April 2, 2024

Twelve’s Transformational Mission: Obsoleting Fossil Fuels

Nucleation announces its investment in Twelve's Series C through its Fund I.

Twelve's tagline, "a world made from air," seems quite incredible at face value.  The average person may not realize that gaseous components of air, like CO2 and H2O molecules, contain the ingredients required for hydrocarbons, namely carbon and hydrogen. Twelve, however, has managed to develop some special technology that finally makes it possible to take CO2 and H2O, run them through an efficient electrolysis process, and get CO and H, which can be blended to create synthetic hydrocarbons that are exact substitutes for kerosene and naptha, which until now, have been produced from oil that has been extracted from the ground.

We all know that burning oil, coal or gas and releasing CO2 emissions is what is causing our atmosphere to warm. With every gallon of gasoline burned, we're releasing 2.7 times that volumetric amount in pollution, most of which converts to gas that is invisible to the eye but which traps solar radiation and warms up in the atmosphere.

Twelve's technology, however, utilizes CO2 that is "captured" rather than released into the atmosphere, and it blends that with hydrogen extracted from water using an electrochemical process powered by clean energy, to create a carbon-neutral high-octane fuel that is chemical identical to kerosene, also called Jet A.  Twelve's sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which it calls E-Jet, can be substituted as a way to enable the aviation industry to achieve carbon-neutrality between now and 2050.

The key for Twelve, which uses a "power-to-liquid" pathway to create its carbon-neutral E-Jet, is to be able to power this production without releasing more carbon dioxide in the process. To do so, Twelve needs to have access to abundant, always-on, affordable and clean energy. Which explains why Twelve opted to build its first production plant not in California, where the power mix is primarily natural gas, but in Washington State, where Twelve can get access to hydropower. 

With that source of energy, Twelve's fuel, once deliveries begin later this year, can help reduce aviation emissions by as much as 90%. In the future, Twelve's growing E-Jet production business will benefit from being able to cost-reduce by being sited near sources of supply for its E-Jet, captured CO2 and airports where its customers refuel. We suspect that, in the future, being able to site a small advanced nuclear power plant near where Twelve's factories want to be, could give them yet another competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, the airline industry's projected demand for SAF far exceeds all known production from all sources, so in the short term, Twelve is able to sell its E-Jet fuel at a premium, while also qualifying for a myriad of local, state and federal incentives aimed at helping businesses like Twelve scale up production capabilities in combination with non-dilutive grants and sales of Scope 3 carbon credits.

Twelve's current Series C financing is providing it with the capital it needs to finish manufacturing its initial stock of reactors and complete the construction of its first commercial-scale fuel production plant in Washington State, where Twelve has a firm contract for hydropower sufficient to meet its production needs for now. Twelve is on track to begin this production and begin delivering initial quantities of E-Jet to Alaska Airlines for use on its flights later this year.

Nucleation is thrilled to have co-invested in Twelve's Series C round together with DCVC, Capricorn (Jeff Skoll), TPG (private equity), Pulse Fund and join many other investors, which include Microsoft, Shopify, Alaska Airlines and the US Air Force. In 2023, Twelve was name one of the Climate Tech Companies to Watch by the MIT Technology Review and was featured in this Bloomberg Green article, Microsoft-Backed Clean Jet Fuel Startup Fires Up New CO2 Converter, a Bloomberg Originals Episode: Dusk or Dawn and other press.

In addition to SAFs, Twelve's reactors can produce a range of carbon-neutral synthetic hydrocarbons, especially e-naphtha, that can be sold into other markets as clean ingredients to enable consumer product companies to make a wide array of carbon-neutral manufactured plastics items, reducing their carbon footprint by over 90%. Twelve has already successfully tested their use through partnerships with Mercedes-Benz (for use in car parts), Procter and Gamble (ingredients for Tide) and Pangaia (for the world's first CO2-made sunglass lenses, in a production run that sold out in under two hours).

Soon after we invested, Twelve was in London to jointly announce a 10+ year, 1 billion liter off-take agreement with the International Airlines Group (IAG), the world's largest publicly traded airline group, which was immediately recognized as the "SAF deal of the year." Twelve's deliveries under that contract will help decarbonize five European airlines, which include British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus, potentially as soon as 2025. This delivery contract is a testament both to the level of demand and to customer confidence in Twelve and its final product. It also signals that funding development of future decarbonization technologies can fundamentally transform our energy future and begin to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

[Note: Investor access to Twelve is currently available through Nucleation's syndicate SPV. If you join our syndicate, we will forward the deal details to you.]

Published by Valerie Gardner in Air pollution, Carbon emissions, Carbon markets, Carbon negative, Carbon utilization, Climate change, Corporate decarbonization, Fossil fuels, Investor activity, NEWS, Public companies, US technological leadership

February 12, 2024

Nuclear Energy: Now or Never

By Valerie Gardner, Managing Partner

UC Berkeley students' annual Energy Summit addresses the world's energy and resource challenges. This year's conference included a panel titled "Nuclear Energy: Now or Never." Valerie Gardner, Nucleation Capital's managing partner, participated on the panel, bringing her bullish outlook on the prospects for innovation in nuclear to have a significant impact on the world's ability to decarbonize. 

BERC's Nuclear Energy: Now or Never

This year's Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC) Energy Summit included a panel called "Nuclear Energy: Now or Never." There to discuss this topic were UC Berkeley professors, Dan Kamen and Per Peterson, who is also Chief Nuclear Officer at Kairos Power; former Berkeley Ph.D. student, Jessica Lovering, currently the Executive Director of Good Energy Collective; and myself, founder and managing partner of Nucleation Capital. This was, as it turned out, a lively conversation about nuclear power and its prospects in front of a diverse audience of mostly undergrad, graduate students and young professionals.

I'm always happy to talk to students. They are generally well-informed about what's happening with climate change and the risks that it poses to their future. This makes them concerned, distressed but also particularly open-minded. As a climate investor, I spend quite a bit of time reading the science and evaluating a wide range of potential solutions. It is easy to get frustrated and even discouraged by how little progress we are making. I can only imagine how they may feel having to face this crisis.

We're less than six years from 2030, when we are supposed to have achieved a 50% reduction in global emissions. Some countries, including the U.S. have made progress, but we've been unable to move the needle on a global scale, largely because the demand for energy keeps growing, especially in places where they don't have enough even now. But, as it turns out, demand for electricity is growing in the U.S., propelled by the growth of online services, vehicle electrification and technologies like AI and cryptocurrencies.

Unfortunately, even in the U.S. the majority of our power comes from coal and gas, which we cannot afford to continue using they way we have.  According to the latest reporting from Dr. James Hansen, we are already exceeding the "safe" limits of global warming, which was to limit heating to less than 1.5° Celsius of warming (equivalent to an increase of 2.7° Fahrenheit). Because of the scale of the "global warming in the pipeline," we've committed the planet to exceeding those limits and face an exceptionally difficult time securing a "propitious climate" for future generations. This should be a big wake up moment for everyone. It certainly makes me want to shake people out of complacency.

Places like California and Germany, which have leaned in to decarbonization and invested billions into wind and solar, are struggling to keep their grids reliable. While they should have focused on shutting down coal and gas, for mostly political reasons, nuclear was already in the crosshairs. This was a big mistake. Germany, against all climate reason, went ahead with a scheduled shut down of its nuclear power and is paying a huge price, having had to re-open coal plants after Russia invaded Ukraine, a far worse climate, health and energy outcome. California was also planning to shut down its remaining nuclear power plant. Fortunately,  it became clear that the state needed its nuclear plant to avoid blackouts—and, in doing so, could save $21 billion in decarbonization costs while helping it with its climate goals.

Increasingly, results like these establish that nuclear is a central part of a more effective clean energy solution set. Nuclear power, which uses the smallest land footprint, the least amount of material per kilowatt and which has the highest capacity factor, has an "energy return on energy invested" (EROEI) more than 3X that of fossil fuels and more 20X that of wind or solar. It stands alone with the greatest potential to leverage 21st century innovation to produce a new set of truly paradigm-shifting energy solutions. 

Which is what makes nuclear, despite all of its idiosyncratic risks, a compelling investment proposition. The threat to our societies by our continued use of fossil fuels vastly outweigh the risks of expanding the use of nuclear—especially when an advanced generation of designs promise enhanced capabilities, improved safety, boosted fuel efficiency and manufacturing cost-economies.

So, sharing my excitement for the potential of innovative nuclear energy solutions together with some those who are also working on bringing these advanced solutions to market, like Dr. Peterson and his team at Kairos and Dr. Lovering and her team at Good Energy Collective—was a way to help point students towards a future that may well include dozens of new types of energy—spanning fission, fusion and other technologies.

