Shanu Mathew
@ShanuMathew93
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Climate, Investing, NBA, & Rap. SVP, Portfolio Manager - Sustainable Investing. Prev: Head of ESG, HY Credit, Startup (acq.) IB. Own Views. RTs ≠ endorsement.
Joined June 2019
A highlight from the @CSISEnergy's Electricity Supply Bottleneck on U.S. AI Dominance event hosted by @1reluctantcog! We dug into a variety of topics ranging from the growing computational intensity of the economy, the sustainability and trajectory of datacenter capex, and how
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My 2022 meme submission: "You should lower your emissions"
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I wish everyone that spouted off on the ICE vs. EV debate had to simply acknowledge first that most of the energy you put into a gasoline car is wasted and EVs are far more efficient at converting energy to motion. This is a simple, objective fact.
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Perspective: Lithium we mine today and that we'll need to mine by 2050 compared to other major mined materials today like Iron, Aluminum, and Copper. Measured in kilotonnes. Great visual.
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Larry Fink/BlackRock: "Today, we're standing at the edge of an opportunity so vast it's almost hard to grasp. By 2040, the global demand for new infrastructure investment is $68 trillion. To put that price tag in perspective, it’s roughly the equivalent of building the entire
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The ERCOT electricity mix from 2006 to 2024 is amazing to see!
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Bain:. -Data center boom could require $2T+ in new energy resources globally. -US utilities face 7-26% generation increase by 2028, biggest challenge in decades. -44% of US load growth from data centers thru '28. -Utilities need 10%+ revenue requirement to fund required capex
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. here we go
Rumor going around that $MSFT is paying penalties to get out of some data center contracts & power agreements-- changing tone drastically on CAPEX growth. Might be another DeepSeek shockwave to the semi supply chain.
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Eye-opening perspective on utility grid load - buildings vs. commercial EVs.
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This is such a great & under-appreciated point and can extend to the entire global energy value chain today. Many people don’t understand the complexity, size, and depth of operations that go into producing, delivering, and ensuring safe/affordable/reliable energy supplies. This
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Great visualization by @BloombergNEF which shows the estimated 2022-31 energy transition spending in both the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Segments into emissions categories and includes specific subsets within each.
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Personal news: I accepted a role at an asset manager as a VP in Sustainability & Net-Zero Research working with the US public equities team! Taking a few weeks off to recharge but start in July. Excited to be working in a climate-focused seat. Why I'm pumped about net-zero? 1/n.
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My girlfriend is watching the Grammy's and asked me why I'm so uninterested/hate it. People don't forget.
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“The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.
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McKinsey upped their data center forecast: now expect "83GW is up from ~56GW in from the prior September 2023 modeling. Overall McKinsey now forecasts US data center energy consumption in terawatt hours (TWh) rising to 606TWh in 2030, representing 12% of total US power demand.
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The IKEA Foundation, a philanthropy funded by IKEA owner INGKA Foundation, announced plans to deploy €600 million in climate funding by 2025. Key areas of deployment: stimulating a shift to alternative and plant-based proteins, and reducing methane emissions in agriculture.
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"In fact, [heat pumps] are so efficient at converting power to heat that even if the power grid ran entirely on *gas*, heat pumps connected to it would use *less* than directly gas-powered furnaces do" @GernotWagner in @climate.
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Eaton: U.S. Data Center construction backlog (~$234 billion) represents ~7 years of construction at the 2024 build rates. Their DC business +45% sales y/y, +65% negotiations pipeline, +75% orders TTM, +50% backlog. Insane growth.
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Recent Data Center conference big picture takeaways:.-BYOP = Bring your own power being accepted as likely norm as we hit bottlenecks, nat gas interest is sparked.-SMRs are still a long away.-Sites: land w/ fiber access near nat gas or find fiber where grid is not constrained.
