Money saving hack.

Ask *all* of your utilities (streaming, banking, energy, car) if they can reduce their price.

I just tried to cancel Emma (finance tracking app). It suggested a 50% discount. Then a 75% discount. Taking it from £110 a year to just £30.

You’re welcome.

Lord of the Rings by string quartet. In a cathedral. By candlelight. Pretty great.

I’ve been bearish on Direct Air Capture. It’s inefficient. So I don’t see where the market is for $3/4/500 a tonne CO2 credits.

But what if the bears are missing something? What if urgency is driving demand and not price?What if the customer is the tech industry - the most profitable on the planet?

If you haven’t got up the curve on how to use NotebookLM, or are still using it to make rubbish podcasts, then have a read of this.

open.substack.com/pub/aisuprem...

I don’t see how labour productivity doesn’t skyrocket in the next 1-2 years as a result of tech like this.

Spoke with an expert in EU grant funding for renewable energy projects today. A lesson in bureaucracy but some interesting takeaways for climate tech companies who need state / EU level funding for their projects.

See the 🧵:

How to understand China's commitment to climate action & energy transition, in one short paragraph:

🛢️If you have the world's biggest fossil fuel import bill…

🔋⚡️🌄…and can cut net costs 70% by 2035

🧧Why would you turn back?

(IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2024)

I wonder if the real Squid Game ninjas take a break between death-rounds to demolish a Greggs steak bake?

Definitely one of the more creative exhibitions I’ve seen in Edinburgh’s streets!

Life has just become too expensive.

I took my son to the Christmas market today. We got on a carousel and paid £4 for the pleasure. It lasted <60 seconds and spun 4 times. That’s £1 a spin.

Next time I’ll just take him to a fruit machine. Same cost, same enjoyment and more upside risk.

Visiting an eMethanol business in Madrid. Amazing city. The hills around the airport are also pretty visually impressive.

Spain has an incredible opportunity to use its cheap electricity to become super competitive in eFuels. They seem to be a little behind when it comes to CO2 though…

I’m working on an eMethanol project in Europe - I’d love to speak to people really familiar with this market.

It feels like shipping / aviation are the natural demand drivers. But who wants it and how are we getting more long-term offtakes in place?

Please reach out for a chat!

Easily one of the most actionable podcasts on mental models for growth investing from Anu Hariharan.

I only recently became aware of her and her fund - Avra - which pushed me to find out more.

Worth a listen if you are in the VC / Growth equity community.

open.spotify.com/episode/4ZxK...

Tool of the week: wind-curtailment-app-ahq7fucdyq-lz.a.run.app

The UK taxpayer has spent £674.9m this year paying for wind turbines to stop generating clean power.

Integrated energy storage would greatly improve this and should be part of any new wind project.

Gingerbread house

Just remembered this fact from my site visit yesterday.

Biggest producers of nuclear waste by industry in the UK:

1. Hospitals
2. Universities
3. Nuclear power

Northvolt bankrupt. CEO out. $15bn in capital w/ no batteries to show for it with only $30m of cash left. Obviously bad for EVs. But worse for investor sentiment which will make capital access harder and more expensive. Pressure is on for H2 Green Steel, Form Energy, and Ascend Elements to deliver.

☢️ I spent today inside Torness Nuclear Power station in Scotland. Fascinating.

This plant supplies c 1.5 million homes with clean, reliable baseload power.

But … it will be decommissioned in 2028 along with another 4GW of nuclear supply (10% of UK demand). We need more of these things - not less