After the panel, a number of students thanked me for my comments, expressed both renewed optimism and an interest in learning more about nuclear. Hopefully, a few of those attending will be inspired to further explore opportunities in the industry.

Published by Valerie Gardner in Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Energy abundance, EVENTS, Future of Energy, Investor activity, Macro Energy Systems, NEWS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Reduced ecosystem impacts, Solving climate
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February 7, 2024

First private British nuclear power plant

The first fully privately-fund nuclear power plant is in development in the U.K., with the goal of providing power to up to two million homes.  The project is being developed by a group called Community Nuclear Power, which has already selected and secured a site.

The plan is to deploy four Westinghouse AP300 small modular reactors on a site on the north bank of the River Tees, in Teesside, U.K.  The local authorities are backing the company's plan to locate the new plant on a site was previously home to a chemical plant and adjacent to the renowned Saltholme bird reserve. The new facility may be welcomed, in fact, as a way to help clean up both the air and the water in the area, since nuclear power emits no toxic chemical or carbon dioxide emissions.

Community Nuclear Power evaluated options from a number of SMR developers, most likely including Rolls-Royce and EDF, which is developing an SMR based largely on reactors already being built and used for nuclear-powered submarines.  The company, however, is reported as having inked a deal with Westinghouse, although the formal announcement has to be made.

According to a company representative, the plan will be fully privately financed and will not be seeking government or taxpayer support. Nevertheless, it is a step along the path that was recently set out by the U.K. government's recently issued Civil Nuclear Roadmap, originally championed by former prime minister, Boris Johnson, which references SMRs and their advantages for expediting deployment because they are smaller and can be made in factories and shipped in modules to the construction site, making construction faster and less expensive.

According to Jonathan Leake, writing in The Telegraph (and reposted by Yahoo Finance), there is a definite chance that the Community Nuclear Power project, if successful, could be in operation ahead of both Hinkley Point C, already in construction in Somerset but delayed, and Sizewell C, already being planned for the Suffolk coast and putting 1.5 Gigawatts of power onto the grid by the early 2030s. It would likely benefit from the government's commitment to accelerate the deployment process towards achieving a quadrupling of U.K. nuclear power.

This is an exciting development for those working to commercialize SMRs and will most certainly be a boost to others looking to accelerate the deployment of clean energy around the world with privately financed SMR projects.

Read more at Yahoo Finace "First ‘private’ nuclear reactor to power 2m British homes," by Jonathan Leake, February 7, 2024.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Customers, Capital reallocation, Construction costs, Future of Energy, Great British Nuclear, History Timeline, History-making, International support for nuclear, Investor activity, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Private companies, Solving climate, UK Climate Policy, Zero emission energy

January 20, 2024

The A, B, and especially C’s of ESG

By Valerie Gardner, Managing Partner

ESG investing is the largest and most profound global trend happening in the capital markets. Its popularity points to the global recognition that investors should and do have an important role to play in helping to solve environmental, social and other issues that have put the planet on a bad trajectory. In fact, no business can survive without investor support so businesses do care to meet investors' demands. Yet, as structured, ESG is not working to fulfill investors' true underlying needs or produce measurable objectives. The good news: there is an easy fix, when we start with "C," assessing climate impacts.

Like many things today, an initiative based upon a meaningful and important purpose, has become mired in controversy. Like the Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) movement that preceded it, ESG (an acronym for rating and selecting companies based upon their environmental, social and governance performance) has emerged to enable investors to focus their investments on companies that are taking care to behave more morally and responsibly vis-a-vis the environment, their employees, their shareholders, their suppliers, their communities and the climate. Many of these types of good corporate behaviors previously went unreported. What's become clear to investors is that short-term profiteering by managers may appear to be beneficial for shareholders but often may not be. It can conflict with what we know are looming issues which need action. Thus, sometimes taking a longer-term view and making corresponding sacrifices or investments that actually reduce overall risks can vastly improve longer-term enterprise value.

ESG has emerged to identify, elevate and reward companies which invest in doing what is right, even if such actions reduce returns in the short-term. It is intended to broaden the metrics on which corporations report information, so investors can make better informed decisions and invest in companies taking ethical actions, treating employees, suppliers and their communities fairly and protecting the environment—much of which costs more but which can reduce risks and other future costs, including litigation, public opposition or climate impacts.

While collecting data to make this type of assessment might seem uncontroversial, traditionally company management was required to focus on meeting only one goal: maximizing shareholder value. Because actions that affect long term enterprise value are often difficult to quantify, management reports have traditionally focused on easier t omeasure financial metrics like Price/Earnings ratios and quarterly profit trends. Deviating from the objective of maximizing per share profits could and often did result in shareholder lawsuits, if management took even smart and common sense approaches which reflected a community value, but which did not clearly improve shareholder value.

Fortunately, in 2019, under the leadership of Jamie Dimon, the Business Roundtable officially changed their statement of purpose and so businesses now broadly recognize that they are also accountable to their employees, suppliers and communities — constituents whose needs and actions can also impact the bottom line — but there is no consensus as to exactly how much or how little is enough and companies employ widely diverging approaches. ESG is now a way that investors can better discern the differences and reward companies that are acting responsibly on environmental, social and governance issues. Unfortunately, it is not working very well.

What ESG Currently Is

The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance published an article entitled ESG Ratings: A Compass without Direction which aptly summarizes the main issues with ESG as it currently is. The authors describe their findings as follows: "We find that while ESG ratings providers may convey important insights into the nonfinancial impact of companies, significant shortcomings exist in their objectives, methodologies, and incentives which detract from the informativeness of their assessments."

Critically, there's a significant dichotomy between what people commonly think ESG is supposed to indicate and what it actually indicates. Most people believe that an ESG score reflects a company's positive impact on the environment and stakeholders beyond its shareholders, such as employees, customers, suppliers, and local communities as well as the environment—a type of "Doing Good" metric which would tend to produce more shareholder value in the long run. In actuality, most ESG raters are assessing a company for the existence or absence of risk factors that could impact the future value of the company, such as the risk of discrimination in hiring or the risk of climate change on the supply chain. This is more of a "Risk Reduction" approach to data collection.

From an investment manager point of view, any time you can get meaningful information about a company's actions and potential future value, you are generally willing to pay for that—especially when your clients are clamoring for more sustainable investment options and are willing to pay more. Thus, there are now a plethora of third-party ESG rating services working to provide ESG data for a fee and a very large majority of impact-focused investment professionals are using these services to provide more options for clients. But, sadly, the entire space, which is still in its infancy, is chaotic and incoherent.

Studies show very low correlations across ESG ratings providers in total scores as well as across the three distinct components of "E," "S," and "G." Not only isn't there agreement about what an ESG score reflects, there is no standardization in the types of data collected or used and no consistency to the methodologies of collecting, assessing or prioritizing within or across categories. Thus, not only are ESG ratings badly correlated with environmental and social outcomes, the relationship between ESG ratings and financial performance is also uncertain. Those investing in ESG-type funds will typically pay more in fees for having accessed ESG data but they will generally get just equivalent or worse performance.

High and rising demand for ESG information has caused ESG-type rating services and funds to become profit centers, even as the quality, consistency and efficacy of the ratings has failed to provide meaningful results. At the moment, in addition to all of the inherent confusion as to what data matters, how to collect it, how to assess it and then how combine it with many other data points into a meaningful score, there is also the problem of greenwashing. Greenwashing is the deliberate efforts by some companies to game the system and try to obtain better ratings and scores than they probably deserve.

Which points to a growing problem in the ESG space. Companies control what data they will share with which rating groups, creating an inherent ability for companies to influence their scores by refusing to give their data to groups that don't rate them highly. This has rendered the existing ESG industry scores almost meaningless, since many of these raters are dependent upon the good will with the companies they are rating to get the data they need.

There is no better example how badly ESG is doing for guiding investors to more ethical and sustainable companies than when the S&P Sustainability Index did its rebalancing in May 2022. At that juncture, the S&P ESG team ejected Tesla (the largest EV car maker and one of the most successful climate companies on the planet) from the Index but welcomed ExxonMobil (a renowned climate villain), prompting Elon Musk to call the S&P Sustainability Index a "scam."

This decision caused a broader uproar within the sector and forced Senior Director and Head of ESG Indices Margaret Dorn to publish an explanation. Not only was this shift a climate and ESG travesty but, in fact, the S&P's "delicate balancing act" revealed that ESG raters and ratings are meaningless for a whole host of reasons, predominantly because there is just too much data, too much manipulation, and not enough understanding of what really matters. ESG raters appear to be so lost in the trees, they have effectively lost sight of the forest, namely the critical issue that matters the most to investors: climate change.