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"world’s largest copper producers have warned that there is a lack of mines under development to deliver enough to keep pace with the energy transition. warning comes as miners struggle with falling metal prices because of weakness of the global economy and cost inflation,
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Desalination is becoming more affordable due to cheaper solar power. New plants cost $400M for 500K m³/day, translating to ~$0.30/m³. Energy costs are as low as $0.07/m³ (using $0.025/KWh solar). The Hassyan project in Dubai promises water at $0.37/m³, compared to €1/m³ in
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For the first time, US Census Bureau reported 'data centers' as a separate category in its construction spending reports. "In May, U.S. data center put-in-place (PiP) construction spend was running at an annualized seasonally adjusted rate of $27B. That compares to $16B a year
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Big sodium-ion news week: "Northvolt made a breakthrough. sodium-ion battery that has no lithium, cobalt or nickel. validated battery at critical level of 160 watt hours per kg, an energy density close to that of the type of lithium batteries"
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"CAISO-connected battery peaker plants displaced nearly 30% of monthly demand for natural gas generation last spring. The California battery fleet, consisting largely of systems designed to discharge for up to four hours, displaced an estimated 30 Bcf of natural gas through the
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Incredible presentation. My favorite slides below. 🧵. Manufactured technologies (e.g., solar and wind) enjoy cost learning curves; (fossil) commodities don’t. which also means they grow faster. Even neutral actors modeled in linear terms. But change has been exponential.
The cleantech revolution - it's exponential, disruptive, and now. Our annual presentation looks in detail at the story for renewables, electrification and efficiency.
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"Battery prices are back to a declining trajectory in 2023, after an unprecedented year of increases in 2022. @BloombergNEF's annual battery price survey has found that the volume-weighted average price for lithium-ion battery packs dropped to $139 per kWh in 2023, a 14% decline
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Have you ever been curious about how public asset managers are trying to figure out implementing Net Zero across portfolios? Bunch of approaches all with their own nuances and pros/cons. GFANZ portfolio alignment released updated guidance - 140 pages. Here are some highlights.🧵.
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According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), data centers currently represent 2.5% of U.S. electricity consumption. [At higher end of estimates], data centers could move to 7.5% of all electricity. >60% of DCs in MISO, CAISO, PJM, & Southeast.
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The average age of an installed transformer in the United States is 38-40 years, and the suggested lifespan of a transformer is 20 25 years. Currently, more than 70% of U.S. transformers are aged more than 25 years (DOE).
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"The extended-range Lightning’s 131 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion pack boasts almost 10 times the capacity of a Tesla Powerwall, an $11,000 home backup battery that can’t be driven to the supermarket. The Lightning is 'a mini powerplant for your home'(EVP Engineering from PG&E),".
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"Wood Mackenzie software, used by nearly 50% of US utilities to manage their equipment procurement, gives real-time visibility on lead times and prices. We are typically seeing lead times now averaging three years for particularly large transformers (greater than 500 MVA). In.
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NextEra calls out 28 GW backlog and 40% of the additions are coming from C&I customers vs. 60% from power companies. Battery storage considered lowest cost, ready-now solution for capacity needs.
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JPM highlights what utility companies have said about data center prospects. -PJM Utilities (collective): ~50 GW datacenter load growth identified (some duplication). -Exelon (EXC): 6 GW+ expected datacenter growth; Illinois: 5 GW in engineering phase, 13 GW in prospect phase.
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Breaking: First Solar today announced it entered into two separate Tax Credit Transfer Agreements (TCTAs) on to sell $500 million and up to $200 million, respectively, of 2023 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) 45x tax credits to Fiserv. Under the terms of the agreements Fiserv will.
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While we're at it, this is also true for all combustion of fossil fuels. Most of the energy burned becomes waste heat! I wish more people knew that when arguing this stuff. Imagine on a first principles basis arguing that the optimal state is one that wastes 2/3 of the output.
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Another good one.
Don't forget that the scale of battery metals/minerals mining and extraction is miniscule compared to the scale of extraction that legacy fossil fuels require in terms of equivalent tonnes of annual production.
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"The prompt asking whether it’s okay to lie generated a 1,000-word response from the DeepSeek model, which took 17,800 joules to generate—about what it takes to stream a 10-minute YouTube video. This was about 41% more energy than Meta’s model used to answer the prompt. Overall,
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Wolfe from their conference: "high level, rough approximation of the economics: for a 1 GW data center, which would require $30-35B of capex (the largest four companies in the market have had annual capex of $30-50B to give a sense of the size of a 1 GW data center investment).
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New @DukeU study: US could add 98GW of AI data centers with NO new power infrastructure needed - if they reduce power just ~2hrs during peaks (for <2% of hours in year). DCs can maintain 24/7 operations using: On-site batteries, natural gas backup, load shifting across locations,
1/ 🚨New study alert!🚨 .My DukeU colleagues and I just released a 1st-of-kind study on how the US grid could integrate up to 100 gigawatts of data centers w/out major new infrastructure, provided modest load flexibility (0.5%/yr). AI load growth can be managed faster, cheaper, &
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"Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon all publicly announced power purchase agreements, or PPAs, for clean power last month. Microsoft snapped up by far the largest capacity, with a whopping 1,580 megawatts of contracts signed. The PPAs signed by Google, Meta and Amazon, which
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We said goodbye to my father today. George Mathew, known by Sunny to friends & family, was truly a one of one. From being born to unimaginable hardships in India, to coming to America with only $20 in his pocket ($7 of which that he spent on beer in London), to becoming a
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(1/9) New @BerkeleyLab @ENERGY shows dramatic changes in U.S. data center energy use. In 2014-2016, consumption was stable at ~60 TWh/year. But by 2023, it reached 176 TWh - over 4% of total U.S. electricity use (+up to 6-12% by 2028). The culprit? The rise of AI computing.
