This is the type of investing one (at least me) dreams of doing if you're fortunate enough to get to $B+ in net worth. Sam knows enough people who knows how this tech works to get a read on quality / achievability, and if he gets it right (however challenging/unlikely), it means incredible things. If it doesn't work, whatever -- at least he's shooting at something interesting. And talk about something intellectually interesting to be involved with -- it must be a collection of great minds at this company.
Completely agree with this. This is throwing money at an interesting problem with an incredibly low outcome of success.
Given the amount of public dollars already put into this without success and the amount of money they are going to have too continually pour into this to make it successful it seems like a serious hail mary. Even if they do have the brightest minds working on it. I wish them the greatest success - we need this.
To your point it's an incredibly privileged investing position to be in and to be honest - he can take a lot of the gains he has already had in relatively uninteresting companies that have been successful and hope to something truly remarkable for humanity.
> This is throwing money at an interesting problem with an incredibly low outcome of success.
But an incredibly high return if successful. Nuclear fission (edit... accidentally wrote fusion here), if we can figure it out, is potentially the golden ticket to reducing our carbon footprint. Unlike geothermal energy, it can be done anywhere. Unlike wind or solar, it can be done at any time. It doesn't have the safety issues associated with fusion, nor does it generate waste products nearly as hard to deal with.
Right now, carbon emissions breakdown in the US are broken down by:
Transportation - 29%
Electricity production - 25%
Industry - 23%
Commercial and Residential - 13%
Agriculture - 10%
Land use and forestry - 12%
By moving to fusion, you can all but eliminate fossil fuel usage in the first two (and largest) categories. You can knock a large chunk out of the next two categories, where much of the emissions is due to burning fossil fuels for energy (heating, etc.). You'll still have emissions from agriculture and land use, but you can clamp down on most emissions in a big way.
If you can figure out fusion and get it working on an industrial scale level on par with other forms of electricity production (which is a big if), then you'll have achieved a monumental technological leap and you'll make a lot of money while at it.
Listen I'm all for these kinds of investments. Its very high risk and potentially a high reward. I think likely the reward will be some technology development in the process that helps something else but not in the direction they currently are going. Thats just the way things typically shake out. Especially grandiose plans like this.
They need to prove that the research works to actually produce net electricity - which requires a scientific breakthrough. Next after a research breakthrough - they need to make this a product -- then a commercial product. During that process they need to make this a commercially viable economically viable product that can compete against other forms of energy in the marketplace. They will need to get through serious regulatory requirements. And remember that they need to make this commercially viable to produce electricity at a very low cost - its super competitive at baseload power cost range.
By the time this comes to market the energy landscape will be completely different. It is already moving incredibly quickly.
Like I've said on other post - we need these kinds of moonshots but let's not have them distract against the other important work of deploying already commercially ready technology into the market.
Helion might not work out like they hope but if it does, it'll use aneutronic fuel, producing only 6% of its energy as neutron radiation. That's low enough that they don't need a heat cycle, which gives them a shot at a pretty low cost per kWh. I think they've estimated four cents, which is pretty good for scalable, dispatchable power without batteries.
The UK recently announced a regulatory regime for fusion, with significantly lighter requirements than fission since safety and proliferation issues are much less troublesome. That would be even more the case for aneutronic fusion. Possibly the US would be silly enough to get in the way but many other countries certainly wouldn't, including China.
> - they need to make this a product -- then a commercial product. During that process they need to make this a commercially viable economically viable product that can compete against other forms of energy in the marketplace.
They’re in a really good position here because they actually don’t. Being a no-carbon power source puts them in an almost new market. The government can (should) regulate carbon fuel away, and pour money into this in a non-market way to tip scales. Energy is heavily regulated but also heavily government funded.
Actually not quite - it still needs to be economically attractive in order for it to be a viable product in an energy marketplace that is already deploying @ scale zero carbon generation.
Externalities are actually starting to get baked in (depending on jurisdiction) or are essentially getting mandated in by policy (i.e. no coal in-state via political process). For most of North America coal isn't financially viable unless it gets political beneficial treatment - its been losing to natural gas for awhile now.
To be fair to your comment though air pollution relating to climate warming has been treated as a tragedy of the commons problem for ever.
Even better: much of the "industry" emissions are from producing fuel for the "transportation" category. Oil refineries are the biggest emissions generators in the US manufacturing sector, and some of the largest consumers of electricity in the process, to the point that many refineries have their own power plants on site. If we had fusion power and electric cars, much of those "industry" emissions go away too.
Fusion is what they are doing here. Fission we have already figured out and have been generating power from for decades.
Fusion does not have the runaway reaction safety issues that fission has.