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What ESG Isn't

Investors are looking to ESG ratings to enable them to invest in companies that are doing better on a wide range of areas but, most critically, are environmentally responsible, especially around reducing carbon emissions. For many, this means working to provide solutions along the lines outlined by the United Nationa's Sustainable Development Goals. ESG investors care to invest in companies which improve global sustainability and solve climate change.

There are plenty of dire human, environmental and governance problems—you could name dozens—but none that threaten to seriously and even permanently disrupt the planet, human society and economic order as much climate change, the forced heating of our climate caused by burning fossil fuels. This crisis dwarfs everything.

So, while it may be troubling that there are reports of a toxic "bro" culture at Tesla, every single day, Tesla ships electric vehicles that enable people to stop purchasing and burning fossil fuels, which is the primary driver of climate change. In stark contrast, every single day ExxonMobil strives to greenwash their aspiration to keep selling more and more fossil fuels for as long as they possibly can—threatening not just human survival but that of all species and potentially our well-functioning societies, which could effectively wipe out the concept of wealth as we know it.

Shockingly, ESG as it is currently designed doesn't enable either the experts or investors to clearly assess companies on the single most important metric of sustainable performance—whether the company contributes to climate change or if they provide solutions to climate change. The average ESG investor, however, thinks that this is primarily what ESG does. Clearly, if ExxonMobil is rated highly but Tesla is not, ESG is not just meaningless, it is actually misleading for the average impact investor.

Fortunately, in order to fix this problem, ESG doesn't need to change that much, it just needs to make a small, relatively easy modification, which will then substantially improve its effectiveness and performance and begin to have a truly beneficial impact on humanity's ability to invest "sustainability."  I propose a very basic approach for doing that below.

ESG Can Easily Be Fixed:  Start all ratings with a "C" assessment

(Click to enlarge.)

As those concerned about what's happening with our climate saw, 2023 experienced a succession of seven record-shattering and "gobsmackingly bananas" (in the words of two climate scientists) hottest months on record. Not surprisingly, 2023 was also a record-breaker for climate disasters in the U.S. and around the globe, which have cost humanity billions annually. The bill for extreme climate disasters in the U.S. since 1980 now totals over $2 trillion and growing. Hundreds of millions of people are already being affected and/or displaced by the extreme weather events resulting from burning fossil fuels and allowing the CO2 pollution to escape into the atmosphere. These climate events are impacting the global economy, national security, geopolitics, businesses and politics in a range of ways but especially by increasing over systems risk.

(Click to enlarge)

Not surprisingly, at COP 28 in December, 198 nations gathered in the United Arab Emirates and finally agreed that we need to "transition away from fossil fuels." Though fossil fuel exporting nations like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq fought hard against adopting the specific words "phasing out fossil fuels," this is a pointless distinction, since it is abundantly clear that humanity needs to stop using fossil fuels as fast as humanly possible, whether transitioned or phased out. The climate is so bad, even Middle Eastern countries, whose primary source of revenue is fossil fuels, finally acknowledged what we've known for a very long time: only by eliminating the use of fossil fuels will we start to turn the tide against our worsening climate change and the dire ecologic and economic crisis that it threatens.

Against this backdrop and in light of the fact that ESG analyses and ratings are clearly still in "beta," we believe that ESG raters could make a very minor modification and start to have a much more significant impact. Simply by commencing vetting with one very simple sorting action, they would improve the coherence of ESG ratings by a lot. Prior to applying the rankings from hundreds of data points amassed regarding a plethora of corporate actions, ESG needs to divvy up the universe of companies into three distinct buckets: Climate Villains, Climate Neutral companies and Climate Heroes. This is a very easy distinction to make. Climate villains are those that are actively extracting, refining or selling virgin fossil fuel products or related services. Climate neutral companies are those that doing other business and are merely energy customers. Climate heroes are those companies which are actively developing and/or delivering key solutions to climate change (unrelated to ongoing fossil fuels operations), like low-carbon and carbon-free energy such as nuclear power, hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal and wave power; providing electrification support, such as with electric vehicles, heat pumps, charging stations and energy efficiency; and lastly carbon management, including carbon capture, carbon utilization and carbon sequestration (so long as unrelated to fossil fuel operations).

Once this vetting process has been done, then all of the current ESG metrics can then be assessed for more comparative performance relative to a company's other environmental, social and governance risks. But the top line assessment will easily enable every ESG-rated fund to exclude all Climate Villains. ESG funds will then be able to select their choices of best-performing companies from the other two categories for a mix of risk and return characteristics and use whatever type of analyses they wish. Investors will then have a very clear sense of what the composition of the fund is, across these three categories. Companies whose business is actively extracting, refining, distributing or selling fossil fuel products or services that cause climate change will likely still be included in standard, non-ESG funds, of course, but even these funds would easily be assessed for their climate impacts. Such funds could also be assessed for their ESG conformance, relative to other similar funds. But with this big bucket approach, no company or fund would be able to manipulate their "S" or "G" ratings in such a way as to feign that they are environmentally sustainable or acting responsibly relative to climate risk or sustainable development goals, when they are not, which is what impact investors mostly care about.

Summary

Despite inconsistencies in and controversy over ESG, we believe that demand for ESG research and investment vehicles remains strong largely because of concerns about climate change. Investors demand greater clarity about which businesses have more sustainable and ethical business approaches and want to own those and not companies shirking their responsibilities to future generations. Although ESG is in a nascent and chaotic state and not currently delivering the data ESG investors really need, a simple modification will be enough to ensure that more investor capital is directed into sustainable ventures.

Here's how we think it can work.

Prior to running the current slate of ESG assessments, each company should be given a climate score:  "C Minus" is given to "Climate Villains," companies whose products and services are contributing to climate change, namely the fossil fuel extraction, refinement, distribution and sales companies that are responsible for contributing millions of tons of carbon emissions. Companies that not involved with climate-impacting businesses (such as those in healthcare, education, textiles, manufacturing, etc.) would be deemed "Climate Neutral" and get a straight "C" since their business is not directly causing climate change other than through their energy usages (or idiosyncratic emissions). Lastly, the final category are the Climate Heroes who get rated "C+" as they are actively working to solve humanity's need for clean energy and/or carbon services, which seek to restore the natural carbon balance in the atmosphere.

Once these very broad but clear buckets are determined, ESG ratings can be applied to provide more nuanced distinctions between the companies in each of the three buckets, based upon their treatment of employees, governance policies, whether or not they take care of their toxic emissions or waste products, whether they protect water sheds or try to use clean energy for their operations, etc.  In this way, Tesla will be in the C+ bucket with other climate heroes and rated in comparison to other electric car companies but will never be in the same climate bucket as disgraced Climate Villain, ExxonMobil, which must try to out-maneuver other fossil fuels purveyors stuck in the C- bucket.

If this simple change were implemented, ESG funds could showcase their percentage of holdings that are C+ versus C, and ESG would finally become a highly effective tool for enabling investors to invest towards increasing the sustainability of our planet.

References

Columbia University, Climate Science & Solutions, Groundhog Day. Another Gobsmackingly Bananas Month. What's Up?, by James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, January 4, 2023, the title is taken from a tweet by Zeke Hausfather.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2023). DOI: 10.25921/stkw-7w73.

Fortune, Musk claims S&P ‘lost their integrity’ after Tesla gets booted from sustainability index while Exxon is included, by Christiaan Hetzner, May 18, 2022.

New York TImes, Sustainability Index Drops Tesla, Prompting Insult from Musk, By Jack Ewing and Stephen Gandel, May 18, 2022.

4. The (Re)Balancing Act of the S&P 500 ESG Index, by Margaret Dorn, Senior Director, Head of ESG Indices, North America, S&P Dow Jones Indices, May 17, 2022.

5. Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, ESG Ratings: A Compass without Direction, by Brian Tayan, a researcher with the Corporate Governance Research Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, David Larcker, Professor of Accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business; Edward Watts, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Yale School of Management; and Lukasz Pomorski, Lecturer at Yale School of Management, August 24, 2022.

Published by Valerie Gardner in Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Carbon markets, Carbon negative, Climate change, Climate innovation fund, Climate mayhem, Climate policy, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, Investor activity, Macro Energy Systems, NEWS, Reduced ecosystem impacts, Solving climate
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January 4, 2024

Dr. Hansen warning humanity to get its act together, deploy renewables and nuclear

Dr. James Hansen's year-end update contains an admonishment right in the title, "A Miracle Will Occur" Is Not Sensible Climate Policy."  Those who have followed his work and his typically well-tempered writing will recognize this as a very strong indictment of what we've not done to date to address climate change. This is, for this mild-mannered scientist, the equivalent of "Hey Guys, Get your S _  _ T together!"

