April 11, 2024 • 30 mins
Clean energy technologies saw a record influx of investment last year: $1.7 trillion in total. But that still falls short of what’s needed to meet climate goals. With venture capital investment now falling, it’s increasingly difficult for startups to gain traction.
Claire Curry, global head of technology, industry & innovation at BloombergNEF, follows the journeys of many young companies in the clean-tech space. On this week’s Zero, Curry tells Akshat Rathi about the kinds of innovative pathways that have proven successful. LanzaTech, for example, a nine-year-old carbon recycling technology company, works with Chinese steel companies looking for low-emissions solutions. H2 Green Steel also scaled quickly, in part through agreements reached with Mercedes Benz, IKEA and other big brands looking to access low-carbon steel. Curry explains how these approaches could be replicated by other startups.
- Listen to Zero’s episode about green-iron startup Electra.
- Listen to Switched On’s episodes on clean-energy investments and plastic recycling.
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producers are Mythili Rao, Magnus Henriksson, and Sommer Saadi. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to zero. I'm Akshatrati. It's an interesting moment in
the climate fight. Twenty twenty four will be a year
of many big elections around the world, and the governments
(00:25):
that end up with power will determine the pace of
the energy transition no matter what politics prevail. One thing
that will continue to speed up the transition is technology.
But even there the picture is a little bit mixed.
Right now. Last year saw record spending on clean energy,
reaching one point seven trillion dollars. That's six hundred billion
(00:47):
dollars more than what was spent on fossil fuels, and
yet it is still far short of the four point
five trillion dollars in clean energy investment needed to be
on track to meet climate goals. And by design, clean
energy spending is front loaded with the cost of installing, say,
solar panels or wind turbines or hydrogen electoralizers. That's becoming
(01:10):
more difficult in an environment with high interest rates, and
of course those are not the only technologies the world needs.
Industrial sectors like steel, cement, and plastics also need to
be decarbonized. Earlier stage technologies need venture capital funding, which
is also falling, but some emerging companies have found a
(01:30):
way to successfully take their technology to the market. How
did they do it? That's the question I ask Claire Curry,
Global head of Technology, Industry and Innovation at Bloomberg NEF.
We also talked about investment trends in climate tech and
how to find the best early stage startups. Claire, Welcome
(02:05):
to the show. Thanks for having me. Now, one of
the things that is poorly understood about the energy transition
is how much climate tech and climate tech investments from
early stage all the way to scaling them up matters.
And we're going to talk a lot about how exactly
that works, how different types of startups have used that
(02:27):
journey to try and make the commercial case for being around.
But let's start with a basic understanding of where we
stand on investments in the energy transition now. Plumageney, I've
put out a report saying last year was a record
investment year. One point seven trillion dollars were invested in
(02:49):
all kinds of clean energy technologies at scale, but that
is still far from what is needed. We're about a
third of the way for the energy try to be
on track from night zero. If you look at that number,
the one point seven trillion number. How do you think
about where the energy transition is going and which of
(03:10):
the sectors are getting that kind of money.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
We'd a really pivotal moment right now in the transition.
We've spent fifteen years or so scaling solar, wind, lithium, ions,
so batteries, really those three things actually, and that's been amazing,
huge effort, and most of that one point seven trillion
went to those three areas, plus an investment in grade expansion.
That's great. We need lots more of that, so keep
(03:34):
on building those projects. And they've really worked towards at
least a path for us to see how we can
clean up the power sector and at least passenger vehicle
transport sector through electrification. So that's almost half of the
CO two PI. We emitted about thirty seven giga tons
of CO two last year, almost half of that. We
(03:54):
have a route to decarbonize. We're far from doing it,
but we know how we can do it. It's now
a scaling investment problem. It's not technology problem. I mean,
in generalizing, we still have commercial transport, industry, materials and
ag and food to decarbonase, and we are less certain
how to do that. There are some cool technologies and
we'll talk about them, but many aren't scaled, and many
(04:17):
are scalable but aren't gained the financing. Well, really, where
we are now actually is I said, it's pivotal because
last year, for the first time, we began to see
the tens of billions being invested into those technologies to
scale the other half of the pie. Those technologies include
carbon capture, hydrogen, drop in biofuels, some nuclear, some geothermal
(04:37):
heat pumps for electrification of buildings, and we saw I mean,
for CCS it was about eleven billion was invested in
projects that are going to get built. Hydrogen was about
ten billion. So we're seeing small numbers, but obviously it's
a fraction of that one point seven you mentioned trillion.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Now that is the total amount of investment going in
and this is of course, the tens of billions are
typically to work commercial scale, but most of the technologies
that will be crucial for reducing emissions from industry and
from agriculture are still at an early stage. And one
of the ways in which these early stage technologies get
(05:13):
to scale is through a model that's been perfected over
the past three four decades. The venture capital model, where
you have investors who are taking on a big, risky bet,
typically one hundred companies and maybe ten of them will
become commercial, ninety will fail. And that's been a very
important part of the climate tech story. In recent years,
(05:36):
we see investments have just been going up and up.
That's starting to change now. The numbers that you have
for Bloomberg and If show that things are flattening.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
That's true, and that's actually not it's no reflection of
the appetite in the market. There's actually more dry powder
i e. Money that's been raised by climate funds that
hasn't been spent yet than ever before. I think it's
about fifty billion dollars. There's lots of appetite to raise
money in this space. The challenge is just generally macroeconomics.
