Bill Gates caused a climate meltdown

Summary

Open Circuit – “Bill Gates caused a climate meltdown”

Episode Date: November 7, 2025
Podcast by Latitude Media
Live from Greentown Labs

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Overview

In this lively live episode, the Open Circuit team wades into the uproar over Bill Gates' recent climate letter and its implications for climate tech, energy policy, and startup innovation. Hosts Steven Lacy, Kathryn Hamilton, and Jigar Shah dissect Gates’ arguments, explore the ongoing deployment vs. innovation debate, discuss shifts in the climate tech investment landscape, and muse on what history will remember about this moment in industrial transformation. The episode closes with a future-looking thought experiment about the next 250 years of innovation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Elections, Electricity, and Affordability

• Electricity prices and affordability played a major role in recent elections across Georgia, Virginia, and New Jersey.
  • Kathryn Hamilton (04:40): “Affordability is everything. It really is. And you can see that throughout the races… Climate change language is even coming back into Texas school curriculums.”
• Increasingly, affordability and climate are being linked in both public perception and policy debates.
  • Jigar Shah (06:08): “[Candidates] ran specifically on climate… they actually want to honor all the laws that have been passed in Virginia to scale up all of this American technology that Dominion has been holding us back from for years… Climate was, like, on the ballot.”
  • Steven Lacy (07:13): “I don’t know that climate is on the ballot, though. I think it’s really more about bread and butter affordability…”

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2. Bill Gates Climate Letter – Controversy Unpacked

• Context: Bill Gates published a memo calling for more focus on innovation and public health alongside climate action, downplaying doomsday scenarios. Media and political worlds react with outsized fury, incorrectly interpreting Gates’ position as a reversal or denial of climate concerns.
  • Steven Lacy (09:07): “The reactions broke down on pretty predictable partisan lines… Those on the right celebrated Gates’ supposed reversal… The left saw it as bowing down to Trump… But I think there’s something else going on here: this old idea that we have to make this trade-off, that somehow deployment of clean solutions is incompatible with economic growth and improving lives.”

Gates’ Core Points (as summarized by Hamilton, 11:00–13:09):

• Climate change is serious, and we need to keep investing in zero-emission technologies (“we need to keep investing in this”)
• We can’t trade off public health/development funding for climate funding (health and climate are linked, these are not oppositional)
• Human welfare should be at the center of climate policy (drive ‘green premium’ to zero, measure impact rigorously)

Notable Quotes:

• Kathryn Hamilton (11:00): “It’s funny how people took him saying climate change will not lead to humanity’s demise to saying climate change is a hoax. That’s not what he said…”
• Jigar Shah (13:57): “This is the only topic I’ve resented you for. I can’t believe I have to spend five seconds talking about a person who is so uneducated… When you’re worth $200 billion, you’ve invested $2 billion in lawn care services, I’m sure.”

Critiques of Bill Gates’ Approach:

• Gates is “stuck on innovation,” often to the detriment of deployment of existing scalable solutions like solar, wind, and heat pumps.
• Jigar Shah (14:21): “His point of view has not changed since 2007. He has said we need breakthrough technologies, and infers that the technologies we have now are not worth deploying at scale.”
• Gates’ high-profile investments (Breakthrough Energy, etc.) have sometimes distracted from scalable, proven solutions and policy advocacy for deployment at scale.
• Gates’ team is packed with talent, but the money and policy focus remains misaligned with the immediate needs for mass deployment and affordability.
  • Jigar Shah (23:52): “He doesn’t care… For him, technology itself is the end point. That once you invest in something that is so freakin’ amazing that he’s going to go on Fareed Zakaria and Fareed Zakaria’s going to be like, ‘I love you, Bill Gates’… And this sector doesn’t work that way.”
• Gates allegedly underrates the current impact of wind and solar, and doesn’t focus on areas like electricity access (a key HDI driver).
  • Jigar Shah (19:05): “What is the number one determinant of the Human Development Index? Access to electricity. Who is going to solve that problem? U.S. solar and battery storage entrepreneurs…”

Policy and Near-term Impact

• Gates’ portfolio has some success stories, but major investments (fission, fusion, etc.) are long-term bets.
• Kathryn Hamilton (21:30): “If he’s really going to try to make a statement and be a thought leader… he needs to pick up some different technologies.”
• Impact needs come from both innovation and rapid deployment + supporting policy levers—workforce development, market access, regulatory frameworks.

Memorable Moments:

• Steven Lacy (16:53, on Paris Agreement): “He screwed up the entire media and comm strategy for the Paris Agreement.”
• Jigar Shah (26:39): “Do not put it in my face. Through Gates Notes. You have 70 people around you who are brilliant—can’t one of them stop you from hitting send?”

Closing the Debate:

• Kathryn Hamilton (27:26): “A lot of this is just like doing a million small actions that add up.”

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3. Climate Tech Capital and Startups: The New Normal

• Despite volatility, there’s a “super-cycle” of investment—AI/data centers, re-shoring, supply chains are driving infrastructure capital into clean energy.
  • Steven Lacy (32:09): “We’ve got this major capital spending boom on AI. Add in energy security, supply chain reshoring… it’s suddenly like a different landscape for investors.”
• Family office capital and infrastructure investors are stepping in, alongside venture capital and public markets.
  • Jigar Shah (32:09): “If you ask [solar, battery people] what capital sources do they have access to? Unlimited… All of the business models that people have been using for infrastructure are now being used for our sector.”
• Exit strategies are shifting: less focus on unicorns, more on infrastructure-scale, sustainable exits.
  • Jigar Shah (39:04): “Once you hit product market fit and have two happy customers, there’s someone that’s willing to buy your company. You just sell your company for $50 million and make a lot of money because you’ve only raised $6 million…”

Policy Realities in the Trump Era

• Companies are pulling back from federal policy, focusing on state levers – but neglecting policy is a mistake, as regulatory moves still dictate adoption.
  • Kathryn Hamilton (35:13): “If you’re doing business in a market that is electric and has anything to do with the utility, every single decision is made by the stroke of a pen of a regulator, and you better be engaged in policy…”
• Introduction of Common Charge, a 501c3 movement focused on affordability and reliability for customers (37:50).