Dr. Hansen proceeds to call "bunk" on the assertions from both the COP 28 Chairman and the UN Secretary General who imply that the goal of keeping temperature rise to below 1.5°C is still feasible. According to Dr. Hansen, the already banked warming will take us beyond 2.0°C "if policy is limited to emission reductions and plausible CO2 removal." In other words, he makes it clear that this is now merely wishful thinking and does not reflect a realistic understanding of the way that emissions released create future warming, which he calls "Global Warming in the Pipeline" and describes in the linked paper.

The only realistic approach is to take true climate analysis that is informed by knowledge of the warming "forcing" effects and to use that to drive decisions about policy options. If we can possibly use the next several years to define and commence more effective policies and courses of action, then there is a modicum of a chance that we can still save the future for our young people. If this isn't a bomb of an alarm, it would be hard to say what else would be, especially because the IPCC has made it very clear that major ecosystems, starting with coral reefs and then, therefore, all marine life, will be threatened with substantial (90%) collapse by 1.5°C  and with 100% by 2°C.

Unfortunately, climate science is complicated and most people don't have a good understanding of the "human-made forcings that are driving Earth's climate away from the relatively stable climate of the Holocene (approximately the past 10,000 years.)" Even if they could grasp the implications about climate science from the graphs that Dr. Hansen and his team provide, very few are even reading Hansen's work. These graphs are very scary but clearly they are not being used as the basis for policy discussions by either politicians, government agencies (like the EPA), or by leading environmental groups and that is likely the primary reason why many people are still arguing about renewables versus nuclear power, thinking they have a certain luxury of time, rather than saying "Renewables and nuclear, YES!"

For his part, Dr. Hansen doesn't make it as easy as he could for those with less expertise in climate science. He spends a lot of effort discussing two major climate forcings: greenhouse gases (GHGs) and aerosols (fine airborne particles), which in fact have opposing forcings. But then goes into detail on many other related forcings. This level of detail may provide a more scientifically accurate picture of what is going on but it makes for much sparser readership. Clearly, there are many different kinds of feedback loops, including how the aerosols impact cloud formation, albedo effects and also the way the ocean absorbs a considerable amount of the warming that is happening to our climate. It's important that he understands these effects but it takes considerable sifting work to get to the point that what it all adds up to is that there is much more warming that has occurred than what we are actually now experiencing, so in fact, the effect of warming will be accelerate and we're now seeing this.

Even for those of us who finding climate science fascinating, this 14-page paper is incredibly dense and gets relatively badly bogged down with details on things like cloud forcings, albedo changes, reviewing differences between expected temperatures and real world measurements, catching up with a 40-year old mystery having to do with the last glacial maximum and describing the impacts of an "experiment" that occurred when the International Maritime Organization limited sulfur content in ship fuel and the variability introduced by El Nino and La Nina events.  The bottom line of quite extensive discussion that few will wade through, is that global warming is now accelerating. This is very important but definitely buried. The key graphic of the whole paper depicts this acceleration.

On page 7, we finally get to the implications of global warming acceleration.  As shown in the above graph, were the warming happening at a steady rate, we'd be on the green dotted line. Instead, we are veering off into the yellow zone of accelerated warming, which means that we'll "exceed the 1.5°C mark within the next few months and reach a level far above 1.5C by May 2024."

Hansen, while recognizing that there could be some up and down based upon El Nino and La Nina effects, believes that the baked in energy imbalance already "in the pipeline" means that it does not serve anybody's interests to "wait a decade to declare that the 1.5°C limit has been breached." In summary, Hansen argues that, "unless purposeful actions are taken to reduce our present extraordinary planetary energy imbalance," the 2°C global warming limit will also be breached.

By its very nature of having a delayed, baked-in response, human-made climate change makes this an intergenerational issue. What we have done in the past is already having consequences but what we do today and going forward will mostly impact the next generation for better or worse.

To his credit, Hansen dives yet again into Climate Policy, unlike most other scientists. This has been long been a huge source of frustration for him and you can almost see him stomping on his own hat, in his anger and impatience with the political processes that have thwarted action. First he reviews just what makes solving cilmate extra hard, starting with the fact that the principal source of GHGs is fossil fuels, which are in his words "extremely beneficial to humanity."  They have raised starndards of living worldwide and still provide 80% of the world's energy. "Fossil fuels are readily available, so the world will not give up their benefits without equal or better alternatives."  Because of this conundrum, we are near a point of no return, where extreme consequences can spiral out of humanity's control.

Dr. Hansen has been a first-hand witness to humanity's failure to act over the last 35 years or so and his exasperation with that and his desperation to communicate to those in power about our increasingly limited options is abundantly clear. He's been advising governments around the world on possible approaches with little of the urgent response that is warranted.  He delves into some of these details but then finally hones on in the three actions that are required to successfully address climate and achieve the bright future we desire for our children.

The first is a near-global carbon tax or fee.  It is the sine qua non required to address the "tragedy of the commons" problem" wherein fossil fuels waste products can be dumpted in the atmosphere for free.  There can be a range of approaches, yet something that penalizes those dumping GHGs is required to be enacted globally. A corollary to a carbon fee is a "clean energy portfolio standard," with government policies that are far more supportive of nuclear power.

The second major policy requirement, is the need for the West to cooperate with and support the clean energy needs of emerging and developing nations. There are economic imbalances with developed nations having caused the past emissions but emerging nations increasingly being the driver of future emissions:

The clear need is to replace the world’s huge fossil fuel energy system with clean energies,
which likely would include a combination of “renewables” and nuclear power. Even if the
renewables provide most of the energy, engineering and economic analyses indicate that
global nuclear power probably needs to increase by a factor of 2-4 to provide baseload power
to complement intermittent renewable energy, especially given growing demands of China,
India and other emerging economies. The scale of China’s energy needs makes it feasible to drive down the costs of renewables and nuclear power below the cost of fossil fuels.

Lastly, Dr. Hansen proposes that "a multitude of actions are required within less than a decade to reduce and even reverse Earth’s energy imbalance for the sake of minimizing the enormous ongoing geoengineering of the planet; specifically, we will need to cool the planet to avoid consequences for young people that all people would find unconscionable."

References:

"A Miracle Will Occur" is Not Sensible Climate Policy, by James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, Columbia University, Earth Insitute's Climate Science & Solutions, December 7, 2023.

Columbia University, Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Newsletter, "Groundhog Day. Another Gobsmackingly Bananas Month. What’s Up?, sent on January 4, 2024 from the same team.

"Dire Warnings from Dr. Hansen and Team, by Valerie Gardner, Nucleation Capital, Dec. 22, 2023.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Asset manager support, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate innovation fund, Climate mayhem, Construction costs, Energy abundance, Environmental support for nuclear, Extreme weather, Future of Energy, International support for nuclear, Investor activity, Land Use by Energy, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear maritime propulsion, Nuclear R&D, Philanthropic support for nuclear, Politicians supporting nuclear, Pro-nuclear campaign, Solving climate, Solving nuclear waste, US competitiveness, Venture capital support for nuclear, Zero emission energy
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November 16, 2023

Investors are turning bullish on nuclear

After years of disinterest, energy security concerns and the push for net zero are leading investors to bet on nuclear power. The fact that the world has not managed to meaningfully reduce emissions—despite commitments from most every country and billions spent on renewables—has made it clear that more dramatic action is needed.

Many of those trying to gauge investor interest look at spot Uranium prices, believing that these are a barometer for investor interest in nuclear. The fact that the spot price rose 55% between January and October speak loudly about the shifting sentiments and prospects for nuclear power.

According to Cameco's website, the world's largest publicly traded uranium company, “Ongoing geopolitical events coupled with the global focus on the climate crisis have created what we believe are transformative tailwinds for the nuclear power industry, from both a demand and supply perspective.” Not surprisingly, Uranium spot prices stood at $74.38 per pound at the end of October, based on month-end prices published by nuclear research companies UxC and TradeTech, up from just $18 in October 2016 and $47.68 at the end of 2022. According to Morningstar, nuclear related exchange traded funds were the best performing ETFs, with Sprott Uraniaum Miners ETF (URNM) gaining 13% over the summer.

Back in May, Bank of America’s Research Investment Committee (RIC) forecast a 20 to 40% upside on uranium and nuclear power after a decade of underinvestment. Bank of America published its research findings in a report called  "The Nuclear Necessity" and pointed out that global demand for nuclear had grown with 60 new reactors being built, 100 more approved and plans for old reactors to be refurbished, adding to the positive investor sentiment.

