Two-Bullet Tuesday: Finance | Clean Energy | Productivity | Tips | Trivia
January 10, 2017
Here's your weekly 4-minute digest of bullets on finance, clean energy, productivity, and trivia. (Warning: Attempts at witty commentary included.)
Have a great week.
Chris Wedding, PhD
CEO, IronOak Energy
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What does IronOak Energy do? Financial Advisory (Raising capital | Sourcing investment opportunities) Strategy Consulting (Investment due diligence | Energy policy risk analysis | Go-to-market planning)
SOLAR
Renewable Energy Investing is Less Risky:
Especially Compared to Not Investing
I frequently encountered this debate 15 years ago in the emerging green building industry: "What is the cost to build green?" Increasingly, the answer became, "What is the cost to not build green?" (Lower occupancy, lower rent, slower lease up, etc.) And so it is today with renewable energy investing, according to finance legends Bloomberg, Stayer, and Paulson in their latest report: From Risk To Return: Investing in a Clean Energy Economy. They estimate a global need for $210B to $410B extra to be invested per year between now and 2050 to address climate change, and to save $70B to $700B per year.
500 Pages of MIT Genius?
76 Recommendations for U.S. Energy Strategy
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz recently published the Quadrennial Energy Review (QER),which lays out guidance for the next administration to address the industry’s impact on national security, economic competitiveness and the environment. Sounds like great bed time reading for me and my kiddos. (Maybe it can positively brainwash them as they sleep.)
ENERGY STORAGE | ELECTRIC VEHICLES
List of 8 Energy Storage Market Entrants in 2016: To Enter, or Not to Enter, in 2017?
With all the hype and hope, many energy businesses are asking themselves:Is there a way for us to profit and make an impact in the battery market? This compilation from GTM includes 8 stories of companies that chose to jump in. Will it be your turn this year? Or do you aim to be the smart second guy, not the "pioneer with the arrow in his back?"
Cleantech Comeback?
Raymond James paying attention
We've all met them at parties and conferences: Those know-it-alls who give us the sad look like we're holding a sick puppy dog after we tell them that we work in the clean energy sector. Many are thinking about the cleantech VC losses of the late 2000's, or the ever fun topic of Solyndra's failure. However, when the financial giant Raymond James — with its 2.7 million client accounts and $500B in assets under management — produced a Clean Tech Primer 2017 on Jan. 3, I wondered if attitudes might be changing. As for storage, they say, "There are too many players in the market, and the shakeout is starting to get underway."
PRODUCTIVITY | TIPS | TRIVIA
Habit vs. motivation:
Effective vs. sexy
Often we choose to do something (e.g., get out of bed, call a prospect, write a report) only when we are motivated to do so. However, feelings are fleeting. What matters more is habit, especially on a daily basis. Taken to an extreme: "If it's not in Google calendar, then it doesn't happen." Take Isaac Asimov as an example: He purportedly wrote every day from dawn until noon. And he published 400 books over his lifetime. Do you think he was inspired every single morning? (If so, then I must be of a different species.)
Calculus Class for Toddlers:
We Are Capable of Much More
OK, maybe not that much more. But consider other examples: Teenagers invented the trampoline, earmuffs, Braille, the popsicle, cancer screening tests that assess biomarkers in urine samples, the earliest versions of the TV (of course!), and gloves that convert sign language into words that show up on a screen. We should expect and believe that kids, teenagers, our peers, and we (gasp!) are capable of achieving more. (Insert the theme music from the Rocky movie.) As for us, we gave our 3-year-old son a graduate-level, 600-page Smithsonian book on animals. Today he's teaching us about ecology. And if he gets his facts wrong, we make him run sprints. (Just kidding.)