(06:07):
As we all know, the economy has not been great
for venture capital because of interest rates. Last year the
global VC market fell into has a dollars spent by
thirty eight percent, Yet before it was as much again,
so really it's a twenty three one huge peak. We've
now seen a huge job climate tech. Therefore, you could
say being steady the last two years is a success
(06:30):
story because it now comprises a higher percentage of the
total market that it used to. But there is quite
a lot of nuance in there, and it means we
may continue to see it flat, which obviously is not
good for startups. Don't it raise money?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And the reason why, even though venture capital itself is
falling investments in early stage companies has remained flat in
how you measure it at Bloomberg en EF which is
venture capital and private equity money. So why is the
bee part, the private dec DeepArt so important in this story.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, So the way we track the VC or startup
climate tech financing world is to track deals money raised
by startups. Now we classify as startup in our space,
is anyone that's privately backed, so not public raising from
angel and seed stage. They're very small amounts of money
really right through to the whole alphabet. Right it's Series
(07:25):
A through to PROBYG. At what point they normally get
acquired or they go public or they scale up it
where they need to raise private money anymore, they're profitable.
That means many of those companies at Series A, great,
they're just raising VC money. Many of the companies at
Series C through the g are actually attracting now what
we would call growth equity. It's not classic pe that
(07:45):
do a lot MA. It's more companies that have that
want to write one hundred million dollar check sizes because
their fund is two billion dollar size. They're diferently not
the VC size. We think that money is going to
be increasingly important, so we track it because actually is
an increasing share of the pie, particularly in Asia.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And this is a very good place to understand the
journey of a startup. Right roughly, there are five stages.
You can slice and dice it different ways. The first
is you inventor technology, then second is pilot, the third
is you demo it. You show that it can actually
work at a reasonable scale, then you build what would
(08:25):
be a first of a kind commercial plant, and then
you finally build a scaler plant. In my head, the
easiest way to understand it is to think about a
steel startup, for example, and invention is making grams in
a lab. Pilot is making kilograms in a startup in
a decent lab, but not a big lab. Demo is
(08:46):
where you make tons of that material. In your first
of a kid you're making thousands of tons, and then
in a commercial scale, you're making millions of tons, so
that each step is sort of a thousand times more
than what you've done in the past. And many of
these startups have struggled at a very particular stage, which
(09:06):
is going from demo to commercial. There's the first of
a kind plant that needs to be built. Let us
talk through a few examples of some of the companies
that have achieved that.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, that it's often called the value of death, which
sounds very dramatic, but many startups fail at that point.
It's pretty helpful for me to mention a few reasons
before you go into the examples. One is the kind
of capital you need. Changes vcs might fund, as you say,
your kilograms of production, they aren't big enough check sizes
to fund the hundreds of millions of dollars you need
to raise for your commercial so you need to suddenly
(09:41):
attract project equity from banks or pe firms or other
investment firms, and maybe debt. Both of those are incredibly
hard to attract because they don't like technology risk, they
don't like first of a kind. If they do, they
charge you lots of money and then your project becomes unprofitable.
They like margins, and that's quite hard to achieve. A
(10:02):
lot of climate tech, particularly first of a kind, they
like secure guaranteed revenues, and that again is tricky if
your firstive a kind is making a brand new product
never made before, or if you're making your product with
a green price premium, among many other things. But this
are some of the challenging, challenging reasons to get from
demo to commercial.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And there are examples that we need to pick, and
particularly maybe examples that are in these hard, harder sectors
such as industry or agriculture. One that comes to mind
that I've followed for some time now is Lancetech. This
company is now more than ten years old. Came up
at a time when there was a demand for the
(10:43):
product it was making, and then it went through a
very difficult cycle of that product not having that investment.
Just talk us through its journey.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, lanc Tech is a great example, found in two
thousand and five, so actually, yeah, pretty old. And I
think it's the first thing. This stuff takes time. It's
very rare to see a startup founded and then bang,
bang bang, they get all these five steps in a
few years. So yeah, it's taking them some time there.
She went public I think last year, but privately backed
by vcs up to then. In nutshell, they have a
(11:11):
microbe or many microbe types that turn nasty kind of
industrial gases or waste bio mass to ethanol. When they
were founded, their US market was very keen on ethanol
as the future of road transportation, so that was their
target market. As you said, since ethanol still exists, it's
a huge market, but it's no longer the darling of
(11:32):
the transport market future. It's pivoted. And they've done two
things really well. One is most startups have to build,
own operate. That's the demo to commercial value of death,
raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Landadech instead found a
niche of clients willing to actually license its technology from
day one pre commercial project and then pay to build
(11:54):
the plants. That's pretty cool. They did this through seeking out.
Chinese steel company were mandated to stop emitting lots of
unburnt nasty processes from coal to steal from their plants.
So the government managed them, you need to do this
and will shut you down. So they formed a JV
paid Lancetech to license the technology to eat up their
(12:16):
nasty off gases tenet ethanol. Lance Tech had the option
to buy the ethanol and sell it on. So it's
two revenue streams straight from the bat. It's the licensing
of the tech and it's the ethanol revenue and de
risking them need to invest in the projects.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And the bill to operate model versus a licensing model
is basically a capital play. If you're building and operating,
you are going to be spending hundreds of millions of
dollars doing that. When you're licensing, you're actually generating revenue immediately.
You're not actually putting in the money yourself, and so
(12:50):
that allows a startup to be able to continue scaling
its technology and also learning from somebody else building it
out completely.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You're de risking a lot. The reason we will don't
do it twofold one is it's less money. Overall, licensing
revenues are going to be much less than if you
own the plant and sell the output of the plant. Second,
really hard to persuade a customer to license your tech
if it's unproven, but lands that don't manage that. The
second thing that they're doing that's really cool is they've
been flexible the output product not possible for everyone, but
(13:19):
for chemicals companies, definitely possible. And they've proven a way
of also getting companies to pay them to do the
R and D, which is pretty cool. So they now
have revenue from projects they've done with Lululemon and H
and M to make low carbon fibers for clothing. They've
been paid by Laurel to produce new low carbon plastic packaging,
(13:40):
so it's really cool to see they're able to get
that third revenue stream from new R and D. And
then they're developing as I said, I think I said
about twenty different high value chemicals from the ethanol, higher
profit margins and much more diversified which means lower risk.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
More from the conversation after the break, Let's look at
another recent darling of the investment industry, especially in climate tech.
