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
Abbott: 2021 Texas blackouts prove fossil fuels are necessary
“Sean, this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. As a result it just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states.”
Niedermeyer: Tesla's self-driving pitch works by matching consumer mental models
“And the reason Tesla's been successful at that is not because it's technically plausible at all. It's because it fits exactly what's in the mental model of the American consumer when they hear the word self-driving cars. And Tesla's the only company that's sel…”
Brophy: Fossil fuel assets are the new subprime mortgages
“The fact that fossil fuel assets are basically the new subprime mortgages. It's existential for them because some of these disclosures could expose that.”
Jurowicz: Gen-IV reactors solve problems the industry does not currently face
“The things, the problems that Gen-Fur reactors solve are not the problems we're faced right now, we're facing right now. We just need a lot of low-cost, affordable nuclear power. We don't have to reinvent the wheel.”
Hickenlooper: Environmental nonprofits fund overhead by opposing and slowing development
“Part of it is we have to recognize that all these non, non-profit organizations, they are organisms. They have a life of their own, and like any organism, they're gonna, they don't wanna make themselves extinct. And so they've been raising money to pay for the…”
Garabedian: Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, and Cummins margin models will fail in hydrogen
“If you look at the incumbent electrolyzer producers they're the big industrials. I'm talking about companies like Siemens and ThyssenKrupp Cummins, who are not in the business of mercilessly driving cost out of their products, right? They're heavy industrial s…”
Garabedian: Nel and Plug Power lack the technical innovation to cut costs
“Then there are kind of some pure plays, companies like Nell, like Plug Power's not quite a pure play, but you could put them in that category. And these are folks who Haven't shown the desire maybe, or the ability to be highly innovative technically to drive c…”
Shah: NRC is not currently the primary bottleneck for nuclear
“I would say that having done this nuclear stuff for the better part of three years, I don't know of a single project that was hurt in any material way by the NRC. Right? So I do see the NRC being a bottleneck where we're building 10 reactors a year, but we're …”
Beebe: It is game over for hydrogen and internal combustion vehicles
“I, you know, I think it's game over for hydrogen based vehicles. It's game over for internal combustion engines.”
Firing the Supercharger team to bet on autonomous tech is irrational
“You get rid of the team responsible for your most valuable asset, and
You put all the bets of your company, you bet the company on a technology that isn't anywhere near ready for the market.
All of these things together, they're not rational.
They are not rati…”
O'Donnell: US developers are dangerously distracted by speculative hydrogen subsidies
“In the U.S., there's a developer community's attention, in my humble opinion, has been a bit attracted to the hydrogen subsidies, and that The place will get the next wave of growth for utility-scale solar. We'll be building hydrogen projects that sell hydroge…”
Sussman warns refining industry may lock into blue hydrogen permanently
“It's really scary to me to think that the whole refining industry, which is one of the two largest users of gray hydrogen today, and is a prime candidate for switching to green, could go permanently in the direction of blue now, Sussman said.”
St. John: Clean hydrogen incentives risk becoming a tax-credit mining scheme
“I fear some jockeying around from folks who see this as being either a tax credit mining or farming opportunity, or a chance to see their existing fossil fuel assets be repurposed for use in what is putatively a decarbonization strategy, but which runs the sig…”
Wesoff: All advanced nuclear reactor designs are untested paper reactors
“All of the reactors in the advanced reactor population are paper reactors. We haven't built them. We haven't tested them.”
Wesoff: SMRs are engineering solutions misapplied to financial and PR problems
“Small reactors, SMRs, are a nuclear engineering solution to a financial problem. We need a financial solution to this financial problem. Small modular reactors are a nuclear engineering, engineering solution to a PR problem. We need a PR solution to that, not …”
Wesoff: Nuclear industry should build AP1000 reactors over novel designs
“We should be figuring out how to build AP 1000 instead of flailing around trying to find silver bullet designs that will rescue this industry.”
Real-time electricity pricing is a terrible idea for retail consumers
“I also hear a lot of things about, we're magically gonna give everyone real-time rates. I think that's a terrible idea. I think that is a terrible idea. I think real-time rates are a, are an approach to trying to personalize, but actually passing the entirety …”
Naam: Wilderness no longer exists; preserving ecosystems requires active human management
“There is no such thing as wilderness on planet Earth anymore. We have modified the climate such that if you're, if it's a forest, if it's a coral reef, if it's a wetlands, It doesn't exist in the same climactic band that that natural ecosystem evolved in. And …”
Pichai: AI is more profound than fire or electricity
“You know, I've always thought of AI as the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire or electricity or anything that we have done in the past.”
Shah: No EPC contractor will provide a guaranteed price on AP1000
“I don't think any EPC contractor wants to wrap that thing and provide you a guarantee price, but whatever, you know.”
Steve Coll found reporting on Exxon scarier than covering the CIA
“I thought it was hard to report on the CIA, and I came to understand that Exxon was far more difficult and a little bit scarier even.”
Kra: VCs who triggered the run on SVB share blame for damage
“You might have just destroyed an institution that created value for our companies. And turns out that the people who tried to stay the course are in just as good shape as you are, except the whole ecosystem took a body blow that it didn't need to take. So I th…”
Iseman: Inhaling sulfur dioxide hurts less than a massive bong hit
“Like, if you've ever done a massive bong hit, like, it's, let's, it's not, it sounds, it's, a bong hit is worse than, you know, what you're gonna inhale in terms of the pain.”