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4. What Technologies Will Define This Era? (The Next 250 Years)

Hosts speculate what history will remember from our era 250 years from now:

• Kathryn Hamilton (45:05): “My hope is that in 250 years we have a three-day work week… as a result of AI.”
• Steven Lacy (45:59): “Synthetic biology… Instead of extracting to produce materials, we will use synthetic biology to create those materials… The AI’s acceleration of science… will be really foundational.”
• Jigar Shah (47:29): “We’ll have gotten rid of all transmission lines. I think all power will be beamed… And all energy that we don’t need locally will be produced on the moon and then beamed down.”

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “[Bill] started this whole journey… that the technologies we have today are not worth deploying at scale. He says that four times in this piece as well. His point of view has not changed since 2007.”
  — Jigar Shah (14:21)

• “Affordability is everything. You can see that throughout the races.”
  — Kathryn Hamilton (04:40)

• “He doesn’t care… For him, technology itself is the end point… And this sector doesn’t work that way.”
  — Jigar Shah (23:52–25:24)

• “In 2012, he says solar’s never going to amount to anything. It’s a cute technology.”
  — Jigar Shah (15:16)

• “He is very much stuck in the… investing in the big stuff… But then don’t pretend you want to have your near term impact.”
  — Kathryn Hamilton (27:08)

• “If you can’t succeed in this moment, you can’t succeed. And so take a hint. People are desperate for solutions.”
  — Jigar Shah (41:41)

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Timeline of Major Segments

• [04:10] – [07:38]: Elections, affordability, and climate as a pivoting issue in policy
• [07:38] – [29:21]: In-depth discussion on Bill Gates’ climate memo; Gates vs. deployment debate
• [30:14] – [43:48]: Climate tech investment super-cycle, startup exits, and policy strategy under “Trump 2.0”
• [43:48] – end: Speculations on defining next-century innovations

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Tone & Style

The episode is lively, at times irreverent, and deeply informed, mixing industry-insider wisdom with pointed critiques and humor. Jigar Shah provides sharp, occasionally biting commentary. Kathryn Hamilton delivers policy experience and pragmatic advice. Steven Lacy keeps the conversation moving and grounds it in broader context.

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Summary Takeaways

• The debate over innovation vs. deployment is far from settled, but the industry’s immediate need is toward scaling known solutions and supporting them with smart policy.
• Gates’ memo is less a denial and more a signal of the persistent disconnect between “big bets” and boots-on-the-ground climate action.
• The climate tech capital landscape is rapidly evolving, with new forms of financing and exit strategies.
• The urgency and opportunity in clean infrastructure have never been greater—companies and investors who can’t gain traction now may not get another window this good.
• History may remember this era for AI, synthetic biology, distributed and lunar power, or something even wilder—but the choices made around policy and deployment could be just as consequential.

Transcript

[Narrator]

Latitude Media covering the new frontiers of the energy transition.

[Host]

From Latitude Media, this is Open Circuit. This week we are wading into the heated discourse over Bill Gates latest take on climate and tech innovation. His recent letter caused a wave of strong reactions and so we figured why not add some of our own? Why are we still stuck on the innovation versus Deployment trope? Then we'll take a quick look at how climate, tech and clean energy startups are navigating the current landscape. Investment is up, but the ground is shifting. We'll touch a bit on exit strategies and policy priorities. And finally, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, we'll ask, what will history remember us for 250 years from now? That's all coming up in our live episode from Greentown Labs. OpenCircuit is brought to you by Natural Power for nearly two decades, Natural Power has provided engineering and consulting services for renewables projects across the US Natural Power supports clients in wind, solar and battery storage with a focus on independent engineering, technical due diligence, energy estimation and developer support. With more than 245 gigawatts of project experience in North America and acceptance from major financiers, Natural Power is responsive, able to meet tight timelines, and pragmatic. Natural Power works with you to understand, quantify and mitigate risks. Learn [e-mail] or click the link in.

[Narrator]

The show notes in the U.S. a billion dollar disaster now strikes every three weeks on average. That's why Latitude Media and the Ad Hoc Group are launching the Power Resilience Forum taking place January 21st through 23rd in Houston, Houston, Texas. PRF 2026 will be the center of the conversation on resilience. Utilities, regulators, innovators and investors will all be in the room talking about how to keep the grid running in this new era of heat waves, wildfires and storms. Expect conversations on everything from AI driven solutions to new financing models that can actually get projects built. If you work on the grid or depend on it, this is the place to be. Join us in Houston in January for the 2026 Power Resilience Forum. Check out the agenda and [e-mail].

[Steven Lacy]

Hello Somerville, Massachusetts. How's everybody doing? I am Steven Lacy. I am the Executive Editor of Latitude Media and I'm a New Englander. I was so excited about the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. I tried to get Ken Burns here as my co host but he declined. So I'm stuck up here with these two Sorry.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Seems super disappointing.

[Steven Lacy]

Those two are Kathryn Hamilton and Jigar Shah. I have to say I'm so relieved. I was texting you incessantly figuring that you might not get here. Going through two very busy airports this morning during a government shutdown. So absolutely relieved that you're here.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Yeah, I was praying quite a bit this morning because of the air traffic control issue and the government shutdown and Virginia being a hub of shutdown, I would say. Did you leave out of national?

[Jigar Shah]

I flew in from Chicago this morning and I'm upset that the government I think is still shut down after 37 days. It's ridiculous.

