161. Northvolt - Epitaph

Gerard delivered a master class at TedXBerlin about the four forces driving the Energy Revolution Solar, Batteries, Electronics and China. It is called “Welcome to the Era of Energy Disruption”  An excellent introduction for tomorrow’s world.   You can watch Gerard on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXwGvLj4rak  

Just Climate is a 1.5bnUSD vehicle established by Generation Investment with the mission to invest in the highest impact solutions that can radically reduce or remove emissions. They occupy the “missing middle” between VC and PE-Infra allowing growth, FOAK and deployment. Their positioning comes on the heels of VCs such as Prelude Ventures, Energy Impact Partners or Breakthrough Energy Ventures.Laurent and Gerard invite its co-CIO, Shaun Kingsbury, the “inventor” of North Sea Offshore Wind when he was at the head of UK Green Investment Bank.We talk about the investment thesis and its portfolio. Steel? Cement? Electro-mobility? Gerard discusses the general environment when it comes to Climate Tech (not great) and wonders if the third wave of Green Investment is not hitting a wall after years of exuberance.Shaun concludes that there is no future for climate innovations if they don’t deliver attractive risk-adjusted financial returns. There will be short term bumps, but the long term is bright.

Northvolt, once the poster child of the European battery industry, shocked the world last month by filling for Chapter 11 in the United States. The Swedish battery start-up burned through billions of euros in capital from investors such as Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs, and others, with little to show for it. Laurent and Gerard conduct a postmortem on this debacle of epic proportions.With access to confidential sources within the company and its supply chain, they arrived at the same conclusions as Robin Zheng, CEO of CATL—the world’s leading battery manufacturer—who stated: “They have the wrong design, the wrong process, and the wrong equipment. How can they scale up? So almost all mistakes together.”The root causes of Northvolt’s failure? Hubris and culture. What’s next for the European battery industry? It’s time to face reality: partner with the best or risk failure.Northvolt’s collapse is a tragedy for its believers and a costly loss for investors. However, the industry continues to grow at a breakneck pace, and with pragmatism, there is a path forward. 

Deploying solar and heat pumps in the residential sector is all well and good, but many attempts to scale have unfortunately failed.Beyond the king Octopus, Simon Phelan and his company Hometree have managed to become an unlikely challenger in the deployment of the Energy transition inside home. And Simon has achieved this feat by flipping the system onto his head.Hometree is a company that offers its customers home emergency breakdown insurance, plus installations and financing for energy efficient hardware. The achievements of Hometree are truly remarkable: 100,000 homes covered, a network 5,000 engineers, 100mEUR VC raised (Legal & General, Blackrock), 400mEUR securitisation of behind the meter asset portfolio (Barclays and CPPIB).How has the Hometree system cracked the code of home energy decarbonisation?They don’t “push” a product or a technology, they “pull” the client towards the best decarbonised solution. It starts with insurance, making sure that your heating system always work and thus creating long term relationships with clients.Then comes the financing with fully wrapped solutions that lower the prices; the financing is then securitised to investors. And it is a good risk. Finally, having boots on the ground to serve clients to repair, maintain or build.The eco-system is so versatile and powerful that all Utilities are looking to partner with Hometree … in the secret hope of staying relevant against the Octopus juggernaut.  We call Hometree: “the Best of the Rest”.

Laurent goes live to Baku COP29 to discuss with Bruce “Almighty” Douglas, CEO Global Renewable Alliance and tireless promoter of Renewable Energy.He is the one who coins the famous “Triple Renewables” rallying cry, and has been rewarded by joining the precious list of TIME 100 Climate leaders.With Bruce, Laurent dives into COP. Shambolic, Rudderless and Essential nevertheless. The world of renewables is at the centre stage, dealing with diplomats who are doing politics without a calculator while policy makers are busy inventing more alphabet soup concepts while ignoring geopolitics.COP is the summary of the world’s contradictions. COPs are useless and irreplaceable at the same time.  

As COP29 begins, the ripple effects of the re-election of Donald Trump are reaching the shores of the Caspian Sea.  COP28 welcomed 85,000 delegates, within which a significant contingent of Oil lobbyists. COP29 is supposed to be the “Finance COP”, whatever that means, but all major head of states will not participate.What to expect from COP29?   Are COP still useful? Is it the correct format? Who is really committed and who is just paying lip service to fighting Climate Change?  Those questions and more with Lord Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) a global coalition of companies committed to achieving a net zero global economy by 2050. Lord Turner is a leading British businessman and academic, former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (2008-13). From 2008-2012 Lord Turner was the first chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee.

