An important conversation hosted by Doon Insights
Doon Insights, an investment-focused group organized by Howard Chao, convened dozens of subject-matter experts as speakers (see the list below) across many disciplines in Santa Cruz, California to address trends and issues impacting demand for and supply of energy in the coming years and decades. Energy, which is what makes today's technologically-dependent society possible, is a very large and important topic and was a lot to cover. But in an ambitious, rapid-paced one-day conference titled "POWER SURGE: Solving for Unprecedented Energy Demand," dozens of people laid out the fundamentals and discussed the key questions around both what is driving demand and how will we meet that demand. Questions tackled included:
Demand Side
- Why projections for US power needs now greatly exceed what would have been predicted only a couple of year ago
- Why the exceptional needs of AI Data Centers and the electrification of diverse parts of the economy are driving energy demand
- What are the challenges of building, financing and operating new data centers?
- How much more power will these new facilities require? Where will they be located and what is the attitude of utilities, state and federal government towards supporting them?
- How will the rapidly changing AI competitive landscape affect these power projections? Does the advent of very cheap, highly efficient, smaller SLMs, open source models and Chinese competitors mean that investors have overestimated the need for huge data centers?
- How will the electrification of vehicles, buildings, industry and transactions (blockchain and cryptocurrencies) further accelerate and add significant incremental power demand?
- What are the primary challenges to meeting these power demands of these expanding use cases in the coming years and what will be the main challenges to implementation, including the need to expand the transmission capabilities of the grid?
- Will the new administration's renewed emphasis on fossil fuels result in a slowdown in electrification?
- What will be the impact of the tariffs on the buildout of all these projects?
- How will the new administration's energy policies impact all of these areas? Will we be able to unleash power generation sufficient to sustain the foreseeable economic growth while also continuing to reduce carbon emissions?
Supply Side
- What are the near and longer-term challenges and solutions to the surge in power demand?
- Will growing renewables and batteries be sufficient?
- Will fossil fuels experience a resurgence, with all that drilling?
- Will the sexiest and biggest solutions—nuclear fission and fusion—be coming on stream faster than most people believe?
- What are the short, medium and long-term prospects for these new technologies?
- Will the "privatization" of nuclear innovation and the prevalence of an industry being led by fast-moving private companies, pleasantly surprise us with their speed to market?
- What will be the near-term and longer-term mix of energy solutions?
- How will a patchwork of revamped legacy technologies, including fuel cells, wind, solar, distributed generation, energy storage, energy time-of-use shifting and other behind-the-meter solutions help in the short-term?
- How are advancements in small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which offer enhanced safety features, reduced construction times, and the flexibility to be deployed in diverse locations, going to contribute?
- Given that major technology companies like Google and Amazon are investing in SMRs to power their expansive data centers, how will this accelerate commercialization?
- Fusion energy—which is experiencing a wave of breakthroughs, with multiple companies and research initiatives racing to develop and commercialize multiple technologies, such as high-temperature superconductors, improved plasma confinement techniques, and novel neutron flux applications—is beginning to generate revenues but has yet to complete a power-generating reactor design. Will the new administration help accelerate progress towards practical fusion power with pilot plants within the decade or is this game-changing technology still decades away?
The Nuclear Option
Valerie Gardner, Nucleation's managing partner, moderated the day's fission panel, called "The Nuclear Option: Generation IV and Small Modular Reactors," which looked at the role of fission innovation and the coming wave of small, modular reactors (SMRs), that were poised to bring nuclear power into the 21st century. She and her panelists, Leah Crider from Westinghouse (seated on the left), representing the eVinci design, and Clayton Scott from NuScale Power (in the center), which has the first NRC-certified advanced fission design, discussed how and why next-generation nuclear will be the ideal clean energy solution that few think is possible.
While the Fission panel had a full 45 minutes (and probably went over-time) to cover a lot of ground, including reviewing nuclear's status as a major source of today's clean energy, the fact that nuclear is turning into a "technology" product that can be manufactured in factories and shipped to locations, and how a growing assortment of energy buyers like Google, Amazon and Dow Chemical see advanced nuclear as solving their energy needs better than other solutions, because the subject matter was so expansive, Valerie and her panel were able to cover many but definitely not all of the important points. Nevertheless, the fact that this conference's supply-side conversation included nuclear fission at all was a huge victory. This inclusion reflects the fact that nuclear energy is no longer seen as the taboo topic it was long deemed to be, at least up until the last couple of years. For too long, nuclear fission was excluded and no one considered it a vital part of the clean energy solution set. But times have changed and especially among investors looking to understand key long-term trends and be able to invest into them at an early stage.
According to Howard Chao, each panel of the conference, by design, was too short, leaving a lot of unfinished conversations. Nucleation Capital was honored to have been included in this discussion and we look forward to continuing to see interest in advanced nuclear broaden.
POWER SURGE: List of Speakers