[Steven Lacy]

Longest shutdown ever. Katherine Hamilton is the co founder and the co chair or the chair is the co founder and chair of 38 North Solutions. She's a former board member of Greentown Labs. How are you?

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Great. I love this place so much. Huge fan.

[Steven Lacy]

And Jigar Shah is the co managing director of Multiplier. He is the former director of the DOE loan programs office. Hello, Jigar.

[Jigar Shah]

Hello.

[Steven Lacy]

So I want to start with something that's in the news right now. Can I just get your reactions to this Tuesday's elections? We saw major races in Georgia, in Virginia, in New Jersey, all centered around electricity prices. So based on the results that you saw this Tuesday, how do you think electricity prices, energy is playing into the American public policy going forward?

[Host]

Catherine?

[Kathryn Hamilton]

It's huge. It's massive. I mean I'm in Virginia and Virginia had a real sweep. A lot of seats switched over and that was. Affordability is a big issue. The other issue is the shutdown in Doge because like, you know, 250,000 federal workers are in Virginia and like 10% of them got canned. So there was that. But affordability is everything. It really is. And you can see that throughout the races. Another race that I watched that was pretty interesting. That's very dorky. But it was like a, it was a school board race in Texas where the members of the school board had said that we had over interpreted the separation between church and state and that they really wanted to put the church back into the state and they took out all the climate change language from all of the school materials, all the curriculum materials that completely flipped over. So we're getting climate change back.

[Steven Lacy]

Jigar, a lot of promises made about lowering energy prices. Are these promises going to get kept?

[Jigar Shah]

Well, I mean we certainly have extraordinary companies in this room that can help keep those promises. So that part I think is great. I think the big thing that I got out of the election is that the Republican candidate for the governor of New Jersey basically was like, I'm going to reopen a whole bunch of fossil fuel plants and it's going to be amazing. And that clearly did not work. It was his number one issue. And everyone basically said, we hate you. And so that's good. I think that in Virginia, I think there were like 15 of the house of Delegates who ran specifically on climate. Right? Not just like, we're against data centers or we're against whatever they were. Like, no, we actually want to honor all the laws that have been passed in Virginia to scale up all of this American technology that Dominion has been holding us back from for years and years and years. And so that also, like, beat in a big way. I mean, one of the candidates I was following, I think was in an R&6 race and won by 0.48%. I think they're two votes shy of a super majority in the House of Delegates now. And so, like, I just think it's important to recognize that this wasn't just a wave election. Climate was, like, on the ballot. Because the President has said he wants to make energy insecure in this country. Right. Because he wants to, like, take the stuff that we deployed at 90% right. Last year and, and hurt it as much as possible. And you had a bunch of candidates who said, I'm going to fight him tooth and nail on it.

[Steven Lacy]

I don't know that climate is on the ballot, though. I mean, I think it's really more about a bread and butter affordability issue and that there's an opportunity to talk about clean solutions as part of that conversation. But it seems to me that the climate conversation is very removed from most of the policy debates.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

I think people are starting to link them, though. People are starting to see that affordability is very much linked to inexpensive energy solutions. And that has a lot to do with climate.

[Steven Lacy]

Well, let's talk about the climate conversation and those sets of solutions through the lens of another story that is getting hotly debated and discussed as we head into the COP30 climate talks this month. Microsoft co founder Bill Gates publishing a memo that suggests adopting a different view and changing strategy towards addressing climate change. It is a rebuttal to what he calls, quote, the doomsday scenario. Jigger's favorite billionaire Bill Gates is out with a new manifesto on how he thinks about climate impacts. Philanthropy, climate, tech, investing. And here's how he described it in an interview on cnbc. If you think climate is the only problem and it's apocalyptic, or if you think climate's not a problem at all. My memo will make no sense to you. You'll be like, oh, no, it should all be climate. Or you'll be like, why are you even still talking about this climate thing? Why? Why do you invest billions of your money into these companies? So if you haven't read the memo, it's a lengthy memo where Bill Gates is basically saying, yes, climate change is a big deal, but we're far too worried about these doomsday scenarios. And so we should be given the gap in public health funding right now. We should be funding more public health initiatives that aren't necessarily directly related to climate. And instead, we. We should also invest in innovation so that we can drive down emissions in a decade or so once we've filled that gap and solved some of those problems around quality of life. And, well, this landed in a way that seems very on brand for the media landscape of 2025. Fraud alert. Fraud alert. Bill Gates been pimping us out with climate change. And now all of a sudden, he realizes he had an epiphany, that climate change is a hoax. This is the narrative flipping here.

[Jigar Shah]

The man who told us the sky.

[Steven Lacy]

Was falling, the sky was falling, now.

[Jigar Shah]

Says, you know, the sun might stay up after all. I mean, I don't know.

[Steven Lacy]

And then President Trump comes out and says, rob, if you have that clip, it's actually a tweet. Yeah. He says, I. We just won the war on climate change. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely wrong on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that, we are grateful. So, okay, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking there's a reason why they're not releasing the Epstein files. So the reactions broke down on pretty predictable partisan lines. Those on the right celebrated Gates supposed reversal on climate change. That is not what it was, but that's how it was interpreted. There are even conspiracies going out. There are even conspiracies going on around about him changing his stance to avoid scrutiny over the Epstein files. Really wild stuff. And then the reaction on the left was that this was yet another billionaire bowing down to Trump and that he's moderating his stance in order to avoid scrutiny. But I think there's something else going on here, which is what I want to talk about. And it's this old idea that we have to make this trade off, that somehow deployment of clean solutions is incompatible with economic growth and improving lives. So, Jigar, I know that you're chomping at the bit here. I want to start with you first though, Catherine, what was your read? Before we really get wild here, what was your read of the letter and why do you think it hit such a nerve?