The entire global economy is, in fact, poised to move into a new period of increased interest in building nuclear, premised upon macroeconomic forces that include "resource nationalism, energy security, war and inflation."  According to Jared Woodard, Bank of America's Investment and ETF Strategist, "Every analyst I spoke to was bullish on prospects for nuclear power as a technology that's clean and meets the kinds of goals that so many policymakers are eager to hit in terms of reducing emissions."

Both sides of the political spectrum see the beneifts of nuclear, progressives like the low emissions and highly reliable capacity of nuclear for addressing climate change and conservatives like the national and energy security aspects. [Aside: What's been working in the U.S. Congress is that both Democrats and Republicans vote in support of bills that both protect existing and help next-generation nuclear power using voice votes. Pronuclear bills have been passed with bipartisan majorities in every administration since Barack Obama's, with the Biden Administration doing the most good to level the playing field for nuclear. Virtually every elected official supports nuclear but progressives still find it harder to explain their support to their constituents. Less so with Republicans.]

Read more at Reuters Investors are turning bullish on nuclear, by Paul Day, November 16, 2023.

Reuters, Best and Worst Performing ETFs in August, by Valerio Baselli, September 15, 2023.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Asset manager support, Capital reallocation, Carbon emissions, Climate policy, Corporate decarbonization, Energy abundance, International support for nuclear, Investor activity, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Private companies, Public companies, Solving climate, Zero emission energy

November 10, 2023

About NuScale and implications of the CFPP cancellation


Why did the Carbon Free Power Project get cancelled? What does that mean for NuScale?

By Rod Adams, Nov. 10, 2023
Cross-posted from our related blog, Atomic Insights

I’ll start with a disclosure. I’m still long on NuScale in my personal portfolio and have no intention of changing that position in the near future. I believe that the company has a good product and excellent potential for growth. The image above with Jose Reyes and me is from a visit I paid to the NuScale test loop in October 2014.

Yesterday (Nov 8, 2023), an expected shoe dropped. NuScale and UAMPS (Utah Association of Municipal Power Systems) announced that they had decided to abandon their Carbon Free Power Project. The press release stated, “Despite significant efforts by both parties to advance the CFPP, it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment.”

A chorus of commentary has erupted on social media. Some are cheers from the usual suspects who have never met a nuclear reactor that they like. Others are from people who ardently support different designs that range from different water reactors to gas-cooled, molten salt or liquid metal reactors that don’t use water cooling and moderation.

Some believe that the decision proves that NuScale Power Modules are hopelessly uneconomic and that the CFPP cancellation proves that NuScale is on shaky grounds as a company. Self-admitted short sellers are doing everything they can to undermine investor confidence so that the company stock price falls quickly and profitably for those betting on that behavior.

My conclusions from the project cancellation are different. There is no doubt that a smooth first-of-a-kind demonstration of a 6-12 unit NuScale power plant would have been better for the company’s prospects in the short term. That result would have also helped to increase interest in new nuclear power projects and would have increased investor FOMO (fear of missing out.)

As a venture capitalist helping to manage a fund that is focused on advanced nuclear energy as a major, undervalued tool for the energy transition from high carbon fossil fuel combustion to ultra low carbon energy sources, that result would have been a welcome reinforcement of our investment thesis.

Competitive headwinds fighting Carbon Free Power Project

During the past few years, however, the prospects for success for the CFPP have repeatedly dimmed to the point where its cancellation was readily foreseeable. The initial 12-unit power plant was scaled down to a 6-unit facility. Individual members of the UAMPS association pulled out as it became ever clearer that a new, first of a kind nuclear plant built in the remote Idaho desert would produce power that was measurably more expensive than the low priced mix of coal, natural gas, hydro and wind they were used to.

That cost disadvantage only grew as it became less and less likely that there would ever be a price on carbon in the states UAMPS serves. Rising interest rates also reduced the economic viability of capital-intensive power plants compared to established, depreciated plants burning cheap local coal, low capital cost plants burning natural gas from nearby places like North Dakota or onshore wind located in sparsely-populated windy plains near mountain ranges.

As coal demand falls throughout the US as a result of changing air pollution regulations, increased production from natural gas, solar and wind and continued excellent performance by existing nuclear plants, coal prices soften. The long term prospect is that they will remain affordable and perhaps decline considerably, especially in places that are close to established mines. UAMPS member power systems have ready access to local coal sources.

The UAMPS-served areas are close to productive oil shale formations that contain substantial quantities of associated natural gas. Sometimes North Dakota gas is almost given away – even in the dead of winter – because it is an annoying byproduct of oil production. Associated gas is still flared – burned without serving any customers – for safety reasons. Regulators are increasingly enacting rules that discourage the practice. There are also financial incentive programs that encourage operators to find customers that will pay something.

UAMPS members also benefit from their favorable wind locations. They have wide open spaces and good wind associated with nearby mountains. On-shore wind turbines are well proven and numerous developers have cost effective processes and experienced installation teams. The Inflation Reduction Act provides long term certainty for clean energy subsidies, ensuring that the power prices are consumer friendly. It also opens new avenues for non profit utilities to directly benefit from tax credit programs. A nuclear power project like the CFPP would be eligible for the same subsidy level as other clean energy sources but the tax credit programs in the IRA start paying real money only after projects are completed. A wind project can be finished in just a year or two in places where there isn’t much opposition. Earlier monetary flows are more valuable than later flows.

Even if they are led by people who would like to decarbonize, municipal power systems have a mandate to provide the most cost-effective power possible within the given constraints. They have access to relatively low cost, tax exempt debt, but bond issues needed to access that debt capability are often tenaciously debated, political choices. The interest rates paid may be lower than commercial rates, but rates for new debt are still linked to those paid in the rest of the borrowing market. Rising rates affect all borrowers.

Munis have no access to capital markets where investors have more understanding and appetite for a certain amount of financial risk. It is highly unlikely that they could convince their customers to pay catalytic prices for power from new technology with significant room for growth.

in summary, economic conditions for the Carbon Free Power Project have been deteriorating for several years. The total expenditures associated with that project have not been publicly released, but the amount spent is nowhere near the amount of money that was earmarked. UAMPS only submitted an application for “Limited Work Authorization” to the NRC in August of 2023 and it has only been a few weeks since the NRC accepted that application for review. No dirt has been moved at the site, other than that needed to conduct environmental impact studies.

Where does NuScale go from here?

This commentary is not supported by any direct communication with NuScale. It is based on publicly available news and announcements.

The CFPP was an important project for NuScale, but it is not the only sale that the company is working on. UAMPS is not the only customer attracted by a passively cooled, light water reactor using established fuel forms, materials and chemistry refined through many decades of operation in large fleets of nuclear power plants.

NuScale’s power modules have been issued a design certification at a time when none of the alternative choices have submitted an application for review. Submission is needed to start a regulatory calendar that moves at an excruciatingly slow pace. Though we hope the next review will be quicker, it took more than six years from the time NuScale submitted its Design Certification Application until the 5-member commission issued the final document. (Dec 31, 2016 – Feb 21, 2023)

According to Fluor, which still holds its large stake in NuScale, 18 active and signed Memorandums of Understanding from 11 different countries were in effect at the end of 2021.

Though none have yet achieved the status of a signed contract, there have been public announcements of serious interest in Romania and other Eastern European countries. NuScale is one of the six finalists selected for the Great Britain Nuclear light water reactor SMR program. Standard Power announced its interest in using NuScale power plants for two data centers, one in Ohio and one in Pennsylvania.

In March, 2023, an early stage start up company named Blue Energy visited Houston, TX – arguably the energy capital of the United States – for CERAWeek. The founders gave a presentation on their concept for offshore power plants that combine NuScale power modules with proven technology from offshore oil and offshore wind. They shared some startling numbers about the cost reduction potential available for NuScale power modules when using the ocean for the ultimate heat sink instead of a giant man-made pool that must be protected from aircraft impact.

Blue Energy is “productizing” nuclear fission by manufacturing pre-certified light water small modular reactors in shipyards as fully-completed, transportable nuclear power plants that are leased to industrial facilities and countries seeking energy security, price stability, and turnkey decarbonization. We leverage existing oil & gas platform manufacturing infrastructure and a simplified plant design to shrink the construction schedule from 10 years to 24 months and the overnight capital cost from greater than $6,000/kW to less than $2,500/kW while putting nuclear on a learning curve down to $1/W.

CERAWeek presentation “Blue Energy | Offshore Nuclear Power” Mar 7, 2023

The news of the demise of the CFPP should not discourage nuclear energy advocates for very long. It’s not good news, but no one should expect 100% good news with new nuclear development. CFPP’s demise should not – but certainly will – provide PR fodder for those who have never met a nuclear project that they like. It should not – but certainly will – provide a reason for “I told you so” commentary among nuclear energy cheerleaders who are rooting for a different kind of nuclear power system.

