Traveler’s Tales
No. 15 | May 12, 2025
Home again after three weeks of travel, up and down California with Canada sandwiched in between. Seven events, including our first in-person event at Halcyon and my third-annual keynote at the Prelude Climate Summit.
I cannot say that anything seems more certain now than it did three weeks ago, though as I write this, the US has apparently cut tariffs on Chinese goods to 30% from 145% for 90 days. I hesitate to even provide a link to the news, given there will be more to say by the time you are reading this; suffice to say, a juddering, jarring trade motion is not the stuff of which durable industrial decision-making is made.
My sense - from rooms full of curious, thoughtful, dedicated, concerned investors in long-dated, technology-based assets - is that while commitment to decarbonization does not waver, the mechanisms for deploying capital gummed up (at best) or seized up (at worst) by stochastic uncertainty. What will inputs cost? What prices can outputs command? Where can dollars (and Euro and yen and renminbi) flow given the need to deploy capital and the need to build critical infrastructure?
A few of my favorite charts follow.
China outbound container ship traffic to the US, April 2023 - April 2025
A fairly dire chart, but of course given the news above, perhaps subject to change.
China trade
I imagine it will surprise many to know that China’s solar market is now significantly tilted towards the global south, and its EV makers now ship more (in value) to the global south than to Europe. Only China’s battery exports flow more to Europe and the US than to the global south - but for now long?
It really is an electric century
Since the start of the millennium, consumption of oil is up 27%, and consumption of coal and gas are up 66-67%. Consumption of electricity is up 93.5% through 2023.
Solar underestimation has improved; it is still wildly off
Not much more to say than “this technology, consistently underestimated, now adds more capacity to the global grid than anything ever and will soon add more power in any given year than anything ever as well.
Halcyon notes
1. The Feed
Halcyon has built a feed functionality with the document flow from 41 US states (and the District of Columbia) public utility/service commissions. There can be 2,000+ documents a day, so it feels a bit like staring into The Matrix - but I use it for a sense of motion (and emotion) and also, a sense of the possible.
You can (and should) sort by publisher and topic and keyword, but also recommend just reading it in continuous scroll for a sense of just how much information is in play, from whom, where, and about what.
Halcyon Feed
2. 10 Things more
We have put extra attention into our this week in energy Friday email containing key findings from the information flow in the feed mentioned above. The intent: to be more graphical/figural, and to explore in greater depth.
Here is the latest.
3. Sign up
You can now set up (free!) publisher, topic, and docket-specific alerts here.
And, you can sign up our blog and weekly wrap here.
Evening reading
More things which I have recently read and recommend spending time with this week.
David Wallace-Wells on the world surrendering to climate change. My data is throughout; while I do not agree with the ultimate premise, the data within its confines is indeed hard to argue with. link
Logan Goldie-Scot of Generate Capital on investing in US infrastructure for a decade of demand. There’s an essay format and a deck format; both are thoughtful and include a chart that is now a Logan classic: annualized US infrastructure investment needs.
Essay and PresentationCongruent Ventures on the existential challenge for American AI dominance: power. Disclosure: Congruent is a Halcyon investor. link
And finally - I gave a talk at my daughter’s school on sustainability, what it is, how it matters, and how a 10 year-old might think of it. A healthy challenge to put things into their lens (especially on a sports day, after lunch, in a warm classroom). Post with slides here.
I am setting my speaking schedule for the second half of the year.
If you are interested in a keynote or a board briefing, you can reach me here.