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Yeah, so it's funny how people took him saying climate change will not lead to humanity's demise to saying climate change is a hoax. So he did not say that. That's not what he said. He just said it is a serious issue, we have to deal with it, but the devil's in the details, of course. So he kind of said three big things. Climate change is serious. We've already made a ton of progress and we need to keep backing zero emission technologies. That's great. That sounds really great. We'll have to dig into what he's actually invested in and what we can really scale and get done. But he did say that. He said we need to keep investing in this. The second thing is he said you can't trade off funding from health and development to fund climate change, because if you help on the development side and help people get healthier, they'll be more resilient to climate change. And that's kind of rich because basically what he's saying is there's not a linkage. First of all, we've never asked to switch out any funds for health for climate change funds. They're all wrapped together in the SDGs. In COP. Everybody talks about all of these issues and of course they're inextricably linked, as you said. So health has a lot to do with climate change. And of course, if you're healthy, you'll be more resilient. At the same time, if you get storms, it will not help your health, and if you have more coal, it will not help your health. So that's a little bit of a conundrum there. And then he said that human welfare has to be at the center of any climate policy. And he kind of looks at two main things. His two priorities are that he wants to drive what he calls a green premium to zero. So that's the difference between the dirty stuff and the clean stuff, which I don't exactly know what the premium thing means other than you get something better when you get clean. There isn't really necessarily a cost differential, except for some of the solutions he's choosing. And then the other thing is he says we need to be vigorous about measuring impact and invest in things that have the most impact. And that's where we need to really hold him to account, because what are the things he's invested in? And let's really look at them. And a lot of them have had impact, and some of them will never have impact. I mean, that's like any investor, right, where you have some that are winners and some that aren't.

[Steven Lacy]

But.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

But a lot of the things that will have impact that we can do very, very quickly, he has not invested in. I think Tiger's well aware of that.

[Steven Lacy]

That's a great summary. So why are we talking about this? I debated whether or not to talk about this, but then I saw the extraordinary reaction. And this clearly sets a tone for the conversation around climate, both within the climate community and in the general public. And so I think it's worth, you know, I think it's worth debating. Jigger. You have long publicly disagreed with Bill Gates on how he approaches this. Hated. I know that there are a lot of people in this room who may not have context around the feud. So remind us what he has long argued, why you have disagreed with him. Why has that collided with your way of seeing the world?

[Jigar Shah]

First of all, I've been on this podcast with you since 2013. This is the only topic I've resented you for. I can't believe I have to spend five seconds talking about, like, a person who is so uneducated to, like, actually like that. It doesn't even warrant the conversation. So let's just put my.

[Steven Lacy]

This is a guy who's invested billions of dollars of his own money to a major venture capital firm.

[Jigar Shah]

He's invested billions of dollars, Real toll in the ecosystem. Jets as well. I don't give a crap about what he's invested in. When you're worth $200 billion, you've invested $2 billion in lawn care services. I'm sure it doesn't matter. My thing is that, look, first, Bill Gates started this whole journey with Beyond Lomborg's ted talk in 2007. That Ted Talk was basically that the technologies we have today are not worth deploying at scale. We need to invest in more innovation because that's the future. He says that four times in this piece as well. Right. So to be crystal clear, his point of view has not changed since 2007. He has said we need breakthrough technologies, and he infers that basically the technologies we have now are not worth deploying at scale. Right? Fine. Then he sort of says, okay, in 2012, he says solar's never going to amount to anything. It's a cute technology.

[Steven Lacy]

Yes, he called it cute.

[Jigar Shah]

And so you're like, first of all, why open your mouth at all, Right? You don't know Anything. And ultimately, like, who cares what you think? Like, it's one thing for you to open your mouth on vaccines and other things because, like, he actually has spent a tremendous amount of time on that. I think he actually works with real entrepreneurs. For all of you in this audience, how many of you are on Bill Gates, like speed dial? None of you. Because he just talks to historians who also don't know anything about the technology commercialization trajectory of all these extraordinary people in the audience, right? So then you're like, what is the net impact of you doing that? It actually dries up capital for people who want to raise money for stuff in the area. Now we move to 2015, right? The Paris Agreement. Why did the Paris Agreement pass? Because China, India, Brazil and South Africa teamed up together and said this is the largest wealth creation opportunity of our moment. And so they completely switched, switched their decision from 2009 at the Copenhagen COP summit where they thought we needed a $100 billion transition fund, which Hillary Clinton offered up. Now what does he do to celebrate that moment? He switches the entire press focus in the Paris Agreement to the Mission Innovation announcement that he made with Obama on stage. So no one realized that these four big companies were creating the electro state, which we are now talking about, because he screwed up the entire media and comm strategy for the Paris Agreement. Right? Now, let's keep going. Now he starts breaking.

[Steven Lacy]

Well, I should say just interrupt. I should interrupt you, but I think one of the reasons why the Paris Agreement was successful was because countries saw that there was a set of solutions that they could rally around.

[Jigar Shah]

In fact, exactly the opposite. So what ended up happening was, was that China said, let's deploy solutions at scale, right? And they decided to invest in stuff that they knew was going to meet Wright's law, et cetera. Fine. Bill Gates used the opportunity in 2015 to create breakthrough invest in stuff that he knows, or he shouldn't have been so stupid to not know that it was going to take 20 years for every one of his investments to be successful, whether it's TerraPower Atrium or whether it's like the cement companies or the steel companies or whatever. And then when he realized that he was so out of the money on his investments, and he said, let me put together an entire policy team to figure out a way to get Western governments to put up way more money than they probably should to help accelerate the subsidization of his first of a kind deployments so that he can enrich himself even more to get his companies these projects. Now instead, what we should have done was said, wow, we're only at 5% rooftop solar in this country, but Australia's at 35%. Why don't we figure out what the policies are to go from 5% to 35%. Or we have heat pumps. Why don't we get heat pumps to be a much higher percentage? Or we have all these other solutions, weatherization programs so we can help poor people who are suffering from the polar vortex or a winter storm. Yuri in Texas, did we do any of that stuff in the ira? No, because Bill Gates is only interested in innovation and not deployment of technologies that are affordable at stage and at scale. And now what happened, you know, this week at the elections everyone's like, why the hell didn't you guys focus on affordability, right? And so like look, I mean he could have just put this out and said I don't have enough money to solve all the world's problems. I'm focusing on health. And I would have said go with God, that's awesome. But he didn't. He then went on to write a bunch of stupid stuff that is not true. I'll give you one example of the stupidest thing that he wrote. He said the thing that matters the most is the Human Development Index.