I am neither a registered investment advisor nor a broker-dealer and I do not provide stock market recommendations. As a managing partner of Nucleation Capital, I invest solely in private equity. My personal public market portfolio, however, includes some SMR (NuScale’s NYSE ticker symbol) stock that I have no intention of selling.

Additional References

Nov. 22, 2023: The Clean Air Task Force published Lessons learned from the recently cancelled NuScale-UAMPS project, with yet another very powerful argument against reading too much into the cancellation of NuScale's demonstration project as a reflection of the prospects of the broader SMR and advanced reactor market in the United States or globally.

Published by Valerie Gardner in Advanced Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Customers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate innovation fund, Construction costs, Corporate decarbonization, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, Government support, Investor activity, NEWS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, US competitiveness, US technological leadership, Venture capital support for nuclear
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November 9, 2023

A First-Ever Commercial Plant Extracting Carbon from Air

Heirloom Carbon Technologies has opened the first commercial carbon capture plant in the U.S.  This key moment presages the start of what is widely expected to be an important new industry whose entire purpose is preventing the carbon emissions released by burning fossil fuels from destroying life on our planet.

Brad Plumer, writing in the New York Times, provides the details of this very small demonstration plant built in Tracy, California. It's an open air structure, with 40-foot racks holding hundreds of trays, each sprinkled with calcium oxide powder that turns into limestone when it binds with airborne carbon dioxide. This is a natural process that Heirloom is working to speed up.

Once the carbon dioxide is "captured" through the creation of the limestone, the company expects to heat up the limestone in a kiln at 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit, which then releases the carbon dioxide, where it  then gets pumpted in a storage tank, leaving the calcium oxide to be returned and reused on another set of trays. 

The carbon dioxide (called CO2) is expected to be transferred again to be permanently stored. For now, Heirloom is looking at the large concrete marketplace and working with CarbonCure, a company that was launched to mix CO2 into concrete to make concrete stronger by having it turn into limestone again where it will be permanently stored and reduce the carbon footprint of concrete (which ordinarily releases a lot of carbon emissions through its normal creation and use throughout the building industry).

Providing CO2 to CarbonCure has a value for sure but for now, that value is far below the costs of capturing the carbon.  Let's look at what these economics are now.  The Tracy facility will be able to absorb 1,000 tons of CO2 per year. At the estimated $50/tonne "social cost" of carbon, the Heirloom facility would earn $50,000 per year. Although Heirloom hasn't released info on its specific costs, those funding breakthrough carbon capture activity, such as Frontier (which includes Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey Sustainability), are typically paying between $500 and $2,500 per ton to accelerate innovation and market development. These high prices are intended to generate sufficient revenue for these early-stage ventures to actually cover their costs.  At $1000/ton, Heirloom could earn $1,000,000 per year.  However, Plumer estimates that Heirloom's actually costs may be in the range of $600 per ton or higher. 

Fortunately for Heirloom and other ventures working in this space, there are a lot of large corporations willing to spend millions to pay for "carbon removal credits" in what has been a voluntary carbon market to effectively be able to claim that they are reducing their carbon footprints. These corporations see reputational benefits from those outlays, even if they do not result in even meaningful actual carbon reductions at this stage. The Biden Administration is also getting into the act and awarded $1.2 billion to help Heirloom


The Heirloom carbon capture plant in Tracy, California

Many people still don't know much about carbon capture and storage, or what has been called "Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration" (CCUS).  There are a multitude of approaches being taken to capture carbon and, as a result, a plethora of acronyms have emerged. The approach used by Heirloom is now called Direct Air Capture (DAC) and specifically involve capturing CO2 out of the air but other approaches are simply called Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and utilize a range of methods to bind that CO2 in a semi-permanent or permanent way, such as through marine-based CDR or natural processes such increasing the CO2 content in soils or accelerating the use of CO2 by plants, such as by growing crops or trees with the intention of having them capture the CO2.

Utilization of CO2 involves finding valuable ways to use that CO2 or just the carbon (C) from captured CO2. Ventures working on the utilization part of this process pose the prospects of having profitable business models. Nucleation Capital, as a climate-focused venture fund, recognizes that CCUS is a growth industry that is anticipated to become a large consumer of energy. We are following the activity in this nascent space and we are investing in some of the most promising approaches, especially where that approach has strong profit and growth prospects or where it intersects with the need for abundant clean energy.  While knowing all the acronyms isn't critical, there are a few key things to know about CCUS in general.

Key Facts to Know about CO2 and Carbon Capture, Utilization & Sequestration
  1. While CO2 itself is natural and not toxic (except in high doses), the enormous amount that we have polluted our atmosphere with by burning fossil fuels for energy is causing our climate to warm up at a very fast rate. We need CCUS in order to lessen and possibly reverse the rate of warming, so we can restore a healthy climate.
  2. All technological approaches to capturing carbon back out of the air or water are expensive and early stage. So are the approaches to carbon utilization and sequestration (i.e. methods to utilize and/or store the carbon so it doesn't get released back into the atmosphere).
  3. To stop making our climate crisis worse, we have to stop burning fossil fuels, as our highest priority mitigation effort. While some might think that capturing the carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels right at the point source may warrant continuing to burn fossil fuels, that will not enable us to use carbon capture to restore the damage already done, which is the primary rationale for CCUS.
  4. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today, the amount of damage the long-lived CO2 pollution is causing the world will continue to heat the planet for decades or centuries. The only way to prevent that is by removing this excess CO2 pollution.
  5. Today, there are only a handful of dedicated carbon capture plants in existence globally but, to prevent serious damage to earth ecosystems, we will need to scale up these plants in record time to be able to reverse most of the emissions produced by the fossil fuel industry in its entire history. We will also need to scale utilization and sequestration capabilities.
  6. The cost of cleaning up all of the emissions caused by our past use of fossil fuels will be enormous and we haven't come to any agreement as to who bears that burden. Some of that cost can be mitigated with valuable commercial utilization technologies.
  7. Powering CCUS plants will require massive amounts of low-carbon clean energy because it makes no sense to emit carbon in the process of capturing carbon. The best and least-cost approach will likely involve using the coming generation of small modular reactors to generate 24x7 power in remote areas.
  8. The cost of clean energy used to capture and sequester carbon will be a significant factor in the total cost of that activity but powering CCUS can help SMRs scale up, which will help reduce the manufacturing costs.
  9. There is no scenario in which the cost of burning fossil fuels and capturing all the CO2 from that activity and permanently storing it will cost less than replacing the fossil fuels with renewables or nuclear and avoiding the release of new emissions in the first place.
  10. Fossil fuel companies are already lobbying to earn carbon credits by pairing carbon capture with the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. This is why some environmentalists, like Al Gore, oppose providing funding for CCUS to oil and gas companies, even though the most cost-effective CO2 capture is done at or close to the fossil fuel smokestack source point.

Read more in the New York Times, "In a U.S. First, a Commercial Plant Starts Pulling Carbon From the Air," by Brad Plumer, November 9, 2023.

Learn more about Frontier a consortium that is providing advance market commitments (AMC) that aim to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies, without picking winning technologies at the start of the innovation cycle. The goal is to send a strong demand signal to researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors that there is a growing market for these technologies.

The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $3.5 billion to fund the construction of four commercial-scale direct air capture plants. In August, the Biden Adminstration announced $1.2 billion in awards for the first two, one to be built by Battelle in Louisiana and the other to be built by Occidental Petroleum, in Texas, through a 50-50 cost share.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Carbon markets, Carbon negative, Climate change, Climate policy, Construction costs, Government support, History Timeline, History-making, Investor activity, LINKS, Private companies, Solving climate, US competitiveness, US technological leadership

October 22, 2023

Parnassus Versus Green Century: A Contrast in Styles

By Valerie Gardner, Managing Partner

June, July and August of 2023 were the three hottest months the Earth has ever seen by such a large margin, it left climate scientists agog. Climate disasters are abounding apace, with the U.S. hit by 23 large-scale disasters, a record-breaking year already. In Pakistan, extreme rainfall and flooding affected 33 million people, killing more than 1,700, displacing more than 8 million and causing damage estimated at over $30 billion, not counting the estimated 2.2% loss to the country's gross domestic product. North America and even Hawaii were ravaged by intense forest fires, with record acreage subsumed, scorching towns like Hahaina, killing hundreds, and forcing evacuations in areas of the northeast, northwest and Hawaiian islands once seen as refuges from the expected heat. Decades of increasingly severe drought, now complicated by shortages and war, have displaced millions in Iraq and other regions of the Middle East and the bad climate news is just getting worse, adding to the cacophony of alarm bells being rung by scientists in almost every field. In this context, when it is clear that we humans are not coming close to winning this fight, it's illuminating to contrast how two competing sustainable investment groups have chosen to address their obligation to invest "sustainably."