Also, what you're describing is what we've known since we fairly easily harnessed fusion to make a hydrogen bomb.
Controlling the reaction rate so it doesn't explode is metastable with fission, and nearly impossible with fusion. This solution is basically just using tiny explosions.
As others have mentioned, you have your terms backwards. We already have nuclear fission, and its only problem is political FUD[1]. I can't imagine that the fossil fuel industry's FUD machine will spare fusion energy.
[1]: Nuclear is one of the safest kinds of energy we have even including every absurd disaster. We already know how to deal with the waste, and the unit cost of managing nuclear waste is very low (the up-front costs are high, but we're already committed to those costs).
It might be not unreasonably unsafe, compared to e.g. coal (which will be phased out). But as an investment it is even riskier than FRC fusion. The ratepayers of South Carolina were made to invest $30B in a fission project that will, in the end, produce exactly zero watt-hours of energy. But might burn even more money, first.
Yes, large fission projects probably aren’t the way to go these days—I’d rather see investment in Small Nuclear Reactor technology. More importantly though, considering the alternative (failing to mitigate climate change) the risk-adjusted cost of nuclear is minuscule. Moreover, I don’t understand how it is “riskier” than fusion, which still hasn’t been deployed anywhere in any form?
You are not factoring in opportunity cost: that $30B would buy a hell of a lot of solar panels and wind turbines, with perfect reliability. Displacing a megawatt of carbon-generated power now is worth a lot more than displacing that same megawatt in 10 years, because 10 megawatt-years worth of carbon did not, thereby, go into the atmosphere.
> You are not factoring in opportunity cost: that $30B would buy a hell of a lot of solar panels and wind turbines, with perfect reliability.
What do you mean "with perfect reliability"? Do you mean it can buy the panels and turbines and batteries? How much reliable energy capacity does $30B buy?
> Displacing a megawatt of carbon-generated power now is worth a lot more than displacing that same megawatt in 10 years, because 10 megawatt-years worth of carbon did not, thereby, go into the atmosphere.
Yes, there are different return-on-investment curves and the short term obviously favors things which can be deployed quickly. The question is which pays off the best for the relevant timescales. Also, we should invest in both--now isn't the time to pinch pennies nor to put all of our eggs in one basket.
Why d'you think? Helion has been super successful with their demos so far. The timelines are optimistic but I don't see why you'd expect the technology itself to fail with, say, >80% probability.
You misread my comment. 80% was in reference to a probability of failure. I think any chance of success 1:4 or greater can't exactly be called “incredibly low [probability] of success”, and even 1:4 seems unduly pessimistic.
I have been thinking a lot about this. I wish I could invest my paltry funds into climate-focused ventures as part of a crowd of like-minded small-scale investors. So I am investing in things like renewable energy ETFs. But my impression (correct me if I’m wrong) is that I am investing in companies deploying proven technologies, rather than moonshots. I want to invest in moonshots, given the fact that I think we need moonshots in order for human civilization to survive. But a) I would need significant funds to do so, and b) realistically, I wouldn’t be able to evaluate those moonshots for technical and economic feasibility. It is a discouraging realization.
I spend a lot of time thinking about this as well as someone who has worked in climate tech for > decade and am currently looking to deploy capital. It's quite tough.
1. Impossible to get anywhere close to good investing rounds. And deal flow requires serious capital on any meaningful technology (sorry carbon accounting software doesn't move the needle, needed but it isn't a game changer).
2. Investing in companies in the market as an equity holder. It feels like it doens't actually help the company - there's an argument that it helps the industry as there is more money/attention/talent attraction. Seems like a poor investment for myself given the P/E ratios on most of the companies.
3. Investing in actual projects - small returns but meaningful results. You don't get the outsized returns on companies growing quickly.
4. I do believe the success of humanity in the climate tech space is actually not through moon shots but a constant deployment of ready tech (read solar, ESS, wind, etc) and getting our politicians to probably signal the value proposition that climate tech brings. I do think moon shots have a place and we should bet on them.
I am open to ideas on how to help and new models if anyone has any!
>sorry carbon accounting software doesn't move the needle
I think the place where software could be really useful is with demand response and grid management. There's tons of work in that space already.
Seems to me that long-duration storage and electrochemical production of fuels/chemicals/materials are the places where new technology is really needed, thinking ahead to when we get to 100% decarbonization of the grid and beyond that to when we try to decarbonize everything else. If the exponential growth and learning rates of solar keep up, in 15-20 years it will meet our entire projected primary energy demand and cost 5x less than the going rate for electricity right now. (Those are big 'if's, though!)