H to Green Steel last year raised billions of dollars,
(14:22):
which is very difficult to raise a because of the
environment it is in, but also just the sheer number right,
climate tech companies raising billions of dollars are accountable on fingers,
and so what was it about h to Green Steel?
A company that's going to try and make steel without
the carbon emissions gaining that much money.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, and they already found it in twenty twenty, so
they bucked the trend I mentioned earlier. Part of that
is we are now saying companies scale faster too commercial
because suddenly the last three years everyone's worken up to
the fact climate change is here and we need to
decarbonize these hardwarebate sectors. So it's right time, right place.
(15:06):
Great backers. They have very experienced team from industry that
all helps, I think, reassure investors, and you're right. They
raised almost about seven billion euros to build their first
commercial project. They've done two things which is clever and
I think could be replicable in steel but in other
industries too. The first is they managed to convince investors
(15:28):
that they are not technologically risky, which is fascinating because
they're really a first of a kind in many of
the technologies they're using, but they license they're not actually
technology inventors. They are licensing tech from many other players.
Hence where they can scale so quick. And their secret
source is enough expert executors who they've hired out of
(15:48):
the industry, who say we can build a project greenfield.
So from scratch that is perfectly optimized and digitalized and
cutting edge equipment, which means we can make the cheapest
kind of green steel out there compared to other companies
doing retrofits or other stuff. That's the first thing, and
that actually attracted debt and project equity that otherwise probably
(16:11):
wouldn't have been interested in a first of a kind.
The second thing they did was sign off takes. You
can de rescue project as much as you want, but
without customer demand, it's hard to get investors. And ptentially
because of their network, they manage to sign off takes
with Mercedes, Benz, Scannier, Ikia, loads of really big brand
names who are willing to pay up to fifty percent
(16:33):
premium for the steel because it's low carbon.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And these customers the steel component is actually a very
small part of the products they typically sell, Like Mercedes Benz,
steel is going to be what one two percent of
the price of the car, But if that one or
two percent becomes three percent doesn't really matter. But then
it does matter on their carbon footprint, it doesn't matter
(16:57):
in their marketing of the goods. And those connections were
readily available to each to Green Steel because they had
backers in the battery space. They had backers from this
and other startup North World, which is making batteries that
has connections into the auto industry.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, exactly. That definitely helped. I think the jury is
still out on how big the green premium green steel
market can get. Yes, you can sell. I mean I
think the Mercedes benz Off take was about fifty thousand tons,
so it's not huge. So it is a drop in
the ocean of all the other steel that they're buying.
You're right, if you made an entire chassis of a
car with green steel, it would cost about two percent
(17:34):
more to the consumer. If that's a very high end electric,
low carbon vehicle sold to a wealthy individual, You're right,
it doesn't matter. It might matter to the average person.
And the real question about green materials not as green steel,
green plastics, green cement. If there is this persistent premium required,
does it hit a ceiling. The example always used is
(17:56):
fair trade coffee. Right, people love their idea of fair trade,
but it hits feeling and it really hasn't grown as
a market in a decade because those who can afford
to pay more do, But that percentage of people isn't growing,
and so will we see the same thing with green steel.
Will it remained the premium of German auto makers who
can afford it, or will it actually end up being
embedded in all of our buildings, our bridges and so forth.
(18:19):
For a different topic at a different time. There's some
really cool work governments are doing to try and procure
green materials and make that reality true for everyone, not
just rich car buyers. But it may not work well.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
The theory is that, at least initially, if you can
get to a place where somebody is buying the green premium,
you make enough of it, you make enough plants that
make it that green premium actually goes away. Now that's
just theory, right, because it's fair trade. That's the case
that hasn't been proven out to be true. But before
we get into what are some other bets that could
(18:52):
try and maybe crush this green premium to zero or
even negative, let's talk through the third example.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
So the third example is interesting area that I think
people know less about than the other two, and it's
the area of plastics recycling, which is both a waste
problem it's also a netzerio problem. Today, plastics about ten
percent of our plastics is recycle globally, so it's pitiful
and almost all, basically all of that is mechanical recycling.
It will only take clear like plastic bottle type things,
(19:20):
and it will make worse quality plastics from it, like
throwaway cutlery, so it's not great. There is a whole
wave of mostly startups developing this thing called chemical recycling. Basically,
you can take in the stream of dirty colored, mixed
wavee plastic and turn into a pseudo kind of crude
oil again really, and that can then be used and
(19:40):
upgraded into anything, and it's completely circular forever and ever.
And our company we're going to talk about is Mirror Technologies.
They commissioned last year their first ever commercial plant in
the UK doing exactly this process chemical recycling, and it's
pretty exciting. It's twenty thousand tons per annum then make
and they've been around it to an eleven so again, it's
(20:03):
taken them quite a long time to get here.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Now as a chemist, recycling of plastics is possible. It's
always been a cost problem, right, So what is it
that Mirror has been able to do that? They've been
able to overcome that and actually make a commercial case
for their product.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yes, recycling doesn't make money generally at this moment in time,
maybe be true forever. But we're seeing low scrap plastics prices,
particularly for waste plastic that literally otherwise it's going to
get land filled, and so you are paying very little
for your feedstock, which is take one of kind of
business model excellence for climate tech startups. Second, there is
(20:41):
a lot of policy right now in the UK and
France and the EU generally that is mandating. In the UK,
the mandate is thirty percent of plastic made has to
be recycled or circular economy plastic. Now that just isn't
available right now to producers. They're really scrambling and that
is enabled a price premium. It's not a subsidy. It's
(21:03):
really just the government mandating has meant companies are desperate
to buy this product that Mira has, which means companies
like Mira. Our BNF calculations show about a thirteen percent IRA.
