1. More money, but hopefully not more problemsThe Energy Department received nearly $40 billion—a record—for energy research and development in the infrastructure law (DOE gets a total of more than $62 billion in the law). That’s good news for clean energy innovation, but now it’s facing the Herculean task of getting all the money out the door effectively and fast. First up: Hiring 1,000 new people, the department said last month. “They have to be very thoughtful about how to structure programs, how to put out money and how they’re going to manage political wins and also when something bad happens with the money invested,” said Spencer Nelson, senior research director at ClearPath, a nonprofit organization focused on clean energy innovation policy. 2. First-of-their-kind projects to the start line Efforts at both the federal and private-sector level are pouring money into ensuring new technologies can go from invention to commercialization. This could be the year we see a lot of rhetoric turn into action. The Energy Department’s record funding will help create the supply of new technologies, but we also need demand. The Biden administration announced the First Movers Coalition at the United Nations climate conference in November, which includes roughly three dozen companies having committed to procure new technologies in such hard-to-clean sectors like aviation and steel. Closer to Cipher’s home, we’ll be looking at which projects get funding through Breakthrough Energy’s Catalyst program, announced in July. The program, whose anchor partners span the corporate and government spectrum, will include direct funding for early-commercial projects in sectors that are similarly hard to clean up: sustainable aviation fuels, long-duration energy storage, direct air capture and green hydrogen. 3. Global climate and energy equity Leaders of developing countries, particularly those in Africa and Southeast Asia, are increasingly speaking out on the importance of ensuring the technological transformation to net-zero emissions by 2050 is equitable. Although this rift has existed for decades, the topic is taking on greater urgency as multilateral organizations in and run largely by wealthier nations cut off financing for fossil-fuel projects in the developing world (even while they continue such projects within their own borders). We’ll be looking to see to what degree leniency is granted in some of these restrictions and how development of new clean energy technologies is done in a way that will benefit the entire world, not just the wealthier countries where they’re being invented. 4. Whether the VC market cools downWhat goes up, must come down, or maybe not judging by Tesla’s share price. We’ll be looking to see if there is any cooling-off of the red-hot (or should that be green-hot?) climate tech VC space, as noted earlier. 5. Reckoning with clean energy criticismAs we enter the supercharged period of ramping up cleaner energy resources, concerns about their footprints on Earth are rising, including: - appropriately handling retired wind turbines and other clean energy technologies;
- safely mining for clean energy minerals we need for these technologies;
- streamlining the permitting process for new wind and solar farms and power lines without bulldozing over community rights; and
- ensuring new industrial facilities (hydrogen and carbon capture) are built with environmental justice in mind.
Expect to see these concerns get louder going forward.
The only things that don’t face opposition are
things that don’t matter. Everything that matters will, so we should be prepared to have constructive (not destructive) conversations about them.
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