Alan Kay[0]: "The key to the Parc approach was to be able to do many experiments in the future without having to optimize." What technology are we going to need 15-20 years from now, when solar energy is 5x cheaper, that doesn't exist yet? My thinking is that electrochemistry is the big missing puzzle piece. If we totally dropped fossil fuels, we'd need to pump something like the entire present-day electric grid's worth of power into making chemicals/fuels.
Some companies with new technologies in this space that I like:
-Form Energy: low-cost iron-air batteries
-Prometheus: solar fuels from CO2
-Boston Metal: zero-carbon steelmaking
-Twelve (formerly Opus 12): other chemicals from CO2
I'm in a similar position (haven't worked in climate tech, but have been diving in recently), and am interested in connecting with others who are trying to find the most useful way to deploy capital in service of a better climate outcome. If you're up for connecting, my email is in my profile.
Thanks for this very thoughtful reply! I thought 2) in particular was a very good point, and one I hadn’t really considered. I would definitely be interested in hearing more about specific opportunities in 3) if anyone has any. At this point, I’m not terribly interested in monetary returns when it comes to climate stuff, so I almost think of these activities as donations. That also means that my funds available are quite limited in the comparison to usual capital for this stuff (on the order of a few thousand).
This stuff is all "personal responsibility", and the fossil fuel industry invests a lot in making us think that recycling, etc will save us. It's really about making sure the fossil fuel industry can continue to pollute without having to pay the social costs.
The bottling industry similarly ran campaigns in the 70s to convince people that litter pollution was a personal responsibility problem, so that it wouldn't have to pay to clean up its mess.
Similarly, rather than making safer cigarettes, the cigarette industry ran commercials and hired "experts" to testify that the cause of household fires was flammable furniture (not cigarettes). As a consequence, several generations grew up around toxic flame retardants.
Ultimately personal responsibility cannot carry the day. Not only is it politically impossible to convince everyone to give up their luxuries and frivolities, but even if we could, these things account for a small share of our pollution. We need to transition our economy to clean energy. Carbon tax (or "pricing" if you chafe at the word "tax") is necessary (but probably not sufficient).
Yes, this will probably "harm the economy" in the same way that limiting one's credit card debt "harms their personal finances".
Sorry but not even close. Think about the fact that 80% of the world population lives on so little compared to America/Europe. If 100% of the planet follows your lifestyle advice, we would still be in trouble. It’s sad but the only "positive" thing right now about climate change is that most of the world is too poor to leave a big imprint.
We actually don’t need to lower the cost of permanent CO2 sequestration by very dramatic anounts before it’s feasible to finance a CO2 neutral Western lifestyle via taxes. The big challenge is scaling it up, and also having a society that’s productive enough to finance this.
For us, I think the sweet spot is a little riskier than renewable energy ETF's but a lot less risky than a fusion moonshot.
If electricity gets just a little cheaper (and it's fairly obvious that it will), then Power-to-Gas technology becomes viable, and could displace fossil fuels quite rapidly.
I'm looking into it. Email in profile if you're interested.
If you're more of a technical person, starting an analyst firm that provides insight for existing venture capital firms might be a solid play. Lots of people would like to save the planet and get rich doing it, they just need someone to tell them how.
No comment on this technology but only commenting on the thought process that Sam or any of these “intellectual billionaires” are right about complex scientific problems because they know enough people who know how this tech works is not valid. The people who circle billionaires have a huge conflict of interest to convince them to fork over billions, and they know people like Sam are smart enough that you can’t lie to them. So they do (subconsciously often) what George Costanza said which is believe in the lie themselves. So yeah don’t trust experts If they’re looking at you for a cheque (even if they themselves won’t directly get the check).
It seems like this would be a great place for a prediction market. Anonymously aggregate the information of people who know enough that they are prepared to lay money on the line. Replace the conflicts of interest with a direct interest in profiting from being right.
Completely agree. More abundant clean power, combined with the eventual takeover of Graphene in the battery sector (dramatically increases power density, recharge time and reduces weight) and I believe we will have a path to significantly decrease global emissions.
When we get to the point of putting Graphene batteries in planes than can fully recharge in the time it takes to unload and reload passengers/luggage it’s going to be pretty incredible.
Aircraft will probably adopt LH2, instead, carried in tanks slung under the wings, like the engines. Or maybe with very thick wings. The LH2 will be made on the spot at the airport from power drawn from high-tension power lines to wind & solar farms.
Once the hydrogen-powered aircraft start flying, kerosene-powered craft will find it impossible to compete.
This! I'm not positive on nuclear fission reactors because I don't think they are robust against the climate challenges we face. Too much bad waste that requires functioning societies to maintain. However, fusion doesn't seem to have these problems. I'm hopeful something comes out of it and the world moves fast.