As we reported back in May, Parnassus Investments, a leading sustainable investment fund, issued a stunning press release in which they announced the removal of their negative investment screen on nuclear power along with a positive outlook for its role in reducing emissions.

In a succinct six paragraphs, Parnassus explained the basis for this momentous decision that reversed a policy in place for the entire 39 years of their existence. While it is not issuing an absolute commitment to invest in nuclear equity, the statement showed that Parnassus’s Sustainability team had thoroughly researched the issue of nuclear power and were sufficiently convinced that nuclear could be an important contributor to helping the world decarbonize to change their minds and finally include nuclear in the universe of investment prospects.

We regard this milestone decision as an impressive example of science and fact-based ESG leadership, reflecting actual changes in the nuclear industry over the last few decades as well as the utter catastrophe we are facing, if we don't find better ways to reduce emissions from our energy usage. Similarly, around that same time, Bank of America Securities analysts released their first "BUY" recommendation for nuclear power in nearly four decades. In BofAS's highly detailed report, titled "The Nuclear Necessity,” a team of five analysts explained why they were "bullish on nuclear power" and laid out both the case for and the methods by which investors should start increasing their exposure to nuclear equities and uranium. This event, we noted was yet another milestone.

Nevertheless, on August 30th, writing in a publication called ESG Clarity, Leslie Samuelrich, the CEO of Green Century Funds, another investment fund which considers itself a leader in sustainable investing, issued her pushback in the form of doubts. Ms Samuelrich wrote: "Even though I knew for months that an ESG firm was thinking about removing its exclusion on nuclear power producers, I was taken aback when I read their press release. Why would they revert their position and turn to nuclear when investing in renewable energy has grown so dramatically?"

Ms. Samuelrich then proceeds to trot out five dog-eared paragraphs containing the standard litany of antinuclear arguments (Safety, Cost, Timing, Emissions and Waste) which, like figures in a wax museum, reflected views so frozen in time, no amount of new data or climate rationale could have had any effect. She makes no reference to nuclear's improved safety performance, nor any mention of new designs nor the accelerating customer interest in them. The stark contrast between the perspectives laid out by these competing sustainability-focused investment firms offers an excellent opportunity to compare the styles and seriousness of their approaches to their ESG investment missions.

Parnassus Investments

Parnassus Investments was founded in 1984 to provide socially-responsible investments. Headquartered in San Francisco, they now have 70 employees and about $42 billion in assets under management (as of Sept. 30, 2023). This is a serious investment firm with an impressive $600 million in AUM per employee.

Reflecting Parnassus’s seriousness is the Climate Action Plan that the firm adopted in December 2022. This Plan established a goal of net-zero emissions in all their funds by 2050, in alignment with the Paris Agreement. This document and commitment demonstrate that Parnassus understands this key point: it is not enough to avoid fossil fuels; society also has to figure out where all the future clean power that we need will come from. It's the long-term "rubber meets the road" reality check. Parnassus's statement that they will now include nuclear in their investment universe to support the transition to a low-carbon economy reflects their deep thinking about this urgent reality.

We imagine that it must have been a difficult decision for the Parnassus team. But they displayed the intellectual honesty to take a deep, critical look at the landscape for where we will produce our clean energy and, like many of us, found the calculations around deployment of renewables did not add up. It is never easy to have to change one's mind. Never easy to reverse course. With respect to nuclear—which evokes so much knee-jerk prejudice and emotion—even being open to an objective evaluation is difficult. Many members of the antinuclear community see it as such a betrayal, they'll question your motives. What ultimately forces objective people to look more closely at nuclear is the fact and increasing certainty that we cannot meet our climate and energy goals without it. Parnassus demonstrated both analytical clarity and courage in their decision to abandon their negative screen and allow nuclear back into the universe of possible equities—without a thought of abandoning their commitment to rigorously evaluate each prospective candidate for its adherence to high ESG performance metrics.

Although in 1984, Parnassus was also concerned about the safety and cost issues involved with nuclear power, they have since learned that nuclear is a critical source of low-carbon power whose benefits include both safety and a stability. They've also recognized that, over the years, tighter regulations have led to improved designs and operating performance. Additionally, they were pleased to find that the new generation of nuclear technology being developed now offers both higher safety and lower costs. The Parnassus investment team, led by Marian Macindoe, Head of ESG Stewardship, has clearly done a deep dive into today's more diverse nuclear industry, where a broader menu of options are being developed, and believes that "nuclear energy will be an essential source of fuel in the transition to the renewable sources required to support a low-carbon economy . . . and a reasonable choice."  This reflects considerable research and learning. We applaud the extremely professional work this team has done.

Green Century Funds

Green Century Funds, founded in 1991 by a "group of environmental and public health nonprofits," has nearly $1 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2023. Green Century’s Registered Investment Advisor, Green Century Capital Management (GCCM), has 13 employees, six of whom provide investment advisory or research work (as of GCCM's most recent ADV) about $86 million in AUM per employee. Any profits from their investment advisory operations go to Paradigm Partners, a holding company owned by the founding entities, predominantly NGOs affiliated with Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Group — Mass PIRG, NJ PIRG Citizen Lobby, Conn PIRG, CA PIRG, Washington State PIRG, Missouri PIRG Citizen Org, Colorado PIRG, PIRGIM Public Interest Lobby, and Fund for the Public Interest. These are all advocacy groups. None are scientific or investment experts.

Green Century's stated mission conforms to an advocacy model: to help people save for their future without compromising their values and to help investors "keep their money out of the most irresponsible industries."  In other words, Green Century Fund applies a simplified, reductive view that merely screens out investments that don't meet their "values" — i.e. no fossil fuel, tobacco, nuclear and conventional weapons, nuclear energy, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other industries "whose core business threatens the environment and public health." Green Century specifically does not aspire to invest into companies that will enable a sustainable future. They also have not published a "Climate Action Plan," from what we could see, so they have made no specific commitment to decarbonizing their fund. We were curious as to what they do invest in.

A cursory overview of Green Century's Equity Fund, the largest of its four mutual funds boasting $544 million in AUM, reveals the following Investment Categories and percentages of investments:

  • Software & Service 23% (52% of which is Microsoft)
  • Semiconductors 10% (52% of which was NVIDIA)
  • Media & Entertainment 8.2% (83% is Alphabet)
  • Pharmaceuticals & Biotech 7.3%
  • Financial Services 6.4% (26% is Mastercard)
  • Capital Goods 6.2% (20% is Caterpillar or Deere & Co.)
  • Food & Beverage 4.5% (57% is Coke and Pepsi)
  • Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency 4.1% (90% is Tesla)
  • Healthcare 4.0%
  • Consumer Discretionary 3.7%
  • Equity REITs 3.0%
  • Insurance 2.9%
  • Household/Personal Products 2.7%
  • Consumer Services 2.5% (43% McDonald's)
  • Materials 2.5%
  • Tech Hardware & Equipment 2.5% (43% Cisco)
  • Transportation 2.0%  (31% Union Pacific Corp)
  • Consumer Durables & Apparel 1.2%  (58% Nike)
  • Banks 0.9%
  • Telecom .8% (98% Verizon)
  • Commercial & Prof. Services .5%
  • Consumer Staples .3% (54% Sysco Corp)
  • Automobiles .3% (Rivian is here at 17%)
  • Utilities .2%
  • Healthy Living 0.0%

There are several interesting things that pop out from our review. Of the top 9 listed investment categories, containing 70% of the total assets, five have a majority of capital concentrated in just one or two companies. Thus, by dollars, this fund is dominated by its investments in Microsoft, NVIDIA, Alphabet, Mastercard, and Tesla. While these are great companies, it is notable that all of them, without exception, require massive amounts of electricity for their success. Which means from a sustainability perspective, that they will need reliable, affordable and growing sources of clean electricity to remain profitable over time. Where will that come from?

In her written response to the Parnassus shift, Ms. Samuelrich pointedly asks "Why would [Parnassus] revert their position and turn to nuclear when investing in renewable energy has grown so dramatically?"  Well, Ms. Samuelrich can easily find the answer to her question in her own firm's largest portfolio. It lacks meaningful investment in clean energy. Green Century claims to have put 4% of its assets into "Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency."  If that were true, one could imagine justifying that level, as the traditional Energy sector represents 4.7% of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 index [S&P 500 9/30/23 FactSheet]. A closer look, however, paints a different picture.

