's a lot of attention being paid to displacing natural gas... And then, you know, most importantly, it means that natural gas infrastructure owners with dec…”
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: Electrifying natural gas demand gets exponentially harder near 100%
“What you find in almost every use case, and I would say in particular Again, in the distributed use cases like building heating is that, you know, maybe the first, you know, the first 50% of gas demand that you soak up with electrification is relatively easy. …”
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…”
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 …”
Lubershain: Data center growth inflates utilities' non-negotiable grid maintenance costs
“Two-thirds of the expenditures they're making today across utilities are non-negotiable, and it's, Has nothing to do with growth, right? All that stuff would be happening even if the data center, boom, were not happening. And so, all that stuff is getting more…”
Lubershain: Grid equipment and gas plant costs have doubled or tripled
“Conductor is, like, twice as expensive. So, like, basic aluminum, steel-reinforced conductor. Transformers are two-plus times more expensive. Switchgear is two times more expensive. Gas power plants are two to three times more expensive.”
Lubershane: Grid equipment costs 2-3x more and takes 3-5 years to deliver
“Anything you want to order today is probably going to take three plus years in the case of gas turbines, probably more like five years to be able to get your hands on. Anything you order today, whether it's a turbine or a transformer or just the, you know, alu…”
Lubershane: 2025 EV power demand growth matched data center growth globally
“The IEA recently came out with some data recently on global electricity demand growth, and it turns out that last year in 2025 from about, from a global standpoint, there was almost exactly as much electricity demand growth around the world from electric vehic…”
Lubershane: A home humanoid robot will use 3-4x a refrigerator's annual power
“If you were to sort of extrapolate from the humanoids that are being built today and you were to run one for five or six hours a day doing various types of tasks around your home and your garden, sort of, you know, the theoretical robo-butler, that would consu…”
Lubershain: High oil and gas prices drain drillers from geothermal projects
“I actually think to some extent, the timing and the pace of geothermal deployment might also depend on the alternative for that skilled workforce.
So like high oil and gas prices, really rich, rich oil and gas market, harder to convince drillers to
To go to wo…”
Lubershain: Distributed natural gas gensets are near-perfect resources for grid operators
“The closest thing to a perfect resource from the perspective of a grid operator is, you know, a flexible, you distributed genset of some sort that can turn on and off really quickly, can ramp, ramp up and ramp down very quickly. And ideally, if it's a natural …”
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 …”
Lubershain: Nuclear will never beat natural gas on pure economics
“Nuclear, my own view is really never gonna look great from a pure economic basis on paper, relative to, say, just more natural gas power generation, unless we have, like, significant gas, natural gas resource constraints, which we might have bottlenecks in, in…”