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 240 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
Woolard: Offshore wind at 15 cents is not economic against small nuclear
“To me, some of those might indicate that something like, I'll pick on offshore wind at You know, 15 cents and up is not economic compared to reliable power at a number lower than that.”
Farooqi: The utility regulatory model is risk-averse and not customer-centric
“The problem with our regulatory model, unfortunately, is again the issue. It is very risk averse, and it's very revenue focused. It is not customer centric.”
Hamilton: CPUC utility-only community solar decision will make projects cost-ineffective
“California basically said, nope, that's not what we're going to do. We're only going to have it work for utilities to run these projects. And what that means is like, they're not going to be cost effective. They're not going to deliver costs to the customers, …”
Origami Solar CEO: Steel is superior to aluminum for solar frame applications
“And steel's inherent fatigue resistance, higher strength it's truly just a better metal than aluminum for a steel frame application.”
Beebe: Sustainable Aviation Fuel Startups Lack 10-Plus Year Business Durability
“I'm not sure that's a 10 year plus long-term sustainable business. A lot of my venture friends have made bets in that space, and we have not.”
Kann: Premature to declare 2035 decarbonization dead over utility gas
“No, it's too early to Right? Like, this is all happening in such real time. Georgia Power is a good example of this. They filed, they're on a three-year IRP cycle. They had to amend their IRP a year after they filed it to account for all this new load growth. …”
Bowe: Electric utilities have been remarkable at integrating clean energy resources
“I think, ah, utilities have been remarkable at the ability to integrate clean resources. I think you know, we just gotta be able to get more online, and there are some fundamental constraints to that within our existing grid.”
Domenech: Higher IRA price tag increases political risk under GOP
“So when we have things that cost way more than we expected them to do, that means that I think those policies have more risk in particularly a Republican administration, but probably in split government too.”
Domenech: Plug-in hybrids are far easier to integrate today than all-EVs
“I love a plug-in hybrid. I think plug-in hybrids are something that should be more part of the discussion there. It's way easier to integrate them into U.S. Society today, but there's some folks on the left who are like, it's gotta be all EV or nothing.”
Gurman: Weak margins were the main factor in Apple canceling its car
“I think ultimately, to be honest with you, the biggest factor was probably, ah, the lack of profitability and the lack of strong margins that they saw coming from the car project.”
Palazzi: California IOUs should share smart meter data with Sunrun and SunPower
“In California, the smart meter data that the three big investor on utilities have actually should be shared with a variety of different players. So for example, the distributed energy companies like Sunrun or Sunpower They can really benefit from having smart …”
Cotton: Traditional battery smelters are dangerous, unsafe hellscapes
“You know, having the desire to understand, well, what happens to these batteries, I went to smelters, and they're a hellscape. It's very dangerous. You've got lead dust all over the floor. You've got a bunch of people wearing hot suits literally chucking batte…”
Ramanathan: Cleantech SPAC growth projections were not backed by performance
“I think the SPAC market especially, I think a lot of companies that use that you know, that pathway to IPO-ing, they really had massive growth stories, and that wasn't underpinned by actual performance or by the technology curve and where they were on it.”
Ramanathan: Electric vehicles make hydrogen passenger cars permanently obsolete
“So Shell announced that it's permanently closing six of its seven hydrogen refueling stations for passenger cars in California, and my forecast is that maybe this is, I hope the end of trying to make hydrogen-powered passenger cars happen, because EVs are simp…”
Lacey: Tripling VPP capacity is necessary for an affordable zero-carbon grid
“If we want any chance of building a grid powered by a hundred percent zero carbon resources and do it affordably and reliably, we need to triple capacity of VPPs.”
Hamilton: Omitting Transmission Tax Credit from IRA Was a Huge Miss
“And one thing that fell out of the mix in the Inflation Reduction Act was an investment tax credit for transmission, which would reduce the cost of building these lines by 30%. So that, to me, was a huge miss.”
Mulholland: Energy transition will fail without accelerated materials innovation
“Candidly, I don't think we get there by a long shot. Even with new materials, it's a heavy lift because there are those cultural and cost and systemic issues we need to overcome.”
Kra: The 2023 AI explosion did not fundamentally change climate tech
“It didn't, again, fundamentally change anything, at least in climate tech.”
Kra: Synthetic aviation fuel is economically unviable without cheap CO2
“You know, even if you have free electricity and free hydrogen, which you don't, and you still need CO₂ at scale, and that cost alone plus some conversion cost kills you here.”
Kra: Many DAC startups lack a credible pathway to $100 per ton
“I think eventually investors are going to look at, do you have a credible path to getting to like a hundred bucks a ton? Of removal. And I think there's a large number of players who don't have a credible pathway to getting there, even if you make big assumpti…”
Davis: US solar-plus-storage attachment rates remain too low to transform VPPs
“But in my opinion, solar plus storage attachment rates in the U.S. Are, like, not high enough yet for batteries to really, like, be a potential game changer in VPPs.”
St. John: Clean hydrogen lacks the infrastructure and economics for end-user adoption
“Governments, the United States, the European Union, South Korea, Japan, others, are incentivizing hydrogen production for these purposes And making goals that are kind of astounding in their scope for gigawatts, tens of gigawatts of hydrogen production, and ye…”
Gallucci: eVTOLs target taxi replacement rather than airline emissions
“Well, with the eVTOLs that you brought up, those are so interesting because they're kind of not, at least at this stage in their development, they're not going after the emissions from passenger air travel. They're kind of trying to create a new segment of avi…”
Wesoff: DOE is funding too many advanced reactor designs instead of standardizing
“There are too many advanced reactor designs being looked at by the DOE and the industry. That's an enormous problem right there. We need to pick a design and stop this first-of-a-kind nonsense.”
