JANUARY 3, 2024

Happy new year! We hope you had restful and joyful time with family and friends. We have exciting announcements to kick off 2024.

Today we’re launching our interactive Cleantech Tracker to map and chart the massive amounts of new clean energy projects underway over the coming years and decades.

Amena draws upon the tracker for this week’s Data Dive and stay tuned for more coverage from our Tracker in the months ahead.

Also, a big congratulations to Bill, who won an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship to support his global coverage of the energy transition this year. We’re grateful we’re able to publish his international dispatches, which are an essential part of the climate tech story.

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Send your energy photos, story tips and more to news@ciphernews.com.

Above is a static image of the Cleantech Tracker. For the full interactive map, click here.

Tracking a new era of climate solutions: Cleantech growth across the U.S.

BY: AMY HARDER

The United States is at the dawn of a technology boom to tackle climate change, fueled by historic laws, increased money from both public and private funders and a heightened sense of urgency as we face more extreme weather exacerbated by a warming world.

Cipher’s Cleantech Tracker map and accompanying investment chart show the progress of select emerging technologies: carbon management, clean hydrogen production, hydrogen electrolyzer manufacturing and sustainable aviation fuel.

These tech types are critical parts of a broader puzzle of technologies, ranging from wind and solar farms to carbon dioxide pipelines to electric vehicle manufacturing. Cipher is intentionally focused on technologies that receive less attention from the media and investors and on sectors that are harder to clean up compared to others, though our tracker and focus will evolve with time. Learn more about the technologies we’re initially including in the Tracker here.

The Cleantech Tracker map is a window into the transformative technological landscape, illustrating where innovations are taking root. We’ll be doing in-depth reporting on the potential impacts they can have on local economies and in the global fight against climate change.

Cipher updates the data as it becomes available as technologies move through the development pipeline, so be sure to check back to see the latest trends. Over time, we also plan to layer in other technologies.

We largely cull and analyze data from the Clean Investment Monitor, a database by research firm Rhodium Group and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. Click here for our comprehensive methodology.

This is just the beginning of what we anticipate being a continuing project! What additional information should we add to our tracker? See something that should be updated? Have ideas on how we can make this even better? Would you like to republish this tracker to your audiences? Email us with your inquiries at news@ciphernews.com with the subject line “Cleantech tracker.”

Check out Cipher’s new Cleantech Tracker.

Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes

Six takeaways from a climate-tech boom — MIT Technology Review
Amy’s take: This article succinctly summarizes key lessons from cleantech 1.0 we can bring to bear in the current climate tech landscape. I found this helpful to jostle my brain back into work mode after a week off. Also, the emphasis on spurring demand is so important.

These 6 charts show how rapidly the Texas power grid is changing — Houston Chronicle
Bill’s take: Texas may be known as fossil fuel country, but renewable energy is slowly but surely remaking its power system.

Climate scientists hail 2023 as ‘beginning of the end’ for fossil fuel era — The Guardian

Anca’s take: Encouraging news, with the article describing it as the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era as the net-zero mission intensifies. The peak for fossil fuel use has yet to come.

A flood-prone historic site decides to live with rising water rather than fight it — The Washington Post 

Amena’s take: The floating Battleship North Carolina museum has opted for native vegetation and other natural solutions instead of concrete. This could be a model for other low-lying areas.

The Electric: The World of Potemkin Solid-State Batteries — The Information (paywall) 

Bill’s take: Solid state batteries — the holy grail of EV energy storage — are proving even harder to make a commercial reality than many expected. Battery technologies are complicated and elusive, especially at the cutting edge. The field is making progress on a number of fronts, including cutting costs.

Climate activists block Amsterdam highway in protest against ING — Reuters
Anca’s take: ING, the country’s largest bank, previously said it would stop financing oil and gas projects by 2040. Protesters said that's too late; the bank said sooner isn't realistic. It's a classic example of energy transition tension.

4 ways AI can help with climate change, from detecting methane to preventing fires — NPR

Amena’s take: As this article notes, AI can be an energy guzzler so it should be used in situations where it will deliver the most bang for its buck.
 
Saffron supplies dry up as climate change shrivels Iran’s ‘desert gold’ — Financial Times (paywall) 
Bill’s take: Iran produces the bulk of the world’s saffron, a spice that’s woven its way into many aspects of Persian culture and identity. This is just one example of the toll climate change is taking on human culture, and with it human resilience to confront the problem.