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BNEF thinks $3/kg subsidy for green H2 projects is worth ~$1.91/kg dollars on a levelized basis. Can bring down avg. US cost of green hydrogen down to $2/kg by 2023. By 2030, they think levelized value of PTC would actually be > their base view for unsubsidized green H2 costs.
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Solar and battery storage to make up 81% of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2024. Developers and power plant owners plan to add 62.8 gigawatts (GW) of new utility-scale electric-generating capacity in 2024 per @EIAgov
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Power/nat gas M&A thoughts 🧵: . Recent gas plant acquisitions show major activity: NRG paid $12B for 13GW, Vistra $1.9B for 2.6GW, Constellation $16.4B for Calpine. Deals valued at $700-$1,100/kw, significantly below new build costs of $2,000-$2,400/kw+.
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NextEra: Renewables + Storage are the most economic and quickest way to meet load growth. Randos: What do they know? They're talking their book. NEE: "FPL is the largest electric utility in the U.S. and Energy Resources is the world's leader in renewables and storage. Together,
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Don't forget that the scale of battery metals/minerals mining and extraction is miniscule compared to the scale of extraction that legacy fossil fuels require in terms of equivalent tonnes of annual production.
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New industry data shows the first three months of 2021 saw the addition of over 5 gigawatts of new U.S. solar power generating capacity, the largest first quarter ever via @Ben_Geman
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Wild stat!. RBC: "Increasingly, we are hearing about 1GW datacenters, which according to Constellation Energy, could cost ~$7-$10 billion to build and potentially another ~$20 billion to populate the facility with chips, power infrastructure, and other electrical equipment.".
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@ArashMarkazi How does anyone watch him all year and think he’s a good coach? Nonsensical lineups, scoring droughts, no strategic use of time outs, players don’t respect his basketball prowess… it’s perplexing he has a job and honestly see no good reason he keeps it.
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"Predictions don’t always come true. There’s no guarantee there’ll be a market for all the oil, gas and coal countries could produce. The chart shows how the U.S. Energy Information Administration missed the shift away from coal and toward wind, solar and natural gas"
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"On average, customers currently have to wait three years for high-voltage transformers and one year for distribution transformers. About 80% of high-voltage transformers and 40-50% of distribution transformers are imported. Meanwhile, the National Electrical Manufacturers
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"Even in a best-case scenario, about 75 gigawatts of gas-fired generation could be built by the end of 2030, 16% of the 460 gigawatts needed overall, NextEra Chief Executive Officer John Ketchum said in an interview at CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. The costs for
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Heads down, doing the work while ignoring the headlines. Blackstone has raised $5.6 billion for a fund dedicated to investing in the energy transition. the fourth of this fund strategy and a third larger than the last one.
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Wow! . "~85% of new residential solar deals in CA now include batteries, a senior vice president for Sunrun, said at the Evercore ISI Global Clean Energy & Transition Technologies Summit in New York on Thursday. That’s up from 20% before new net-metering policies took effect".
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Topical
Anyone have more examples of charts like this where people show predictions made over time versus reality?
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Reduction in near-term EV and battery targets and production by select companies
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WSJ picking up a geothermal piece! Chevron, BP, and Devon are part of a group of fossil-fuel cos investing 100s of millions of dollars in modern geothermal startups and projects. Uses same tech employed by frackers, but look for underground heat vs. O&G.
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‘Report from the Clean Energy Futures project — a collaboration among researchers from Harvard, Syracuse, Georgia Tech & others — found that a U.S. transition to 80% clean electricity by 2030 would cost $342 billion… but it would produce a net benefit of more than $1.4 trillion’.
Some things are harder like cement, steel & airplanes, but we know how to decarbonize the power sector, so let’s get on it with, I tell @NPR @Marketplace.