Kimber: Very Few Hydrogen Developers Have Built 500MW+ Renewable Facilities
“I challenge most people who call themselves hydrogen developers, you know, when you talk to them to ask them how many, 500 megawatt plus renewable facilities they built, because there aren't very many of those, but there's a lot of hydrogen developers.”
Wesoff: Current climate tech boom will not repeat Cleantech 1.0 bust
“Those of us who have lived through a bubble might see certain parallels this time, and this is certainly not your grandmother's venture capital bubble. It's a very different situation. The societal impetus for acknowledging climate change, the bank and financi…”
Pfund: Electric Hydrogen has not proven itself yet
“Well, I would argue that Electric Hydrogen has not proven itself.”
Pfund: Precision spraying cuts pesticide use by 80%, threatening chemical makers
“There's now precision spraying of pesticides so that you use 80% less. I mean, it's really an existential threat for the pesticide industry when these new spraying arms.”
Senator Becker: Clean energy community lacks political presence in Sacramento
“From being in the legislature, there's not enough, by far, the clean energy community does not show up in a, in, in, in a big enough way in elections or in policy in Sacramento, and that's a big problem, and we need to fix it.”
St. John: Short-haul freight trucking is totally electrifiable now
“I think it does prove that short haul, kind of run and return type trips are totally electrifiable now, and that maybe even some of the longer haul
Freight routes are totally possible in the realm of possibility.”
Bowman: UNFCCC should align with IPCC and embrace carbon removal
“But I think that the UNFCCC should be aligning closely to the IPCC report's definition of carbon dioxide removal. In that it is a solution that's part of the puzzle to reaching our net zero goals.”
Storrow: New England Lags Most Regions in Utility-Scale Renewable Resources
“In terms of utility scale, renewable resources, I mean, you know, we pretty much are behind everybody.”
Naam: Laser space solar is BS because lasers cannot penetrate clouds
“Lasers are BS, because lasers don't penetrate clouds and rain, so why would you do it?”
Naam: Hydrogen cars and trucks will not be cost-competitive with EVs
“Hydrogen-powered cars and trucks? Forget about it. That's been clear for a decade. That's not going to be cost-competitive electrification.”
Melanson: Selling distributed AI to utilities is harder than executing the technology
“Selling distributed AI to utilities is harder than actually executing the AI because they, and everybody who sells and works with utilities knows that their historic incentives are not pro-innovation, not pro-software, not pro-future-proofing investments, and …”
Donti: Generative AI Hype Risks Triggering Another AI Winter
“And with technologies like generative AI, there's a lot of, you know, flashiness and sort of jumping on the hype train, but I do sincerely worry that this will lead to an AI winter if a lot of those, you know, if we see a lot of, you know, hype and unscrupulou…”
Coppola: Lack of Further Government Aid Was A123 Systems' Death Knell
“So I think the fact that the government did not step up further, yeah, I think it was the death knell. That was their last chance, and it didn't come through.”
Coppola: US lost battery dominance due to lack of industrial policy
“It's sort of like this is the consequence of our lack of industrial policy. It's just this big symbolic reminder of how we just dropped the ball of how our system did not work, I don't think. You know, for, it didn't work in terms of long-term strategic bets o…”
Clayton: Open energy systems drive more innovation than Tesla's model
“Well, open because it drives more innovation, and I think that's, you know, in direct contrast to Tesla's value proposition. It gives customers choice with interoperability of technologies.”
Ramanathan: Heavy industries like steel require green hydrogen instead of direct electrification
“There are some things that you can't directly electrify, and, you know, steel, cement, there are these Hard to abate sectors, and I think that green hydrogen, we're going to need a molecule, you know, it's probably not going to be an electron, it'll be a molec…”
Shah: A massive part of the private sector ignores the DOE
“Right now, we have a part of the private sector that's coordinating with the government to tell us exactly how they want to allocate capital and how they want us to use our capital, but there's a huge part of the private sector that, for whatever reason, is no…”
Aggarwal: Burning clean hydrogen should be minimized across industry
“From a kind of overall system efficiency economics, and kind of pollution standpoint, trying to minimize the amount of hydrogen that you're burning, actually, is probably a good direction to go in.”
Morris: Climate Action Will Fail Without Sector-Wide Digital Infrastructure
“From my opinion, if we don't, and the language I use about this, deploy digital infrastructure across all of these different sectors of the economy to help accelerate action against climate change, we will fail. We will not address climate change in a time fra…”
Morris: Very few Web3 or crypto startups sold real enterprise solutions
“In my experience, there were very few web three or crypto companies that were selling a solution to enterprises to solve a specific problem.”
Surprise: Geoengineering risks becoming an excuse to delay fossil fuel emissions cuts
“They are the potential for Solar geoengineering to become a kind of techno fix that is, ah, latched onto by particular economic and political actors to delay, ah, mitigation and energy transitions, the fossil fuel industry, and in so doing, that becomes a kind…”
Shah: The US is on track to meet its domestic lithium needs
“You know, look, I think lithium, we're clearly on track, whether it's the Salton Sea, or whether it's Nevada, or whether it's, you know, some of the other mines that we've already identified in the processing facilities that the Loan Programs Office will fund.…”
Niedermeyer: Argo AI's shutdown does not mean AV tech doesn't work
“And I think it's very easy to look at this and say, shutting down Argo.ai was an admission that this technology doesn't work, or wasn't going to work, or was a scam. And you look out on social media, and people are taking that lesson away, and I think that's t…”