Surprise: Make Sunsets' $10 cooling credits are scientifically dubious marketing
“They really, at this point, don't have any way to measure whether or not they're actually releasing the proper amount of sulfur if it's making it into the stratosphere, and it's, you know, easy, like, these just round, easy numbers of correlation from, well, o…”
Iseman: Academic geoengineering scientists need startup operators to execute real-world testing
“I've worked with PhDs before in previous roles, and, you know, I get what they do. They're very challenging, smart. They can look very far into the future, but at the end of the day, when the rubber meets the road, they need someone like me to actually The sci…”
Dr. Terrell: Cancer Alley disproportionately burdens communities of color with pollution and cancer
“To me, Cancer Alley is a place in southeast Louisiana where communities of color are disproportionately burdened with air pollution and with cancer.”
Shah: US transformer backlog stems from avoiding VPPs, not actual shortages
“This is why we have a three-year backlog on distribution transformers. It's not because we have a shortage of distribution transformers in this country. It's because everybody wants to fix the problem using 19 eighties approaches instead of virtual power plant…”
Cape Coral's low elevation makes it unsuitable for 200,000 residents
“And so the place was always, you know, not only in harm's way, but with these canals to carry the storm throughout the city when it does come incredibly low-lying, incredibly wet just not the kind of place where you should put 200,000 humans.”
Florida's coastal development model operates as an ecological Ponzi scheme
“And so that's what I mean by this ecological Ponzi scheme, where eventually, kind of, the bill comes due, and Hurricane Ian is one of those moments where suddenly we've put twenty million people in harm's way, And the harm arrived.”
Corbeau: Germany decommissioning nuclear plants to burn coal is 'completely insane'
“The second reason is that Germany has continued with their nuclear power plant decommissioning, so a few gigawatt free nuclear power plants were decommissioned at the end of last year, and they are going to decommission another three at the end of this year, w…”
Paul claims the CBO is anything but a fair and honest broker
“Both teams agree that they are, you know, a fair and honest kind of broker in the policy situation. But in fact, CBO is anything but.”
Westhoff: US Is No More Suited to Solar Manufacturing Than iPhones
“However, I have to say that the United States is no more suitable to solar manufacturing than it is to iPhone manufacturing.”
Westhoff: Auxin Solar Is an Uncompetitive Manufacturer Seeking Government Aid
“I would suggest that they are just an uncompetitive manufacturer looking for any help they can get.”
Griffin: Hawaiian Electric's transition is like trading cigarettes for crack
“Your plan To me, amounts to a shift from one fossil fuel to another. We're going from cigarettes to crack. We're going from coal to oil.”
Musk: Congress should cancel Biden's federal climate legislation entirely
“I would say, honestly, I would just can this whole bill. Don't pass it. That's my recommendation.”
Musk: The government should eliminate all subsidies entirely
“I'm literally saying get rid of all subsidies.”
Gershenson: Climate VCs often give under-informed board advice with unearned certainty
“The challenge that I have with that group of investors is that oftentimes the advice that they give to founders, or the guidance that they give to founders while they're on their boards, is often not as informed as it should be, but is given as very definitive…”
Su: Climate tech models assuming €100 carbon prices carry major political risk
“If you're building, I don't know if you're a crazy person, and you're unfortunately building a DAC company right now, or Green Steel, and your revenue model assumed a 100 euro per ton carbon price in perpetuity, You're taking on political risk whether you ackn…”
Sage's subsurface storage is more cost-effective than lithium-ion batteries
“You're using four batteries to achieve that 16 hour duration, whereas ours, it's made really for that longer duration, and so it's going to be more cost effective than the batteries.”
Sam White claims Indian business culture freely accepts copying patented technology
“Even with a patent, you know, in India, the culture is, there's nothing wrong with stealing someone's technology. It's just the way it is.”
Graphitic claims its process yields the cheapest non-SMR hydrogen at scale
“I mean, it's still, even without any carbon value, if you build a big plant, this is still, we think, the cheapest sort of non-SMR-based hydrogen that you're going to be able to produce.”
Needham: Fusion is now an engineering problem, not a science problem
“We're just confident the science will work. It's basically an engineering problem right now. Build a comp, you know, a complex machine. But if you get that right, like you're off to the races.”
Garabedian: Global electrolytic hydrogen has entered disillusionment mode
“It's not a seller's market in electrolytic hydrogen anymore. At least not for the time being. We've definitely come out of hype mode, and we're in hydrogen disillusionment mode right now, I think, globally.”
Shah: Trump wind and solar pauses are retribution for Biden oil policies
“I think turnaround is fair play. Like, I mean, I really do think that the wind and solar pauses at the Army Corps Engineers and Fish and Wildlife are, you know, retribution for a lot of the stuff that the Biden administration did, the oil and gas industry”
Shah: Chris Wright is a fantastic pick for Secretary of Energy
“I thought his memo was great. I thought it was well-balanced. I thought it was, you know, like, what you would have expected from a George W. Bush appointee. So, like, I think Chris Wright's a fantastic pick as the Secretary of Energy, and so I'm glad to see h…”
Farooqi: Outside retail aggregators understand customers far better than regulated utilities
“These companies understand customers a hundred times better than regulated utilities. They have come in from the outside. They know how to talk and communicate to customers and do the pricing in a way that the customer says, oh, I see, this will lower my bill,…”
Shah: Clean energy companies must stop hiding their DOE loan applications
“People are so afraid of having anyone hate them that they're like, oh, I don't want to mention that we're a, we're an applicant to the loan programs office. I don't want to mention that we're, you know, applying for this grant or whatever else, right? That's n…”
Janus: Power availability, not chip supply, is the primary constraint for AI
“Absolutely power. Absolutely. I think, you know, six to 12 months ago, I think a lot of the companies were concerned about chip availability, but I think everyone has come around to realize that that is not going to be the biggest constraint.”