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Backpacked in the PNW this weekend, specifically The Enchantments near Leavenworth, Seattle. Breathtakingly beautiful. Nice reminder to unplug every once in a while and connect with yourself and nature. Even better, came back to civilization to news of the IRA passing!
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Great breakdown. @BenHertzShargel .
FERC rejected Talen's ISA that sought expansion from 300MW to 480MW co-located load but the existing 300MW remains valid. Rejection signals heightened scrutiny of non-standard grid agreements and their impact on necessary grid updates/consumer bills. This may freeze up future
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Goldman Sachs Research estimates current global data center power usage at 55 GW: cloud (54%), traditional (32%), AI (14%). By 2027, demand may reach 84 GW, with AI rising to 27%, cloud dropping to 50%, and traditional workloads falling to 23%.
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"McKinsey, BCG and S&P Global Commodity Insights all project electricity demand tied to data centers to increase at a compound annual growth rate of between 13% and 15% through 2030.". "Any company that is net long power—that is, those that have more capacity to sell power than
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"That's because gas turbines are in short supply and in high demand. It's also proving difficult to reestablish the highly skilled workforce required to build these complex power plants. Gas-fired combined cycle plants rely on approximately 1,000 workers across dozens of niche
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Slides from NRG:.-2024-2028 incremental load for ERCOT is 56 GW (~57% data centers); 21GW for PJM (~68% DCs).-Nat Gas is <10% of planned capacity expansions.-Consistent with NextEra, they say 2030+ for any unplanned natural gas while Solar + Batteries are 2025+.-LOIs at
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Barclays: "Despite heat pumps being >3x more efficient, this often more than offset by retail electricity-to-gas prices also being >3x. Few European countries and even fewer US states have consistently had retail electricity-to-gas price ratios below 2.5x"
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We're finally saying the quiet part out loud!. “Conservatively, you’re seeing five to 10 times more interconnection requests than data centers actually being built,” said Astrid Atkinson, a former Google senior director of software engineering and now co-founder and CEO of grid
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"An exclusive Bloomberg analysis shows that more than three-quarters of highly-distorted power readings across the country are within 50 miles of significant data center activity. While many facilities are popping up near major US cities and adding stress to already fragile
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Wild stats from @energy_said:. -A transmission line in the developed world needs to acquire as many as 13,500 permits, while projects that struggle with right-of-way can take 15-20 years. -Distribution bottlenecks are suggested by US grid outages doubling since 2013
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“Battery storage in US homes surged by 64% in 2024 compared to the previous year, outpacing increases in commercial and utility installations, according to new data from Wood Mackenzie and the American Clean Power Association, a trade group. These storage units are now in about
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Wow stat: US moves from 7 GW of domestic module manufacturing to 50 GW, 5 years ahead of schedule. "The United States has reached a historic manufacturing milestone, surpassing 50 gigawatts (GW) of domestic solar module production capacity. In 2020, SEIA set a goal for 50 GW
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Fascinating details on largest COAL to GAS switch:.-Former Pennsylvania coal plant in Homer City demolished to make way for AI data center campus.-Site will house what would be nation's largest gas-fired power plant at up to 4.5 gigawatts, enough to nearly power Manhattan
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Great piece @MLiebreich . Data centers' massive power needs (75MW-2GW+) create unprecedented grid strain. While alternative solutions like SMRs, fusion, and off-grid setups are heavily promoted, they face major cost and feasibility issues. The most viable path is likely grid
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And the letter made itself to my friend @erikolsonn . While doomscroll Twitter will try to convince you otherwise, this can be a wonderful place sometimes. #operationgrandma #missionsuccess.
Does anyone know an Emma and Erick living in a basement apartment in DC? A gift card was sent to them but arrived in my DC mail. Only return info I have is “Grandma.” I’d like to get it to them!.
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Great McKinsey graphic on 12 categories interconnected through dependencies in foundational science and system-level scaling that are required to achieve climate goals. 4 buckets:.1) Clean electrons & electrification.2) Clean molecules.3) Carbon capture & removal.4) Circularity
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Got through the summary report of @McKinsey's Net Zero economy report. Very well done. Read enough of these and you eventually get the same points (sectors, themes, everyone do their part, etc.) so will focus on some of the underappreciated/new points.
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Yep, and timelines for new turbines are already on a 3+ year timeline too. Not looking at getting new unplanned gas plants operating until beyond 2030. People aren’t ready to have that conversation yet cause the “gas is back” talk track is in vogue right now.
