The Gist

As the holiday season begins, our trusted senior advisors reflect on the biggest energy surprises of 2024 and why they matter for the climate and the energy transition. From artificial intelligence’s unquenchable thirst for energy to the existential demands of an increasingly vulnerable electric grid, a lot has changed this year.

We’ve known for some time that a second Trump presidency was a high-probability event and that even a Republican trifecta could be a reasonably expected outcome of the election.

Though the dust has hardly settled, in this month’s Gist we give you an “inside-the-Beltway” view on what we and our lobbyist friends believe is the emerging state of play on climate policy.

Since there’s nothing new to write about the election at this point, this month’s Gist is on a more practical and less emotional topic — heat pumps.

We’re now in heating season in much of the country, which is a good time to consider replacing that old gas or oil furnace. Enter heat pumps — the worst named, but most practical way to electrify your home heating system and get off of fossil heat.

However, those who believe the market is ready for massive heat pump uptake are living in a fantasy. The tech works, but, as you’ll learn from the lived experience of the Ad Hoc team, the customer experience remains a mess. We can and must do better!

With all the focus on the presidential election, it can be easy to lose sight of how aggressively several states are advancing a climate agenda. Washington State under Governor Jay Inslee – perhaps the most climate-forward governor in the country – stands out.

In this month’s Gist, we dig into Inslee’s legacy and leadership on climate and equity with his Senior Climate Advisor (and my former Opower teammate), Anna Lising. She talks about what Washington is doing on climate and energy policy that other states should follow. I’ll also be interviewing Anna and other state leaders at NYC Climate Week.

Our first Gist came out four years ago this month and was about the potential slowdown in EV sales due to Covid. In 2020, U.S. drivers purchased 330,000 EVs. They purchased just as many in Q2 of this year alone. We still have a ways to go, but it’s progress.

In late July, I took a road trip with my family in our new silver Rivian RS1 from Virginia to Maine to test out the Tesla Supercharger network, newly opened to Rivian drivers. In this month’s Gist, I share the tale and what it means for the EV market.

Without some meaningful financial exits soon, I’m worried we’re heading for a climate tech winter. The planet can’t afford that.

I wrote a three-part series for Latitude Media with my friend Michael Sachse on the current climate tech landscape and what investors and startup founders should do about it. Part one is about the impending climate tech liquidity crisis, and part two is about what the industry can learn from biotech.

The final installment, out today, is our advice for climate tech founders. We’ve distilled it for this month’s Gist below. But we encourage you to read the full series here.

As I write this note, half the country faces a record-setting heat wave while wildfires burn north of Los Angeles. This month, I interviewed Katie MacDonald, the cofounder of Tailwind, on how to get more investors to back resilience tech.

In this month’s Gist, my colleague Max Tuttman draws on his Ad Hoc and ARPA-E experience to explain how climate tech startups can avoid falling into some common traps, which he calls the “Pits of Despair.”

Geothermal technology is getting a lot of attention lately. There are essentially two types: geothermal power and geothermal heating and cooling. The former can deliver clean power 24/7, while the latter can heat and cool buildings super efficiently.

We enlisted two experts, Joselyn Lai, CEO of Bedrock Energy, and Michael Campos, investor at Energy Impact Partners, to help us understand the enthusiasm, challenges, and bold predictions for the future of geothermal technologies.

This month, we’re thrilled to announce that longtime senior advisor Julia Hamm is joining the AHG team as our newest partner. Julia brings decades of experience as the former CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA), founder of RE+ (now the largest energy trade show in North America), and much more.

Read on to learn about Julia’s career highlights, her vision for breaking down barriers between startups and utilities, and life in southwest Florida.