Welcome
No. 01 | January 31, 2024
Hello.
My name is Nat Bullard. I’ve been an analyst of energy, climate, and decarbonization for almost two decades. I speak about, write about, facilitate for, and build services around one central idea: getting the global economy to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
I started off at this research company. A decade ago I began writing a little weekly column called Sparklines; I wrote more than 400 of those weeklies, and in December, sent my last. I publish an annual presentation on decarbonization trends. As an investor said to me last year, “the only person in my inbox more than you, is my co-founder”.
But, if you’re reading this note today directly from me, you might know all of that already.
Today, I’m happy to be writing you in the new home for my thoughts on decarbonization. Think of it as a continuation of where I left off, but also as a chance to do something new as well. This will be a place for the themes that motivated me 10 years ago - and motivate me still - to continue evolving. It is also a blank sheet of paper, so to speak, and a constructive way to interrogate one’s priors.
What you can expect from me here: observations on our progress towards decarbonizing the world, and on where we aren’t, and for what reasons. A data-driven approach, and a heuristic one too, striving to convey market-significant ideas with numbers but also with structures for further, deeper, focused thinking. I will have links to what I’ve been reading, and to what I think deserves to be read. Together, I hope to provide touchpoints on the climate ley lines between today, and tomorrow.
What you can also get from me here: a backchannel. One thing I came to miss over time as my prior writing: as it expanded in scale, it diminished in readerly resolution. It became harder to know what readers thought, because I became harder to reach. This channel is direct from me, and to me as well.
As any project developer or financier knows, the first-of-a-kind asset is always the hardest one to see through to fruition. Moving FOAK from spreadsheet to term sheet requires an enticement, and I think that the same enticement applies to first-time readers.
So, here is that enticement: if you are reading this, you are also one of the first to see my annual decarbonization deck, which I published moments before sending this note. And if you are reading this, you also get my own brief narrative on why I built it, and what I think it means:
Decarbonization is a logistically complex process
It is an informationally complex process too.
Understanding what the future might look like can be difficult
Doing so begins with the clearest possible view of the present.
We are all domain-bound by nature in our work
But we need not be information-bound, and the more information we can gather and process crisply, the better.
Markets think in narratives
And there is value in creating a data-driven narrative, true to the most current information but with an eye on the next business cycle.
There is so much
There is so much to know about, to consider, and to be wary of in a world with the highest atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in several million years. There is also much to appreciate and embrace about the world that we are building.
Thank you for reading, and for sharing as well. If you have questions or inquiries about my annual presentation, you can reach me here.
Writing is an exercise, and it is also a cadence. In the coming weeks, I will be doing the former and setting the latter. If you are already subscribed, thank you. If you are reading this anew, I hope you will subscribe too.
Nat