[Steven Lacy]

Right?

[Jigar Shah]

The hdi. And what is the number one determinant of the Human Development Index? Access to electricity. Who is going to solve that problem? U.S. solar and battery storage entrepreneurs that are in markets that are transforming the lives of family after family after family. Did that get a mention in any of his words? No, because he doesn't even recognize that we have cost effective solutions. It is so ridiculous that I even have to talk about this.

[Steven Lacy]

Katherine, jump in the car. We're moving fast.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Yeah, I know. That said, since we are talking about this, I think there are kind of two big issues. One is he has this huge pot of money. A bunch of it now is going to vaccines, malaria prevention. That's great. That's awesome. He's filling in a gap that the US has decided it was going to create needlessly. That's great. I'm happy that he's doing that. The other piece is his breakthrough energy piece and that is I read this really great Medium post by Michael Barnard who said maybe 52% of those make sense from a climate perspective and there may be 38% fail rate. That's not that bad for early stage investor to be able to have those kinds of successes and failure rates. But the issue is that so he does invest in all different sectors with some Things that are gonna be really winning technologies. The issue is that they're not winning from the point of view of immediate scale and deployment. It's all about just like, let's just keep innovating. We do need to keep innovating, but we also need to scale. We need to put this stuff out into the world. And one of the key indicators here of not really wanting to completely put it out into the world is you've fired all the Breakthrough Energy staff, all of their policy staff, he slashed their grant making office altogether. And he's just decided we're just going to keep going with the ones we've done. The fission, the fusion, that's like his favorite thing in the world. And there's some other things, and there's some other things that he's done really well with and some of you all have benefited from that and that's great. But the issue is like he has investments, he can invest in whatever he would like. But if he's really going to try to make a statement and be a thought leader in how do we solve for climate, how do we solve for development, how do we solve for human suffering, he needs to pick up some different technologies.

[Steven Lacy]

Yes, absolutely. I think. Great point. I will just say, Jigar, I think you texted me the letter and suggested we talk about this. So.

[Jigar Shah]

I don't think I suggested we talk about this.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

It kind of was accompanied with a wtf?

[Steven Lacy]

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's an interesting point, Catherine. I think he did talk about wind and solar and battery storage and he said that they were a success story when a decade ago he was calling them cute. I believe he called them an innovation success story, which is a little rich because you think about the 40 or 50 years of policy and market development that went into getting solar where it is. It's this long spectrum from invention and innovation to actually bankability and large scale deployment. And the team at Breakthrough is doing some really interesting things. I mean, the Breakthrough Energy Ventures portfolio is super interesting. And they've invested in Form Energy and in Fervo. But when you actually look at those two companies, for example, they are well past the innovation stage. And right now what they need is project financing, market access, support for their manufacturing, build out regulatory frameworks to for informs case to ensure that long duration storage can play in the market. If you look at, you know, Fervo, they're not stuck in the lab, they're out drilling wells. And you know, none of this is theoretical anymore. And so they're now on the spectrum of deployment and that's a totally different conversation than the one that he is having. And I think that's what is frustrating to me.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

But he's trying to have a story about impact, but what he is doing is like, he's not necessarily focusing on where that impact is and doubling down on how to make that impact real. So he goes through each sector and I'll just give an example. So for buildings, he talks about heat pumps. He's like, heat pumps are great, they're cheap, we can scale them. Then he said, but you know, there's not enough workforce. And he just like lets it sit out there. And he's invested in Dandelion, he's invested in other companies. But it's like, but wait a second. Then if you really want impact, then invest in workforce. We just heard that today. Everybody's saying like, we need workforce. So maybe he could put a little money there too. He has a lot of it.

[Jigar Shah]

He doesn't care. Like, I just don't. Like, this is why this is so frustrating. Like, he doesn't care. Like, I just, I don't think people understand. And you could say he doesn't care for lots of reasons, but he doesn't care. Like, and I, I just want to make sure that everyone understands this. The people who he's employed are extraordinary. The people at Breakthrough, all these people, they're amazing people. But I just want to make sure that we like have this conversation in a real way. If we're forced to talk about it like form energy. Their problem broadly is that the markets do not value long duration energy storage. He refuses to spend a single dollar to fix that. Right. When you think about all these extraordinary people here who want to sell to electric utilities is where dreams go to die. Like, he doesn't fix that. There's not a single electric utility company or EIP or anyone else that is actually making Duke Energy or National Grid deploy stuff faster. National Grid probably has one of the most extraordinary venture capital arms of any utility company I know of that never deploys the technologies they invest in, right? And so like, but he doesn't want to fix that. Like, he's not fixing the underlying like, premise of the cement industry to get them to buy green cement faster. All of those companies have failed to license their technologies to the existing cement industry, which is where their business models went. He hasn't convinced Nucor to go whole hog into the next generation of direct reduced iron production, right?

[Steven Lacy]

Why?