Now normal chemicals plants are about eight percent. So this
is a better investment just without the green tag than
investing in other chemicals projects.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Right, and IRR is just the rate of return, So
thirteen percent for every million dollars that's invested, exactly. And
these are companies now that are at that place where
they have gone over the value of death, build a
first of fu kind, and are starting to get to
the commercial stage. But among the many things that BENF does,
(21:45):
you also go at the very early stage of startups
and you try and identify, given there are now hundreds
of these coming up every year, the most promising ones,
and some of them you give awards to. Which is
a list that you've announced just this week. Talk us
through some of those winners.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, i'd love to so BNF pioneers this innovation competition.
It's been running now since twenty ten, and every year
we have about ten to twelve winners out of one
hundreds of applicants, and more recently we've been picking themes
for the year. There are so many interesting companies out there,
but BENF wants to try and pick companies that are
relevant for today's problems and really for actually tackling climate
(22:25):
change or decarbonization before twenty thirty. It's great that there's
twenty fifty solution, but we can't wait that long. So
this year we chose three challenge areas we want to
relieve the bottlenecks on the grid. There's loads of issues
of permitting right now to get reneaebles on the grid,
there are some tech solutions. Second is decarbonizing buildings in
the built environment, huge cause of emissions. We're still not
(22:46):
entirely sure how to get there economically. And the third
is let's just try and develop a great next gen
zero fuel because right now we're really struggling to know
how to decarbonize aviation, shipping and tracking.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
And just to give the listeners of flavor of the
kinds of startups that end up winning this award, what
are your favorite examples from this year's winners.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Well, yeah, so we have I think eleven winners this year,
and they're all great obviously, but the ones we could
talk about I think exemplify some of the themes we've
already discussed. There's a couple of really great ones in
the relieving grid bottlenecks challenge. Many people think that's just
about permitting and policy, but there's some call tech stuff.
One example that use is a hardware company example called
(23:32):
ts Conductor, the US based, and they have basically developed
a technology. It's a carbon fiber core wrap with aluminium
wrapped around it, which will triple the line capacity how
much power you can push down in existing above ground
power line. That's huge because one of the hugest w
is building out the grid is permitting to build new
(23:52):
wooden poles in the ground. If you can replace those
wires and triple the power capacity and have line losses,
that's amazing and it's a four year payback. The issue
TS Conductor has is it's expensive. We talked about that before,
and utilities in the US are regulated to not spend
lots of money, so they're going to struggle to sell
this stuff. It's two to three times the cost and
(24:14):
to an interesting model to do exactly that, basically try
and get it deployed.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So you replace the copper cable with a cable that's
made out of carbon fiber and aluminum.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
So it's currently aluminum. Yeah, in the US, wires wrapped
around steel core. The steel helps strengthen the aluminium starts sagging.
You only to push much power of the aluminium before
all the wires sag. And I'm sure you've seen sagging
wires in the US very very dangerous. What the composite
core does it's just ten times stronger than steel, so
(24:45):
you can actually push plenty more current through the aluminium
and it won't sag because of the carbon fiber core.
It is expensive, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Well they're also coming in at a time where copper
prices are going up. The ability to get copper cables
has been a real struggle for the grid industry. So
that's a good example. What's another one.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So in the buildings challenge, we have some great companies.
One particularly has been around for a long time, so
Aero Seal. They were found in nineteen ninety six. They're
actually bought by Carrier in two thousand and one, I believe,
and it just went nowhere, and that can happen big companies, buyer, startup,
don't know what to do with it, let it languish.
(25:28):
The founder, the initial founder of aero sal rebought the
company from Carrier in twenty ten because he could just
see it going nowhere. And since then they've managed to
scale massively. They are making lots of money. They I
think have now done about two hundred thousand kind of
installations of their product. And that product is they basically
can retrofit commercial or residential buildings or new bills to
(25:52):
be fully sealed ie airtight almost passive house standard, which
obviously reduces losses. So is it basically an energy efficiency plan.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I actually got a chance to go and visit one
of the aerocal processes in the US in Massachusetts, and yeah,
we just entered a random person's home and they were
kind enough to let us in to see how they
do it. And it's fascinating. Like you, of course have
to leave the house for that period and you have
to let it dry and everything, but you don't have
(26:23):
to deconstruct the house to put it back together to
try and get this insulation in place. So we do
need real good solutions for insallation. And it's really nice
to see a startup that is no longer a startup.
I guess it's twenty years old, coming back to life now.
The final example that you have is a steel company,
and this is where you take h to green steel,
(26:46):
which is a hydrogen powered steel production, which may not
go down the green premium path as one would like,
but there are these other startups that are coming up
with even cheaper ways of making carbon free steel.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, there's only very few ways to decarbono steel. You
basically make it as you do and add carbon capture
always be more expensive. You instead reduce your iron ore
with hydrogen rather than natural gas, which is what Hdgreen
Steel is doing. Or you could electrify the whole process.
That's really tricky, not done currently at scale, but actually
(27:19):
we've now got three BNF pioneers winners who were doing
that in the past. We gave Boston Metal the award,
last year, Electra and this year Element zero. All three
are forms of basically electrolysis. Element zero is interesting, still
very early stage, but they promise a couple of things.
