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 24 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
Pierpoint: Current transmission construction rates will delay net zero goals by decades
“At our current building rates, we'll overshoot our net zero goals by decades.”
Pierpoint: Clean crypto mining can function as a flexible grid resource
“If you're going to be making crypto, do it cleanly. And if you do it cleanly, that actually starts to become sort of interesting as a grid resource because there's a way to shift load into making crypto and you can make money when there's really high amounts o…”
Pierpoint: Alameda City Council shut down an atmospheric sea salt startup test
“In Alameda, just a year ago, there was a startup company that was releasing sea salt particles, or at least trying to, into the atmosphere. And it went real bad, real fast, and the city council effectively shut it down out of a lot of fear”
Pierpoint: Converting to all-electric HVAC doubled home utility costs over gas
“I definitely converted to all electric HVAC in my house, and now I pay almost twice as much as what we paid before on a gas-based system.”
Pierpoint: US built only 386 miles of high-voltage transmission in 2021
“In the U.S., we have about 640,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines. Most of these were built in the fifties and sixties, and most of them are operating at full capacity. Last year, we built a grand 386 miles of new line, and our record for the last de…”
Pierpoint: California majority now favors keeping Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open
“And so for the first time in decades, you actually see more people Wanting to keep the Diablo Canyon plant open than wanting to close it.”
Pierpoint: Hydrogen is probably not going to power passenger vehicles
“I think we're all sort of in agreement that passenger vehicle transportation is
Probably not in the offing for hydrogen.”
Pierpoint: Commercial fleet electrification is the sweet spot for vehicle-to-grid
“And I think if you electrify fleets, that's really the sweet spot for vehicle to grid applications.”
Pierpoint: Carbon-to-value faces structural volume and pricing trade-offs
“And this has just always been a really tough space because the places where you have a lot of volume, like, you know, making cement you have really low commodity prices. So it's hard to get a good price for the carbon that you're capturing. And in places where…”
Pierpoint: Carbon credit buyers will increasingly demand permanence and clarity
“I think what's really gonna drive some of the carbon markets in the near term are a lot of the companies that are actually interested in buying credits, and when they do that, they want to see, I think they're increasingly going to want to see some level of pe…”
Pierpoint: Monetizing grid storage requires renewable-driven price volatility
“The problem is that electricity is cheap and batteries are operated intermittently, so making money on storage can be tricky if you don't have a lot of renewables that Produce significant price volatility.”
Pierpoint: California EVs could reach 5 million by 2030
“By 2030, the number of solar panels could nearly double, and the number of EVs on the road could increase five times to about five million.”
Pierpoint: The mid-2000s cleantech boom failed to disrupt electric utilities
“You know, I remember back in the mid 2000 during that, that clean tech boom that one of the buzzwords everyone kept using is disruption. And everybody was like, we're gonna go disrupt the electric utility industry, and well, now we're all pretty clear that tha…”
Pierpoint: US and France saw reverse nuclear learning curves unlike South Korea
“The truth is that when you look at the United States and you look at France, two of the places that have built the most reactors in the world, you see reverse learning curves, actually, when it comes to the cost of nuclear power. It actually increased over tim…”
Swiss Re projects global property risk pool will grow 33–41% by 2040
“Swiss Re, one of the companies that insures the insurers, Estimates that the global risk pool for property, driven largely by climate, will grow 33 to 41% by twenty-fourty.”
Pierpoint: Heavy-duty trucks account for nearly 25% of transportation emissions
“Heavy-duty trucks make up less than five percent of vehicles on the road, but they generate nearly 25% of transportation emissions.”
Pierpoint: Lithium-ion battery pack prices fell 89% between 2010 and 2020
“They went down 89% between twenty-ten and twenty-twenty from pack prices above 1100 dollars a kilowatt hour down to around 140 dollars a kilowatt hour.”
Pierpoint: GM recalled nearly 150,000 Chevy Bolts following 13 battery fires
“They've gotten safer in many respects, but we have a way to go there, too, given that just last August, GM recalled all of the nearly 150,000 Chevy Bolts they have ever made due to 13 EV battery fires.”
Pierpoint: California grid hosts 1.2M solar panels and 1M EVs
“20 years ago, California had tens of thousands of grid-edge assets. Now, it has millions of them. This includes 1.2 million solar panels, providing an estimated 15% of California's electricity, and a million plug-in vehicles.”
Pierpoint: Utilities historically treated end-users as passive meters, not humans
“Historically, in the utility industry, we just talk about meters, you know, that for them, basically, everything that happens at the end of the line is about the meter. So you have this many meters in this territory, you have this many meters acting in this ma…”
Pierpoint: 2021 Global Energy Efficiency Growth Fell to 1.9%, Lagging Net-Zero Goals
“In 2021, the International Energy Agency estimated that efficiency improved by about 1.9%. That's less than half the rate that's required to meet global net zero targets by 20 50. Furthermore, that rate actually represents some backsliding, because in 2011 to …”
Pierpoint: Hurricane Andrew caused $15.5B in damage and bankrupted 16 insurers
“So one of them, you know, in 1992, we had Hurricane Andrew that hit Florida, and it was 15 and a half billion dollars worth of damage, and 16 insurance companies went belly up as a result.”
Pierpoint: Traditional nuclear reactors max out around 300°C
“It's about 300 degrees C. It's about the most you're gonna get out of a traditional nuclear reactor, and some of these advanced technologies can go a lot higher.”
Pierpoint: Global insurance sector is worth $5 trillion
“To put some numbers on it, the global insurance sector is worth about five trillion dollars. Insurance companies earn roughly 1.6 trillion in premiums for property and casualty insurance, which is the type that often pays out after a climate disaster.”