It isn't just renewables; inflation is hitting all energy infrastructure. Duke just proposed building 2 gas-fired power plants in Indiana by 2030 for $3.3 bln, a stunning $2236/kw. For comparison, a facility in MI came on in '22 at $1000/kw and another in IL in '23 at $1083/kw.
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JPMorgan global head of sustainability policy and regulation head with a straightforward argument: Labeling assets as "transition" won't drive investment. What matters is proven business cases and financial returns, not taxonomies and frameworks. Capital flows to yields.
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NRG Energy, GE Vernova, and TIC announce a venture to develop new electricity generation capacity for AI computing demands. Partnership will advance 4 projects totaling +5GW of nat gas plants in ERCOT & PJM markets, with first 1.2GW operational by 2029 & pipeline of 10-15GW.
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So blatantly partisan. What @JigarShahDC & team have done is nothing short of remarkable in such little time. Turned it into a power house for innovation & funding, while restoring the office’s reputation. Also context for Solyndra below (<5% failure rate overall for high risk.
Republicans are vowing to make 2011's Solyndra loan scandal "look like chump change" as they investigate Biden's $400 billion green bank. Biden’s $400 Billion Green Bank at Risk as GOP Hunt New Solyndra | Bloomberg. 🔓
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Nat gas midstream guys talking about big prospective load inquiries. Reference - US is ~90 bcf/d. So +10bcf is a massive number. KMI: "Current discussions on power opportunities total well north of the 5 Bcf a day we mentioned in the second quarter. Our internal number for
New bull case for Nat Gas from EQT (talking own book, obvi): "We expect natural gas to take 50% to 80% of new power generation market share. base case view that data centers and additional coal retirements will drive up to 10 Bcf per day of incremental natural gas power demand
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US plan to become world’s cleantech superpower. "revolution is under way in sectors incl. solar, nuclear, carbon capture, & green hydrogen — goals are profound: rejuvenate country’s rustbelt, decarbonize world’s biggest economy, & wrest control of energy supply chains from China"
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@bballforever_ do his age next to the seasons played in each conference. c'mon lol. ragebait.
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ERCOT too: "Technology giants developing big artificial intelligence data centers in Texas will need to pay more for electricity infrastructure upgrades to prevent those costs from burdening households and other businesses, according to the state grid operator’s chief. The
Data centers in Ohio must pay 85%+ of energy costs for grid upgrades under new AEP settlement. Agreement includes sliding scale for smaller facilities and path to end Central Ohio moratorium. State PUC approval pending.
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BofA: "Gas turbine market data for 1H24 shows the highest orders in a decade in gigawatt (GW) capacity terms. In terms of actual units, orders were the highest since 2018. Gas turbine orders in 1H24 were up 24% y/y to 30.5GW. On a unit basis, orders rose 15% y/y to 195 units in.
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"indicates how the country’s interstate highways could serve as pathways for the roughly sketched-in interregional high-voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnections that the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has found could enable a significant
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.@BloombergNEF: China Extends Dominance of Clean-Tech Supply Chains (Despite Onshoring Push): China's share of global manufacturing capacity is now above 80% in 11 clean-tech segments
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As of 6/28/23, investments announced under @POTUS:. -$100 billion in US battery manufacturing & supply chain . -$30 billion+ in US EV component & assembly. -$9 billion+ solar manufacturing. -$3.5 billion US offshore wind manufacturing facility, port, and vessel investments
America, we're listening. With historic investments in our electric vehicle manufacturing supply chain, the Biden-Harris Administration is investing billions to make EVs more affordable and practical. Check out our NEW EV Investment map and more:
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WoodMack is tracking several hundred proposed data centers and as permits are captured, building a bottom-up power model by ISO. Figures below do NOT include proposed but only FULLY permitted sites.
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Eaton investing $340 million to increase US production of its three-phase transformers; production and hiring by '27. Since '23, ETN invested $1BN+ in its domestic manufacturing for electrical solutions (transformers and voltage regulators, electrical assemblies, switchgear,
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@CJHandmer Cause it’s more about holding onto power & continuing grifts than it is getting things done, otherwise we would see that phenomenon. Best case scenario, such an uphill battle to win a seat that most change in discouraged to avoid any change that could risk loss of it but meh.
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Woah: "JPMorgan Chase announced today a series of deals aimed at removing and storing 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, valued at over $200 million, marking one of the largest carbon dioxide removal (CDR) purchases to date."
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“Schneider Electric is set to invest over $700mn in the US energy sector over the next couple of years, the largest single planned investment in the company’s 135-year history in the American market.”
Schneider Electric set to invest more than $700mn in US energy sector
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