It's a bit different. One is they say they're not
using a membrane and they're not using carbon electrodes, so
(27:44):
there's no direct process zero two emissions from the carbon electrodes,
and the membrane is very expensive and technically kind of
fussy part of the systems. They're cutting out that cost
and that risk. The second cool thing is they say
that they can operate with renewable intermittent energy. So obviously
if you're in a xetrified process to make in a zero,
it needs to use clean power. The cheapest clean power
(28:04):
is solar and wind, but it isn't running all the time.
So unlike other electrification processes for industry that need to
be twenty four to seven really power liability, what Element
zero can do is actually be off for up to
four hours, which is really cool, is to do what
the heat capacity of the solvent it's using.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Now, I've been particularly fascinated by these electric options, and
the electrolysis part is very simply just using electricity to
do the chemical reaction that was being done either by
hydrogen or coal, where they basically take the oxygen atom
out from the iron ore which is iron oxide. Now Electra,
(28:44):
which is the other pioneer winner, has reached pilot stage.
They are actually making tons of this material sending it
out to steel makers. What stages Element zero at they're.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Still very early stage. I mean more like a lab stage.
I mean they might say pilot, but definitely behind Elektra.
They want to build their first commercial vicility in twenty
twenty nine, So that's there at Series A, if we
go back to the VC discussion, they're raised about ten
million dollars in there. At Series A. They have some
private wealthy individuals that also are helping fund them, but
really they're a way of building their first commercial project.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
And like you said, many of these startups like Element
zero are very early stage. With the funding landscape changing
so much, it'll be interesting to see how they survive
and perhaps thrive. Thank you, Claire, thanks having me for
more on decarbonizing steel. You can listen to an episode
of Zero from twenty twenty two on Elektra, and you
(29:39):
can hear more on climate investing trends on Bloomberg. Anyf's
podcast Switched On links to all that in the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Zero. If you liked this episode,
please take a moment to rate or view the show
(30:00):
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode with a
friend or with a science nerd. You can get in
touch at zero pod at Bloomberg dot net. Zero's producers
are Mithyle Rao, Magnus Henriksen and Somarsadi. Our theme music
is composed by Wonderly Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and
Jessica Nix. I'm Akshatrati back soon.
Welcome to zero. I'm Akshatrati. It's an interesting moment in
the climate fight. Twenty twenty four will be a year
of many big elections around the world, and the governments
(00:25):
that end up with power will determine the pace of
the energy transition no matter what politics prevail. One thing
that will continue to speed up the transition is technology.
But even there the picture is a little bit mixed.
Right now. Last year saw record spending on clean energy,
reaching one point seven trillion dollars. That's six hundred billion
(00:47):
dollars more than what was spent on fossil fuels, and
yet it is still far short of the four point
five trillion dollars in clean energy investment needed to be
on track to meet climate goals. And by design, clean
energy spending is front loaded with the cost of installing, say,
solar panels or wind turbines or hydrogen electoralizers. That's becoming
(01:10):
more difficult in an environment with high interest rates, and
of course those are not the only technologies the world needs.
Industrial sectors like steel, cement, and plastics also need to
be decarbonized. Earlier stage technologies need venture capital funding, which
is also falling, but some emerging companies have found a
(01:30):
way to successfully take their technology to the market. How
did they do it? That's the question I ask Claire Curry,
Global head of Technology, Industry and Innovation at Bloomberg NEF.
We also talked about investment trends in climate tech and
how to find the best early stage startups. Claire, Welcome
(02:05):
to the show. Thanks for having me. Now, one of
the things that is poorly understood about the energy transition
is how much climate tech and climate tech investments from
early stage all the way to scaling them up matters.
And we're going to talk a lot about how exactly
that works, how different types of startups have used that
(02:27):
journey to try and make the commercial case for being around.
But let's start with a basic understanding of where we
stand on investments in the energy transition now. Plumageney, I've
put out a report saying last year was a record
investment year. One point seven trillion dollars were invested in
(02:49):
all kinds of clean energy technologies at scale, but that
is still far from what is needed. We're about a
third of the way for the energy try to be
on track from night zero. If you look at that number,
the one point seven trillion number. How do you think
about where the energy transition is going and which of
(03:10):
the sectors are getting that kind of money.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
We'd a really pivotal moment right now in the transition.
We've spent fifteen years or so scaling solar, wind, lithium, ions,
so batteries, really those three things actually, and that's been amazing,
huge effort, and most of that one point seven trillion
went to those three areas, plus an investment in grade expansion.
That's great. We need lots more of that, so keep
(03:34):
on building those projects. And they've really worked towards at
least a path for us to see how we can
clean up the power sector and at least passenger vehicle
transport sector through electrification. So that's almost half of the
CO two PI. We emitted about thirty seven giga tons
of CO two last year, almost half of that. We
(03:54):
have a route to decarbonize. We're far from doing it,
but we know how we can do it. It's now
a scaling investment problem. It's not technology problem. I mean,
in generalizing, we still have commercial transport, industry, materials and
ag and food to decarbonase, and we are less certain
how to do that. There are some cool technologies and
we'll talk about them, but many aren't scaled, and many
(04:17):
are scalable but aren't gained the financing. Well, really, where
we are now actually is I said, it's pivotal because
last year, for the first time, we began to see
the tens of billions being invested into those technologies to
scale the other half of the pie. Those technologies include
carbon capture, hydrogen, drop in biofuels, some nuclear, some geothermal
(04:37):
heat pumps for electrification of buildings, and we saw I mean,
for CCS it was about eleven billion was invested in
projects that are going to get built. Hydrogen was about
ten billion. So we're seeing small numbers, but obviously it's
a fraction of that one point seven you mentioned trillion.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Now that is the total amount of investment going in
and this is of course, the tens of billions are
typically to work commercial scale, but most of the technologies
that will be crucial for reducing emissions from industry and
from agriculture are still at an early stage. And one
of the ways in which these early stage technologies get
(05:13):
to scale is through a model that's been perfected over
the past three four decades. The venture capital model, where
you have investors who are taking on a big, risky bet,
typically one hundred companies and maybe ten of them will
become commercial, ninety will fail. And that's been a very
important part of the climate tech story. In recent years,
(05:36):
we see investments have just been going up and up.