First, Gerard is sorry, he couldn’t make it as he was on a ship in the Irish Sea, and his Starlink wouldn’t connect. So, it is just Laurent interviewing a young superstar, Peter Paul van Voorst, CEO of the mobile battery management platform Skoon.Skoon, based in Rotterdam, is now seven years old and manages more than 1,000 mobile batteries in 14 countries. Mobile batteries range from 1kw to 1MW and are either on trailers or inside 10ft containers.With Peter Paul, Laurent analyses this new segment of the Storage market. How did the technology evolve, what are the established use-cases (Construction, Film sets, Events) but also the new ones (Support to distribution networks).In recent years, not only has the hardware evolved (widespread use of LFP), but there has been an absolute revolution in the software layers, from BMS (Battery Management System) to EMS (Energy Management System) to now the overall fleet management. Those progresses are not only from a technical perspective but also from an economic and environmental perspectives.How this whole system works, grows and provide immense services to the Electrification of the Economy by providing the ultimate flexibility (time and space).

Gerard and Laurent welcome Kristian Ruby, secretary general of Eurelectric, about their new report entitled “Power Barometer – Zeroing in on Electrification”.  To quote the IEA, we enter in the “Age of Electrification” where electrification rate is going to accelerate significantly.We have an extensive conversation about the good news (growth of renewables, energy security progress in response to Russian aggression) and the not so good news (flat demand, as the new power usages – transportation, heating – don’t grow as fast as anticipated; demand reduction or destruction). We discuss the impact of counterproductive taxation of various sources of energy, European competitiveness, the development of behind the meter energy as well as great initiatives such as the North Sea Wind Power Hub”.A very rich state of play.And Gerard apologises for the poor quality of his audio as he was in car driving in France while carrying his precious collection of rare whiskies from Berlin to Dublin.  Link to Eurelectric report: Power Barometer – Zeroing inhttps://powerbarometer.eurelectric.org/  Join us at the Energy Storage Awards 2024https://storageawards.solarenergyevents.com/

What are VPP? Virtual Power Plants. What are DER? Distributed Energy Resources?As the grid becomes more intermittent while the load is growing, those VPP/DER platforms provide a critical role by shedding demand, sometimes for a few minutes, to alleviate stress on the Grids.VPPs can avoid starting polluting peakers via pre-agreed and targeted demand reduction, shift consumption via batteries and even act in in Frequency response market. And System Operators are willing to pay a decent price to have access to those resources.That is the mission of Dana Guernsey. Dana is the CEO of Voltus, a Boulder-CO based leading DER technology platform and virtual power plant operator connecting distributed energy resources to electricity markets. As interconnection queues lengthen and capacity cost explode, are we on the dawn of a crazy development of VPPs.Dana explains that while working for Walmart or fleet of Electric School buses, she can reduce Voltus’ clients power bills by up to 20% while keeping their core services unchanged. We are going to talk about technology, heating and cooling management, AI… and lasagna.A deep dive into the future.--------------------------------------------------------------VERY IMPORTANT: We are doing a Q&A Episode in NovemberAsk us whatever you want!!!  Send your questions: [email protected]

While Gerard is doing his rock star concert at TedTalk Berlin, Laurent has invited an old friend, Roger Atkins, Top Voice on EVs to discuss the people behind the EV revolution.  Roger has a 40 year career in the Auto industry (half of them in EVs) and his cowboy hat makes him a fixture of great EV shows around the world. Roger talk about his encounters with Robin Zeng -  CEO CATL, Wang Chuanfu – founder BYD, Elon Musk, Jack Cheng - co-founder NIO, Bob Galyen – ex GM and CTO CATL,  Li Shufu – founder Geely and a lot of other formidable people pushing the EV revolution.We also talk about the people we admire Michael Dunne, Robert Llewellyn and Simon Moores. Thanks to them, we see clearer.  And in EVs as in any sector, culture eats policy every morning for breakfast.--------------------------------------------------------------VERY IMPORTANT: We are doing a Q&A Episode in NovemberAsk us whatever you want!!!  Send your questions: [email protected]