Of the 4% of assets designated as Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency, 90% was actually invested in Tesla. Tesla is an electric car company, as everyone knows. Cars, even when electric, are neither a source of "renewable energy" nor do they produce "energy efficiency."  But Green Century knows this because it has properly categorized Rivian, another electric car manufacturer, in the "Automobile" category. Yet, Green Century chose to put Tesla into the "Renewable Energy" category. Perhaps this is because Tesla acquired Solar City, and so has a small division that sells solar panels and battery walls. But Tesla’s 6/30/23 10-Q reports that “Energy Generation and Storage” produced less than 7% of Tesla's total revenue ($3.038 billion of total revenue of $48.256 billion) for the first six months of 2023.

Aside from Tesla, the amount of capital that Green Century has invested in Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency is just 0.4%. These investments include five companies, of which Johnson Controls represents 60%. Johnson Controls provides HVAC systems, fire protection, and automated data information about energy use for many types of commercial buildings. They also service "90% of the world's top marine and oil and gas companies for all types of assets and facilities." In other words, a sizeable portion of their business derives from the oil and gas industry, conveniently ignored by Green Century. For argument's sake, we'll assume that Johnson is credibly working towards "energy efficiency" wherever they are but they are definitely not creating renewable energy.

The remaining .16% portion of Green Century's “Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency” holdings is comprised of four investments:  Acuity Brands, Itron, Ormat Technologies and First Solar. Acuity Brands markets smart lighting and building management solutions. Itron provides smart networks, software, services, meters and sensors to help manage energy and water. Acuity and Itron may contribute to energy efficiency, but neither produces renewable energy. Ormat Technologies claims to be a leader in providing "Green Power Plants" spanning geothermal power, solar power and "recovered" energy (i.e. storage). First Solar, the only US-based solar manufacturing company, claims to offer next-generation solar technologies, a high-performance, low-carbon alternative to conventional photovoltaic panels. At last, two companies that actually contribute to the creation of renewable energy! Yet the Green Century fund invests less than 0.12% of its total assets into these two companies. In contrast, Green Century has invested over 2.5% in Coke and Pepsi — more than twenty times the amount invested in renewable energy companies that Ms. Samuelrich claims are growing so quickly.

We are a bit "taken aback" by the choices made by Green Century, not only their degree of concentration in a few large cap companies but the misleading industry categorizations and failure to invest meaningfully in the lauded renewable energy companies working to clean our energy system. Ms. Samuelson argues that sustainable investors should support the renewable energy sector, so why isn't she, if she truly believes that "the world is set to add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the past 20?"

Samuelrich asks, "Why gamble with the environmental and public health risks of [nuclear], especially when renewable energy is cleaner and cost competitive?" The answer is clear to those who actually do the research and care about facts: because neither solar nor wind actually provide the reliable or climate resilient power that societies demand and need. Geothermal remains highly limited by geography. So, as we've witnessed, without a truly reliable source of clean energy, humanity will continue to demand reliable but dirty fossil fuels and emissions will keep growing—as they have continued to do, despite big increases in renewables. The only clean and firm source of power that can scale up with the speed we need it to, is nuclear. It's gotten a whole lot better over the last 40 years—in part due to the public's concerns about it's safety and increased regulatory scrutiny—and now a new slate of advanced designs with different sizes and features is emerging and buyers like Dow Chemical and Microsoft are leaning in. 

We would urge all sustainable-minded investment groups not to take shortcuts and pander to aged ideologic tropes like Green Century, but instead examine today's facts and data carefully and think critically, as Parnassus did, about the real challenges around how we will produce the enormous and growing amounts of clean grid-scale, distributed and industrial-process heat power on which we all depend. Simply saying “no” to technologies you don't like may have been a justified approach three decades ago but it has not helped solve our true climate dilemma—meeting humanity's growing energy needs without impacting the climate. Until we make this transition, nothing is "sustainable." Nor will it enable one's investors to participate in the growth of a sector—like next-gen nuclear—that is increasingly being recognized by climate and energy experts as critical to our survival.

We are extremely glad that serious, research-focused investors, like Parnassus Investments and Bank of America Securities, are figuring this out and are willing to do the hard work, risk the bruises that may result from following the facts to where they sometimes inconveniently reside, and build the necessary technical capacity to both analyze and potentially invest in the advanced technologies and companies working hard to actually deliver a more sustainable future.

References

  1. New York TImes, Record Number of Billion-Dollar Disasters Shows the Limits of America's Defenses, by Christopher Flavelle, Sept. 12, 2023.
  2. World Bank: Pakistan: Flood Damages and Economic Losses Over USD 30 Billion and Reconstruction Needs Over USD 16 Billion - New Assessment, October 28, 2022
  3. Parnassus Investments: Parnassus Investments Removes Investment Screen for Nuclear Power in Support of Our Transition to Low-Carbon Economy, May 1, 2023
  4. ESG Clarity: Should we embrace nuclear energy to solve the climate crisis? By Leslie Samuelrich, CEO of Green Century Funds, August 30, 2023
  5. Bank of America Securities, RIC Report, "The Nuclear Necessity," by Jared Woodard, published May 11, 2023.
  6. Parnassus' Annual Stewardship Report, Principals and Performance in Action 2023
  7. Green Century's Equity Fund Holdings, as of June 30, 2023, with assets of $544,380,517.

  8. Parnassus Funds, totalling over $42 billion as of 9/30/23.

Published by Valerie Gardner in Advanced Nuclear, Asset manager support, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate innovation fund, Climate mayhem, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, Investor activity, NEWS, Public companies, Reduced ecosystem impacts, Solving climate, US competitiveness, US technological leadership
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October 17, 2023

Marc Andreessen’s Pronuclear Techno-Optimism


Marc Andreessen, Cofounder and General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a phenomenally-successful $35 billion venture capital firm dubbed "a16z," has shared a litany of views of where humanity is and where it should be vis-à-vis technology in a post entitled "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto."  Writing in Nietzsche-like style, Andreessen covers topics such as lies, truth, technology, markets, intelligence, energy, abundance and much more with bold pronouncements regarding our future. This manifesto is a wake-up call to us all to not presume our future's doom and allow pessimism to handcuff action. In fact, Marc posits that we have all the tools we need to create a better future, if we are optimistic and brave enough to use them. 

There is much to appreciate about someone of Andreessen's stature putting his views out there in unapologetic style.  We take the liberty of sharing an extract from Marc's manifesto on the topic of "Energy," which we agree with entirely and which informed our reasons for founding Nucleation Capital, but we urge everyone to take a moment to read the entire manifesto to refresh your brain and recharge your perspective.

Energy

Energy is life. We take it for granted, but without it, we have darkness, starvation, and pain. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth.

We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well.

The current gap in per-capita energy use between the smaller developed world and larger developing world is enormous. That gap will close – either by massively expanding energy production, making everyone better off, or by massively reducing energy production, making everyone worse off.

We believe energy need not expand to the detriment of the natural environment. We have the silver bullet for virtually unlimited zero-emissions energy today – nuclear fission. In 1973, President Richard Nixon called for Project Independence, the construction of 1,000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000, to achieve complete US energy independence. Nixon was right; we didn’t build the plants then, but we can now, anytime we decide we want to.

Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas Murray said in 1953: “For years the splitting atom, packaged in weapons, has been our main shield against the barbarians. Now, in addition, it is a God-given instrument to do the constructive work of mankind.” Murray was right too.

We believe a second energy silver bullet is coming – nuclear fusion. We should build that as well. The same bad ideas that effectively outlawed fission are going to try to outlaw fusion. We should not let them.

We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment. Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago, even without nuclear power.

We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis. A technologically advanced society improves the natural environment, a technologically stagnant society ruins it. If you want to see environmental devastation, visit a former Communist country. The socialist USSR was far worse for the natural environment than the capitalist US. Google the Aral Sea.

We believe a technologically stagnant society has limited energy at the cost of environmental ruin; a technologically advanced society has unlimited clean energy for everyone. [Emphasis added.]

As investors in next-generation nuclear, we were thrilled to see Marc Andreessen rail in support of nuclear.  Yet, a mere two days after the release of Andreessen's almost poetic Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Ryan McEntush from the a16z team published an even more significant piece, a profoundly well researched and comprehensive analysis called "How to Scale Nuclear."  This article received almost none of the social media attention but is definitely well worth reading. To us, this article is evidence that Andreessen Horowitz is actively investing human capital into understanding and building expertise in nuclear fission and, if they aren't already, may soon become a fission investor.

Source: 
Andreessen Horowitz, "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," by Marc Andreessen, October 16, 2023.

Andreessen Horowitz, "How to Scale Nuclear," by Ryan McEntush, October 18, 2023.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Asset manager support, Brilliant thinkers, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, Investor activity, LINKS, Venture capital support for nuclear
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