[Jigar Shah]

Because he doesn't care. Like, for him, technology itself is the end point. That once you invest in something that is so fricking amazing that he's going to go on Fareed Zakaria and Fareed Zakaria is going to be like, I love you, Bill Gates. And then everyone is going to say, I'm going to deploy the technology the next day. And this sector doesn't work that way. Everything is a struggle. You have to go into Kenya, you have to get the government to care about figuring out the 700 million people in the continent that are in extreme electricity poverty when people use mobile phones to try to make more money for their small agriculture farms. Someone has to figure out how to put the data onto that mobile phone and do all that stuff. He doesn't care. As long as someone has invented something over here, he doesn't care about the deployment over here. That's just not the way his brain is wired. And I'm fine with it. People have all sorts of flaws, right? But do not put it in my face. Through Gates notes like you have 70 people around you that are brilliant. Can't one of them stop you from hitting send?

[Steven Lacy]

Kathryn, any parting thoughts as someone who has been where the rubber meets the road on actual policy for deployment?

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Oh, yeah, I mean, we need policy for deployment for sure. I mean that's part of what you need to invest in is the policy piece. And a lot of this is just like doing a million small actions that add up and as Jigger said, like getting the phones into the right people's hands so that they know when their crops need to be watered. All of those things which a lot of you all are doing now, it's like the small actions that add up to impact. And he is very much stuck in the. Like I'm gonna keep doing, investing in the big stuff for the. A lot of that is about things that are gonna take forever. And when you can say, I just wanna invest in the stuff that takes forever. But then don't pretend that you wanna have your near term impact.

[Jigar Shah]

One last thing.

[Steven Lacy]

Oh, I was just gonna say I think we've exhausted still.

[Jigar Shah]

No, just because I just think it's important. This particular version of Gates message also. Ding. Solar and wind. It says in there that solar and wind just can't meet this moment of load growth. Now if you look at the, the load growth that we've had globally since the first half of this year, right, We've grew roughly 369 terawatt hours of electricity sales globally. The solar and wind industry added 403 gigawatt hours worth of total. Like new electricity production since the beginning of the year and nuclear added another 33 gigawatt terawatt hours. Right? And so we are now ahead of schedule. For the first time in my lifetime, we are meeting 100% of all global electricity load growth with clean energy sources. Right? But that's not in his damn piece.

[Host]

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[Narrator]

In the show Notes Last year alone, the US saw $27 billion disasters. 27 utilities are under pressure from every direction regulators, investors, insurers and customers to step up and get serious about resilience. It is one of the most important macro trends shaping the grid. That's why we're bringing together top experts for the first ever Power Resilience forum taking place January 21 to 23 in Houston. The event, hosted by Latitude Media and the Ad Hoc Group, is convening leaders from CenterPoint, EPRI, Edison International, Accel Energy and more who will share real strategies and forge the partnerships that will define the next playbook for resilience. Register [e-mail].

[Steven Lacy]

All right, so we talked about how difficult and complicated it truly is. Now let's turn to those difficulties and the new normal for climate tech capital and climate tech startups. So even in a very chaotic year, tailwinds for the sector seem to be picking up again. Venture capital's thawing out a bit. Public markets have bounced back. There's an enormous amount of infrastructure capital right now pouring into clean energy, or some of it sitting on the sidelines, kind of trying to figure out how to pour it in. I was recently talking to Patrick Maloney, who's the founder and CEO of the venture firm civ, and he was describing this super cycle that we're in, and I want to play a clip from a recent interview he did with the Wall Street Journal on how he describes this moment. But what's fundamentally changed is if you look at the 20 prior years, we were effectively a low demand, low volatility environment in energy markets. And then three things changed. The first of course, just being compute and the voracious energy needs behind powering this transition to an AI and compute driven economy. And then we overlaid on top of that, of course we're now moving towards reshoring and re industrialization. 30 years of a globalization policy, now going the opposite direction, which is now forcing us to bring back manufacturing and build domestic supply chains and domestic production capacity, all of which requires a voracious amount of power. So I think that's a great description of a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about over the last nine months. And we've got this major capital spending boom on AI. Add in energy security, supply chain reshoring, a dash of lower interest rates, and it's suddenly like a different landscape for investors. So are we settling into a new normal for climate tech and what does that mean for the kind of startups in the room with us? Jigger, what do you make of Patrick's characterization? Do you agree and is it opening up new sources of capital that didn't exist previously?

[Jigar Shah]

Well, I mean, today we are like, I mean just unequivocally the dominant source of how you solve problems in this country. Right. I mean 90% of everything that's been turned on in the country this year has been clean. Right. And so if you were to say who are the smartest people in the entire country? They're working in solar and battery storage. If you ask them what capital sources do they have access to unlimited capital sources? Yes, because they're the smartest people in our country. So whether you're doing family offices, for instance, Tangi Serra over at Goodfinch bought up all of the assets from SunPower and then now from Sonova. Those are all billionaire family office money that went into buying all that stuff. So that's new money. Right. When you think about where things are headed in terms of SPACs, we've had tons of climate spacs this year and the stock market is on a tear for climate technology. So then that's all new money. And so a lot of folks are like, oh, I might give you money because I think I can immediately spac you. There are folks who are starting to merge with old world companies. So there are like companies that would normally trade for two times earnings because they're a 70 year old who is retiring from the company he's running, and the only person who wants to buy it right now is an SBA bro that wants to borrow money from the SBA and buy this company. Well, now there are climate tech companies who are like, I'm going to merge with your company and actually I'll run your company because I have this new cement company and I'm going to buy your cement company and I'm going to merge the two together. So you're seeing a bunch of deals that look like that. And so what's happened is that our industry is no longer climate. It's just infrastructure. All of the business models that people have been using for infrastructure are the things now that people are using those tools, family offices, all of that stuff is now being used for our sector. And it's weird because for a lot of the people at Greentown Labs or other places, they've largely been using venture capital or growth capital or other things. So, like, now they have to start diversifying all the different, you know, pots of money and start characterizing it, because they haven't been introducing their companies to those pots of money.

[Steven Lacy]

I think there's a lot of corporate. Corporate investors as well in this ecosystem.