That's starting to change now. The numbers that you have
for Bloomberg and If show that things are flattening.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
That's true, and that's actually not it's no reflection of
the appetite in the market. There's actually more dry powder
i e. Money that's been raised by climate funds that
hasn't been spent yet than ever before. I think it's
about fifty billion dollars. There's lots of appetite to raise
money in this space. The challenge is just generally macroeconomics.
(06:07):
As we all know, the economy has not been great
for venture capital because of interest rates. Last year the
global VC market fell into has a dollars spent by
thirty eight percent, Yet before it was as much again,
so really it's a twenty three one huge peak. We've
now seen a huge job climate tech. Therefore, you could
say being steady the last two years is a success
(06:30):
story because it now comprises a higher percentage of the
total market that it used to. But there is quite
a lot of nuance in there, and it means we
may continue to see it flat, which obviously is not
good for startups. Don't it raise money?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And the reason why, even though venture capital itself is
falling investments in early stage companies has remained flat in
how you measure it at Bloomberg en EF which is
venture capital and private equity money. So why is the
bee part, the private dec DeepArt so important in this story.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, So the way we track the VC or startup
climate tech financing world is to track deals money raised
by startups. Now we classify as startup in our space,
is anyone that's privately backed, so not public raising from
angel and seed stage. They're very small amounts of money
really right through to the whole alphabet. Right it's Series
(07:25):
A through to PROBYG. At what point they normally get
acquired or they go public or they scale up it
where they need to raise private money anymore, they're profitable.
That means many of those companies at Series A, great,
they're just raising VC money. Many of the companies at
Series C through the g are actually attracting now what
we would call growth equity. It's not classic pe that
(07:45):
do a lot MA. It's more companies that have that
want to write one hundred million dollar check sizes because
their fund is two billion dollar size. They're diferently not
the VC size. We think that money is going to
be increasingly important, so we track it because actually is
an increasing share of the pie, particularly in Asia.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And this is a very good place to understand the
journey of a startup. Right roughly, there are five stages.
You can slice and dice it different ways. The first
is you inventor technology, then second is pilot, the third
is you demo it. You show that it can actually
work at a reasonable scale, then you build what would
(08:25):
be a first of a kind commercial plant, and then
you finally build a scaler plant. In my head, the
easiest way to understand it is to think about a
steel startup, for example, and invention is making grams in
a lab. Pilot is making kilograms in a startup in
a decent lab, but not a big lab. Demo is
(08:46):
where you make tons of that material. In your first
of a kid you're making thousands of tons, and then
in a commercial scale, you're making millions of tons, so
that each step is sort of a thousand times more
than what you've done in the past. And many of
these startups have struggled at a very particular stage, which
(09:06):
is going from demo to commercial. There's the first of
a kind plant that needs to be built. Let us
talk through a few examples of some of the companies
that have achieved that.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, that it's often called the value of death, which
sounds very dramatic, but many startups fail at that point.
It's pretty helpful for me to mention a few reasons
before you go into the examples. One is the kind
of capital you need. Changes vcs might fund, as you say,
your kilograms of production, they aren't big enough check sizes
to fund the hundreds of millions of dollars you need
to raise for your commercial so you need to suddenly
(09:41):
attract project equity from banks or pe firms or other
investment firms, and maybe debt. Both of those are incredibly
hard to attract because they don't like technology risk, they
don't like first of a kind. If they do, they
charge you lots of money and then your project becomes unprofitable.
They like margins, and that's quite hard to achieve. A
(10:02):
lot of climate tech, particularly first of a kind, they
like secure guaranteed revenues, and that again is tricky if
your firstive a kind is making a brand new product
never made before, or if you're making your product with
a green price premium, among many other things. But this
are some of the challenging, challenging reasons to get from
demo to commercial.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And there are examples that we need to pick, and
particularly maybe examples that are in these hard, harder sectors
such as industry or agriculture. One that comes to mind
that I've followed for some time now is Lancetech. This
company is now more than ten years old. Came up
at a time when there was a demand for the
(10:43):
product it was making, and then it went through a
very difficult cycle of that product not having that investment.
Just talk us through its journey.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, lanc Tech is a great example, found in two
thousand and five, so actually, yeah, pretty old. And I
think it's the first thing. This stuff takes time. It's
very rare to see a startup founded and then bang,
bang bang, they get all these five steps in a
few years. So yeah, it's taking them some time there.
She went public I think last year, but privately backed
by vcs up to then. In nutshell, they have a
(11:11):
microbe or many microbe types that turn nasty kind of
industrial gases or waste bio mass to ethanol. When they
were founded, their US market was very keen on ethanol
as the future of road transportation, so that was their
target market. As you said, since ethanol still exists, it's
a huge market, but it's no longer the darling of
(11:32):
the transport market future. It's pivoted. And they've done two
things really well. One is most startups have to build,
own operate. That's the demo to commercial value of death,
raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Landadech instead found a
niche of clients willing to actually license its technology from
day one pre commercial project and then pay to build
(11:54):
the plants. That's pretty cool. They did this through seeking out.
Chinese steel company were mandated to stop emitting lots of
unburnt nasty processes from coal to steal from their plants.
