Year 1 wrap up

What I've learned and where I'm going next

My first post went up on Substack on November 6, 2023. Today marks the 52nd straight week I’ve published and it’s been quite a year. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and providing feedback. It’s helped me build out knowledge of what is important to me in sustainability and go deeper in areas I believe to be most impactful. It’s also been motivating to know that folks have been reading consistently enough to complain when they don’t see a Tuesday morning post. Thanks for being my accountability buddy!

With this in mind, I’m taking a posting hiatus until December. I will share why I’m taking a break in a few weeks. I plan to be back and posting regularly again when I return.

Today, I am taking a look back at the full year of posts. I have learned a ton and want to highlight major themes as we look into year 2 of Sustainable Advantages.

By the numbers

I wrote the ICE Manufacturing Pivot last October as a test post that I shared around with a few people to get a sense of what would be interesting to read. When I added it to Substack, it was sent to 2 emails (including mine) and has been since viewed 46 times (mostly by me). My latest post Amazon builds while others hedge went to 243 emails and was viewed 244 times in the past week.

My most viewed post was Making money charging EVs? which had 374 views. This was a time when I experimented with titles that would be suitable for SEO and I suppose putting “making money” in the title did generate more traffic. I ultimately decided to stop doing that because it felt like generating clickbait, which I don’t want to be part of!

I am proud to say that 7 subscribers have purchased EVs and said my work or advice has influenced their decision. That’s pretty cool! 2 other subscribers have asked for my advice on rooftop solar plus storage solution. This is an impact I didn’t expect to have when I set out to write, but I am happy to have been a part of these decisions.

There are 244 subscribers to Sustainable Advantages today and about 50% of them regularly open the emails. Subscribers come from 22 different countries and 27 US states according to IP addresses. Special shout out to friends of the newsletter from the UK, India, and Canada who make up the bulk of the subscribers outside of the US.

Three favorite learnings

I began writing as a way to help me learn about the business of climate change. There’s so much that I haven’t dug into, but here are three main takeaways that I have so far. A meta takeaway is that I am very interested in the electrification aspects of sustainability, so my favorites are all related to that.

Solar is growing fast but could be much faster

Solar is the fastest-growing electricity generation source by far. Every firm that has predicted solar capacity over the last ten years has underpredicted the growth by a double-digit percent each year. Ten years ago, Texas had nearly zero solar production. Now the midday peak in October is 40% covered by solar generation. That’s an unprecedented deployment rate. However, every state in the US could be deploying solar as quickly as Texas is if there were no artificial barriers to getting solar projects done such as vertically integrated utilities that refuse to build utility-scale solar because of the lower capital cost (which lowers the rate of return they can ask for from the public utility commission). With proper processes in place across the US, solar could be deployed to the same extent it has been in Texas within 5 years in every area of the US. This would lower everyone’s electricity prices and provide excess electricity to potentially use for green hydrogen production. The slow states just have to be willing to embrace the obvious market dynamics and break out of the current regulatory capture environment they are currently playing in.

Batteries are here faster than expected

Batteries are the only major electricity component that is being deployed faster than solar. They are getting cheaper, cleaner to produce, and more economical to operate over long durations. In reports I read from before 2020, battery storage was mostly an afterthought and a “nice to have” when it came to grid modernization and cleanup. Five years later they have stabilized batteries supplementing solar have stabilized the notoriously unstable Texas grid, given rise to the dawn of virtual power plants, and revived American manufacturing. I believe that Form Energy could be one of the next great American manufacturing companies with their unique iron-air batteries that are cheap to produce, made from abundantly available materials, fully recyclable, and capable of storing electricity for 100 hours at prices competitive with a gas power plant. The sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t always blow, but these batteries are showing a high potential for smoothing out blips in renewables. With abundant lithium deposits being discovered in Arkansas and California, the supply chain for current battery chemistries can be cleaned up and provided from domestic sources. Experts did not see this coming, so I think we’re just beginning to see the impact of the rise of the battery age.

Weird politics are a high hurdle

The market prices for renewables have been competitive with fossil fuel sources for years. Onshore wind in the US has been the cheapest energy source until solar recently displaced it, yet only a few areas of the country have significant wind deployments despite large potential. Even more frustrating is where wind is currently a dominant force, there is a lack of transmission infrastructure to major cities, leaving wind producers to deal with negative prices for power they can’t export. Energy infrastructure is an inherently political topic, but weird politics are harming consumers and the environment simultaneously in the interest of short-term profits for incumbent players. Everyone loves short-term profits so it is difficult to sell long-term benefits to powerful people who are elected based on other issues besides cheap, clean electricity. It is definitely weird to leave your fellow humans out to dry as a public official, but this is going to be a necessary challenge to overcome if the clean energy transition is going to make it.

Drawing a conclusion

Avid readers will know that I love a good pun, and I draw pictures to help me understand. To sum up the year, I am resharing my favorite picture I have drawn. It is the explainer of how a distribution system operator (DSO) works. This is a crucial piece to capture when talking about the grid because so much of the work happens from the substation to the ratepayer. The DSO is responsible for this work. Also, this drawing contains my full arsenal of artistic capabilities!

I appreciate everyone who made it this far. I look forward to sharing again when I start back up in December.