[Jigar Shah]

Well, but this is not corporate. This is largely family office money. So think about the people who own your local strip mall and, you know, the local, like, you know, commercial office.

[Steven Lacy]

Building in Boston, strip mall owners, your clients in Washington, Catherine.

[Jigar Shah]

But.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Well, they're members of Common Charge that I started.

[Steven Lacy]

Yeah, so tell me about that. So anyway, I kind of want to frame the policy piece. So that's a really good helpful understanding of the investment piece. We're 10 months into the Trump administration. How have you found the companies that you're working with have found their footing? And like, this macro super cycle that we're talking about here, do you feel like that's going to outweigh some of this federal policy?

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Yeah, it's really interesting because the way we think about policy, the way I think about it, and it's partly because I came out of the utilities sector, where innovation goes to die, where there are a ton of people who create amazing widgets. And they're like, every utility is going to buy this. It's amazing. And I'm like, no utility is going to buy that, no matter how amazing it is. And so I think of like, what is the technology? Does it work? What are the markets? Like, what does your market look like? What's your addressable market? Who are your competitors? How are you going to break in? And then what are the policy levers that you can push to remove barriers or to enable you to go faster. So when the Trump administration came in, they all of a sudden started taking a hatchet to the policy levers. And the folks that had not figured out their market strategy and their technology, they had just skipped to policy, were a little bit at a loss. So we've seen a lot of folks backing away from policy. I think that's a mistake. I think there are a lot of different ways to approach policy and. And that it's crucial because for so many companies, if you're doing business in the market that is electric and has anything to do with the utility, every single decision is made by the stroke of a pen of a regulator, and you better be engaged in policy or you are not going to have a market. So what I've seen over time is there are companies, I think they're not. The companies that are going to succeed. The ones that are not investing and thinking through policy and doing policy are not gonna be successful because they won't have that set up for that. But I think what is happening is people are starting to say, all right, well, maybe my federal tax credit's gonna go away. That is a reasonable assumption. So let's figure out what on the state side we need to do. So we do a lot of thinking about that. I would also say don't give up on the federal side, because they are. You just saw on Tuesday the elections, all about affordability. They don't have any answers right now. They've decided they're going to crush anything that is aff and like, let's just like, cut off all the options that we have that are affordable. And they're going to need answers. And I think some of the answers are going to be virtual power plants, all the distributed side customers becoming more engaged. Which is why Common Charge kind of got started to talk about affordability and reliability. And I think what you're going to see is that there are percolating right now a lot of people talking about policies that deal with affordability. And it's all about clean energy. That's what it is.

[Steven Lacy]

Yeah. Can you just remind people what Common Charge is in case?

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Oh, yeah. Common charge is a 501C3 that started it, kicked off Labor Day, and we did hire an executive director, but we're not announcing till next week, so I can't say anything about that. Super excited. But it's a group that combines for profits and nonprofits and regular customers. Just people on the street are joining to be part of this, which is really almost like a movement to make sure that we have affordable, reliable power. And it's going to serve as kind of a hub, like an air traffic controller. Assuming the air traffic controllers are getting paid, that will then kind of make sure that all of us have capacity in the States to fight the fights.

[Steven Lacy]

We need to do so. Jigger, let's turn back to the investment piece. Catherine talked about the gaps and the changing engagement and policy. Tell me about the gaps for startups when they think about exits. Your new firm, multiplier. This is what you're thinking about and you're working with companies to help strategically plan out their exits and investment in the lead up to those exits. You've said that early stage companies, they need to stop waiting for these unicorn exits and start thinking like infrastructure builders. So what does that look like right now?

[Jigar Shah]

So in general, I think that most of our funding models have been borrowed from the tech industry, but we don't have the gross margins and the scale, right? Like, you can't just download an app on your phone and then suddenly like, you know, sell a SaaS model and have millions of people use it. Like, Even in our SaaS model, there's like 350 people that want to like, download your software. And so, you know, so part of what we've realized is for a lot of these companies, once you hit product market fit and you have two happy customers, there's someone that's willing to buy your company. You just sell your company for $50 million and make a lot of money because you've only raised $6 million. But for a lot of these folks, they've been told, no, no, keep raising hundreds of millions of dollars, have them as 1x preferences ahead of you, then sell your company for a billion dollars. Oh, you made nothing off of that sale because you raised too much money. And so that dynamic is a lot of what we're fixing, right? Is that like, is that a lot of companies just need to think about. Every funding round is a funding round where they might want to exit.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Yeah, that's. It makes me think that when back when you were in the Department of Energy and we did the Inflation Reduction Act, God rest its soul, that it was very much about, like giving a lot of funding to a lot of companies. And in some ways that really distorted the market, that really, like made people skip steps, it made some people winners and some people not. And I think that even though it was really good at buying down risk for utilities, which was in a lot of ways. The point you want to give them a permission structure to actually put in new technologies where they didn't have it before. I think not having all of that funding makes you be much more creative about your financing sources and your bottom line and how you're actually the fundamentals of your company and how you're going to function.

[Steven Lacy]

So to move along, final question on this, you know, it's pretty clear that this low growth scenario is bringing a lot of technologies at the margins into the center of the conversation. I have a question about like what you think will define and how will this influence the next wave of climate tech growth? So if we think about the massive build out of data centers, does that provide a demand signal for clean steel, for CCS efficient chip design? I think you could make the case that wild new innovations in chips are a climate tech innovation of sorts or an energy innovation of sorts. Do you see a class of technologies getting a unique opportunity in this moment?