So the government managed them, you need to do this
and will shut you down. So they formed a JV
paid Lancetech to license the technology to eat up their
(12:16):
nasty off gases tenet ethanol. Lance Tech had the option
to buy the ethanol and sell it on. So it's
two revenue streams straight from the bat. It's the licensing
of the tech and it's the ethanol revenue and de
risking them need to invest in the projects.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And the bill to operate model versus a licensing model
is basically a capital play. If you're building and operating,
you are going to be spending hundreds of millions of
dollars doing that. When you're licensing, you're actually generating revenue immediately.
You're not actually putting in the money yourself, and so
(12:50):
that allows a startup to be able to continue scaling
its technology and also learning from somebody else building it
out completely.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You're de risking a lot. The reason we will don't
do it twofold one is it's less money. Overall, licensing
revenues are going to be much less than if you
own the plant and sell the output of the plant. Second,
really hard to persuade a customer to license your tech
if it's unproven, but lands that don't manage that. The
second thing that they're doing that's really cool is they've
been flexible the output product not possible for everyone, but
(13:19):
for chemicals companies, definitely possible. And they've proven a way
of also getting companies to pay them to do the
R and D, which is pretty cool. So they now
have revenue from projects they've done with Lululemon and H
and M to make low carbon fibers for clothing. They've
been paid by Laurel to produce new low carbon plastic packaging,
(13:40):
so it's really cool to see they're able to get
that third revenue stream from new R and D. And
then they're developing as I said, I think I said
about twenty different high value chemicals from the ethanol, higher
profit margins and much more diversified which means lower risk.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
More from the conversation after the break, Let's look at
another recent darling of the investment industry, especially in climate tech.
H to Green Steel last year raised billions of dollars,
(14:22):
which is very difficult to raise a because of the
environment it is in, but also just the sheer number right,
climate tech companies raising billions of dollars are accountable on fingers,
and so what was it about h to Green Steel?
A company that's going to try and make steel without
the carbon emissions gaining that much money.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, and they already found it in twenty twenty, so
they bucked the trend I mentioned earlier. Part of that
is we are now saying companies scale faster too commercial
because suddenly the last three years everyone's worken up to
the fact climate change is here and we need to
decarbonize these hardwarebate sectors. So it's right time, right place.
(15:06):
Great backers. They have very experienced team from industry that
all helps, I think, reassure investors, and you're right. They
raised almost about seven billion euros to build their first
commercial project. They've done two things which is clever and
I think could be replicable in steel but in other
industries too. The first is they managed to convince investors
(15:28):
that they are not technologically risky, which is fascinating because
they're really a first of a kind in many of
the technologies they're using, but they license they're not actually
technology inventors. They are licensing tech from many other players.
Hence where they can scale so quick. And their secret
source is enough expert executors who they've hired out of
(15:48):
the industry, who say we can build a project greenfield.
So from scratch that is perfectly optimized and digitalized and
cutting edge equipment, which means we can make the cheapest
kind of green steel out there compared to other companies
doing retrofits or other stuff. That's the first thing, and
that actually attracted debt and project equity that otherwise probably
(16:11):
wouldn't have been interested in a first of a kind.
The second thing they did was sign off takes. You
can de rescue project as much as you want, but
without customer demand, it's hard to get investors. And ptentially
because of their network, they manage to sign off takes
with Mercedes, Benz, Scannier, Ikia, loads of really big brand
names who are willing to pay up to fifty percent
(16:33):
premium for the steel because it's low carbon.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And these customers the steel component is actually a very
small part of the products they typically sell, Like Mercedes Benz,
steel is going to be what one two percent of
the price of the car, But if that one or
two percent becomes three percent doesn't really matter. But then
it does matter on their carbon footprint, it doesn't matter
(16:57):
in their marketing of the goods. And those connections were
readily available to each to Green Steel because they had
backers in the battery space. They had backers from this
and other startup North World, which is making batteries that
has connections into the auto industry.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, exactly. That definitely helped. I think the jury is
still out on how big the green premium green steel
market can get. Yes, you can sell. I mean I
think the Mercedes benz Off take was about fifty thousand tons,
so it's not huge. So it is a drop in
the ocean of all the other steel that they're buying.
You're right, if you made an entire chassis of a
car with green steel, it would cost about two percent
(17:34):
more to the consumer. If that's a very high end electric,
low carbon vehicle sold to a wealthy individual, You're right,
it doesn't matter. It might matter to the average person.
And the real question about green materials not as green steel,
green plastics, green cement. If there is this persistent premium required,
does it hit a ceiling. The example always used is
(17:56):
fair trade coffee. Right, people love their idea of fair trade,
but it hits feeling and it really hasn't grown as
a market in a decade because those who can afford
to pay more do, But that percentage of people isn't growing,
and so will we see the same thing with green steel.
Will it remained the premium of German auto makers who
can afford it, or will it actually end up being
embedded in all of our buildings, our bridges and so forth.
(18:19):
For a different topic at a different time. There's some
really cool work governments are doing to try and procure
green materials and make that reality true for everyone, not
just rich car buyers. But it may not work well.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
The theory is that, at least initially, if you can
get to a place where somebody is buying the green premium,
you make enough of it, you make enough plants that
make it that green premium actually goes away. Now that's
just theory, right, because it's fair trade. That's the case
that hasn't been proven out to be true. But before
we get into what are some other bets that could
(18:52):
try and maybe crush this green premium to zero or
even negative, let's talk through the third example.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
So the third example is interesting area that I think
people know less about than the other two, and it's
the area of plastics recycling, which is both a waste
problem it's also a netzerio problem. Today, plastics about ten
percent of our plastics is recycle globally, so it's pitiful
and almost all, basically all of that is mechanical recycling.
It will only take clear like plastic bottle type things,
(19:20):
and it will make worse quality plastics from it, like
throwaway cutlery, so it's not great. There is a whole
wave of mostly startups developing this thing called chemical recycling. Basically,
you can take in the stream of dirty colored, mixed
wavee plastic and turn into a pseudo kind of crude
oil again really, and that can then be used and
(19:40):
upgraded into anything, and it's completely circular forever and ever.