Biden administration grants Louisiana power to approve carbon capture wells — AP News

Amena’s take: The Environmental Protection Agency’s action will ease the permitting backlog and allow Louisiana to handle permits for 22 projects that are currently awaiting review and approval. Check out our past coverage of the CO2 storage permitting backlog.

The Water Trade Is Booming — and Sucking Australia Dry — Bloomberg

Jillian’s take: This multimedia story dives into the booming water trade on the world’s driest inhabited continent. The market has led to a boom in crops like almonds and cotton in recent decades; it’s also left many Australian communities and farmers completely high and dry.

More of what we're reading:

• China’s World-Leading Green Hydrogen Project Faces Slow Ramp Up — Bloomberg

• US was top LNG exporter in 2023 as hit record levels — Reuters

  
  
  

In U.S., clean hydrogen draws more dollars than managing carbon

Source: The Clean Investment Monitor, Rhodium Group and MIT CEEPR. • Investments are measured from October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2023. Cancelled projects represent $0 of investment and are not displayed. Clean hydrogen includes hydrogen produced from zero-emitting electricity and from natural gas and oil with carbon capture.

BY: AMENA H. SAIYID

Making clean hydrogen has attracted more investor interest than managing carbon dioxide emissions in the United States during the past five years, Cipher’s new Cleantech Tracker shows.

Since 2018, one and a half times more investment has gone into making clean hydrogen ($45.7 billion) compared with capturing, storing and utilizing carbon emissions ($29.98 billion).

Clean hydrogen and carbon management technologies are viewed as globally proven yet costly approaches for reducing emissions from industrial sectors, including concrete, steel and fertilizer manufacturing, which are considered particularly difficult to clean up.

Investors are now flocking to both these technologies because the U.S. government is subsidizing their high costs through a combination of funding and tax credits authorized under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Across all categories of technologies we’re tracking, it’s clear most investments are going into projects that so far have only been announced and aren’t under construction (yet). With the rollout of tax guidance from the IRA for clean hydrogen and other technologies, more of these investments should shift into the “under construction” category.

ICYMI: Biden proposes tight limits for hydrogen

Senior White House Advisor John Podesta, pictured here, has worked closely on the hydrogen tax credit. Photo credit: Kevin Dietsch / Staff via Getty Images.

BY: AMENA H. SAIYID

The nascent hydrogen industry will likely face strict criteria for production under new rules the Biden administration unveiled shortly before the holiday break late last year.

The draft guidelines, proposed by the United States Treasury Department, mark the latest turn in a months-long fiery debate on a topic that is as significant as it is complex: How to jumpstart a clean hydrogen industry in a way that reduces emissions without hamstringing a nascent sector.

The administration is proposing that producers would only be able to claim the full tax credit of $3 to make a kilogram of clean hydrogen from electricity from nearby grid systems if they can certify that wind, solar or other zero-emitting sources were added within three years of the production facility coming online.

What’s more, beginning in 2028, producers would be required to show proof before receiving credit that they’re making hydrogen within the same hour clean power is generated on the nearby grid, a concept known as hourly matching. Prior to 2028, the requirements would be less stringent on the matching criteria.

These first-of-their-kind tax credits, created as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, are seeking to kickstart what is essentially a non-existent sector to help reduce carbon emissions in everything from steelmaking to transportation. Most hydrogen made today, used in industrial applications like fertilizer, is from unabated fossil fuels.

“The Treasury’s proposal will help build the clean hydrogen industry while including environmental safeguards to implement the Clean Air Act,” John Podesta, senior advisor in the White House for clean energy innovation and implementation, told reporters in a press call on December 21.

Available for 10 years, Treasury said the tax credit can be used by producers whose facilities begin construction before 2033, meaning they will “remain available for some facilities well into the 2040s.”

These tax credits will subsidize clean hydrogen, with two such processes dominating: from natural gas equipped with carbon capture and storage equipment or from using zero-emitting sources to split water molecules in a process known as electrolysis. Currently, U.S. clean hydrogen made from renewable-powered electrolysis accounts for less than 1% of domestic production (and nearly zero natural gas with carbon capture).

Read the rest of the story on Cipher’s website.

AND FINALLY...
Taj Mahal fountains

Cipher associate editor Jillian Mock snapped this photo while visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, India in December. The guide told us the fountains now run on electricity, but when the magnificent tomb was first built in the 1600s by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan these fountains were filled and kept running by animals pulling giant wheels to pump water stored underground.

Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.

Editor’s note: In addition to supporting Cipher, Breakthrough Energy also supports and partners with a range of entities working to tackle climate change, including nonprofits, corporations, startups and research firms. For more information on Cipher’s editorial policy, click here.