[Jigar Shah]

Yeah, but I think the other side of it's also true, which is that if you don't see a lot of revenue contracts in this moment, then it just didn't work. Right. If you can't succeed in this moment, you can't succeed. And so take a hint. And so that's all I'm saying. People are desperate for solutions. They are desperate for solutions and they're willing to pay. Think about what Cat just announced. Kat just announced they own this company. Solar turbines. I don't know why that's called solar, but whatever. That makes these up to 30 megawatt. Yeah, up to 30 megawatt. Like generators. Right. It's like $140amegawatt hour to produce power out of those turbines. Right. They're not cheap, particularly in this moment. They're increasing production by 2 1/2 x. If you can't compete against Cat solar turbines. Right. Then what are you doing?

[Steven Lacy]

Why are you here?

[Jigar Shah]

And so. So that's it. Right. So if you make it through this gauntlet over the next two or three years and you get a bunch of revenue and then you can exit. Great. If you can't, I don't think this electricity super cycle is coming again. Right. This is your moment. This five years.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Yeah, definitely. I think there are a bunch of different places where they're going to be needing this exact scaling. One is like transmission technologies, all kinds of things to squeeze every electron out of every wire. Another piece is hydropower, which we have what, 90,000 dams, 3% of which have powerhouses on them. Let's try for some infrastructure plays with hydro where you can make it really efficient. Let's look at geothermal anywhere, whether it's with district heating or otherwise. Let's look at technologies that work, that we know work, that our infrastructure plays. And let's go for it because that's what the corporates and the data centers are willing to invest in those because they need it. And also of course, distributed energy, which is, I will just say forever.

[Steven Lacy]

Ticker's going to invest whatever Bill Gates invests in whatever he doesn't invest in. Yeah, yeah.

[Jigar Shah]

Short it.

[Steven Lacy]

All right, so we've got to wrap up here and I want to kind of close with a thought exercise. So we are here in Somerville, Massachusetts. We're just a few miles away from where the American Revolution began. Next year, of course, marks the 250th year, 250th anniversary, I will say. Actually an interesting fact that I tried to pitch Ken Burns on in his new documentary. My wife went into labor at the site of the shot heard round the world. And so that'll always be a special place for us. But wow. Anyway, in those 250 years we got the steam engine, electricity, the light bulb, the modern factory, the railways, the telegraph, the telephone, the jet engine, the electronics, nuclear power, the computer, the Internet and now artificial intelligence. And every one of those technologies has just dramatically reshaped the world in their own way. And today we're surrounded by people trying to build the next set. So a little thought exercise before we close. Jumping forward 250 years. What will people in 2275 remember as the defining breakthroughs of this moment? Catherine?

[Kathryn Hamilton]

Yeah, this is interesting because we're here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which prides itself on all this 250 stuff. Well, I'm from the Commonwealth of Virginia, which also has a lot of the founding fathers who had mothers. And I was thinking about this because I live very close to Montpelier, which is James Madison's home. And there's a little statue. I'm going to say little. There was a life size statue of James Madison and Dolly Madison and they're like the size of sixth graders. And so one of the things that I wonder about 250 years is are we going to be a lot bigger? We've already gotten a lot bigger. We're going to be a whole lot bigger. But I think about what are people going to look at? And I think AI is what happened with AI. My hope is that in 250 years we have a three day work week. And everybody is much more focused on their family and their community and their friends and doing other productive activities than being in an office as a result of AI.

[Steven Lacy]

Yeah, I have to. I mean, I think it's obvious that I was probably going to choose AI as well. You know, we talk a lot about the power sector, so like, yes, I think it'll be sort of fundamental to how we think about grid orchestration and the development of new technologies. But like, I'm really interested and I think we will be remembered by the acceleration of the age of synthetic biology, the synthetic era. So instead of, you know, extracting to produce materials, we will use synthetic biology to create those materials, whether it be new sources of building materials or a variety of chemicals or whatever it is. And I think that the AI's acceleration of science to continue to iterate and discover new types of materials will be really foundational to the built environment around us. And I think that that will a pretty fundamental shift. I find myself, you know, I'm pretty skeptical about the sort of the AGI claims and whatever the tech companies are getting people excited about. But like, I really have talked to a lot of people about how it can speed up the discovery process in science and how excited people are by that and just how many billions of hours that you can save. And so I think that, like, the application of that in biology is really exciting to me. Jigger, what about you?

[Jigar Shah]

So if we're still alive because AI hasn't killed us all, then I would suggest two more pedestrian things. One is that we'll have gotten rid of all transmission lines. I think all power will be beamed. So I don't think you'll actually have any wires.

[Steven Lacy]

So you believe. When do you think that?

[Jigar Shah]

I think we've already invented it. And my sense is that it'll be fully scaled up within 250 years. And then the second thing is that all energy that we don't need to produce just off our rooftop or whatever I think will be produced on the Moon and then we'll beam it down.

[Steven Lacy]

You're a beam guy.

[Jigar Shah]

Beam me up.

[Steven Lacy]

I mean, Google's experimenting with, with orbiting data center concepts now.

[Jigar Shah]

So put them on the moon.

[Kathryn Hamilton]

I have some people I'd like to send to Mars, actually.

[Jigar Shah]

I didn't know the moon was so large. I guess it's like one of the largest. It's way bigger than Pluto. It's like half the size of like half the diameter, Sorry, of Mars.

[Steven Lacy]

Well, if any of these things happen, you will hear about it from our AI. Doppelgangers in 2275 on open circuit. That's going to do it for the show. Thank you very much, Greentown Labs.

[Host]

And that's going to do it for the show. That was our live episode recorded this week from Greentown Labs. Thank you so much to Greentown for having us. Open Circuit is produced by Latitude Media. The show is hosted by me. Kathryn Hamilton and Jigger Shah are my lovely co hosts. Sean Marquand is our technical director and he wrote our theme song.

[Steven Lacy]

If you want to support the show.

[Host]

Go to Apple or Spotify and give us a rating and review. Thank you so much for doing that. And pass a link to anyone who you think would benefit from this show. And of course, subscribe to Latitude Media for more in depth industry coverage. We'll catch you next time.