And our company we're going to talk about is Mirror Technologies.
They commissioned last year their first ever commercial plant in
the UK doing exactly this process chemical recycling, and it's
pretty exciting. It's twenty thousand tons per annum then make
and they've been around it to an eleven so again, it's
(20:03):
taken them quite a long time to get here.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Now as a chemist, recycling of plastics is possible. It's
always been a cost problem, right, So what is it
that Mirror has been able to do that? They've been
able to overcome that and actually make a commercial case
for their product.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yes, recycling doesn't make money generally at this moment in time,
maybe be true forever. But we're seeing low scrap plastics prices,
particularly for waste plastic that literally otherwise it's going to
get land filled, and so you are paying very little
for your feedstock, which is take one of kind of
business model excellence for climate tech startups. Second, there is
(20:41):
a lot of policy right now in the UK and
France and the EU generally that is mandating. In the UK,
the mandate is thirty percent of plastic made has to
be recycled or circular economy plastic. Now that just isn't
available right now to producers. They're really scrambling and that
is enabled a price premium. It's not a subsidy. It's
(21:03):
really just the government mandating has meant companies are desperate
to buy this product that Mira has, which means companies
like Mira. Our BNF calculations show about a thirteen percent IRA.
Now normal chemicals plants are about eight percent. So this
is a better investment just without the green tag than
investing in other chemicals projects.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Right, and IRR is just the rate of return, So
thirteen percent for every million dollars that's invested, exactly. And
these are companies now that are at that place where
they have gone over the value of death, build a
first of fu kind, and are starting to get to
the commercial stage. But among the many things that BENF does,
(21:45):
you also go at the very early stage of startups
and you try and identify, given there are now hundreds
of these coming up every year, the most promising ones,
and some of them you give awards to. Which is
a list that you've announced just this week. Talk us
through some of those winners.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, i'd love to so BNF pioneers this innovation competition.
It's been running now since twenty ten, and every year
we have about ten to twelve winners out of one
hundreds of applicants, and more recently we've been picking themes
for the year. There are so many interesting companies out there,
but BENF wants to try and pick companies that are
relevant for today's problems and really for actually tackling climate
(22:25):
change or decarbonization before twenty thirty. It's great that there's
twenty fifty solution, but we can't wait that long. So
this year we chose three challenge areas we want to
relieve the bottlenecks on the grid. There's loads of issues
of permitting right now to get reneaebles on the grid,
there are some tech solutions. Second is decarbonizing buildings in
the built environment, huge cause of emissions. We're still not
(22:46):
entirely sure how to get there economically. And the third
is let's just try and develop a great next gen
zero fuel because right now we're really struggling to know
how to decarbonize aviation, shipping and tracking.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
And just to give the listeners of flavor of the
kinds of startups that end up winning this award, what
are your favorite examples from this year's winners.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Well, yeah, so we have I think eleven winners this year,
and they're all great obviously, but the ones we could
talk about I think exemplify some of the themes we've
already discussed. There's a couple of really great ones in
the relieving grid bottlenecks challenge. Many people think that's just
about permitting and policy, but there's some call tech stuff.
One example that use is a hardware company example called
(23:32):
ts Conductor, the US based, and they have basically developed
a technology. It's a carbon fiber core wrap with aluminium
wrapped around it, which will triple the line capacity how
much power you can push down in existing above ground
power line. That's huge because one of the hugest w
is building out the grid is permitting to build new
(23:52):
wooden poles in the ground. If you can replace those
wires and triple the power capacity and have line losses,
that's amazing and it's a four year payback. The issue
TS Conductor has is it's expensive. We talked about that before,
and utilities in the US are regulated to not spend
lots of money, so they're going to struggle to sell
this stuff. It's two to three times the cost and
(24:14):
to an interesting model to do exactly that, basically try
and get it deployed.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So you replace the copper cable with a cable that's
made out of carbon fiber and aluminum.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
So it's currently aluminum. Yeah, in the US, wires wrapped
around steel core. The steel helps strengthen the aluminium starts sagging.
You only to push much power of the aluminium before
all the wires sag. And I'm sure you've seen sagging
wires in the US very very dangerous. What the composite
core does it's just ten times stronger than steel, so
(24:45):
you can actually push plenty more current through the aluminium
and it won't sag because of the carbon fiber core.
It is expensive, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Well they're also coming in at a time where copper
prices are going up. The ability to get copper cables
has been a real struggle for the grid industry. So
that's a good example. What's another one.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So in the buildings challenge, we have some great companies.
One particularly has been around for a long time, so
Aero Seal. They were found in nineteen ninety six. They're
actually bought by Carrier in two thousand and one, I believe,
and it just went nowhere, and that can happen big companies, buyer, startup,
don't know what to do with it, let it languish.
(25:28):
The founder, the initial founder of aero sal rebought the
company from Carrier in twenty ten because he could just
see it going nowhere. And since then they've managed to
scale massively. They are making lots of money. They I
think have now done about two hundred thousand kind of
installations of their product. And that product is they basically
can retrofit commercial or residential buildings or new bills to
(25:52):
be fully sealed ie airtight almost passive house standard, which
obviously reduces losses. So is it basically an energy efficiency plan.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I actually got a chance to go and visit one
of the aerocal processes in the US in Massachusetts, and yeah,
we just entered a random person's home and they were
kind enough to let us in to see how they
do it. And it's fascinating. Like you, of course have
to leave the house for that period and you have
to let it dry and everything, but you don't have
(26:23):
to deconstruct the house to put it back together to
try and get this insulation in place. So we do
need real good solutions for insallation. And it's really nice
to see a startup that is no longer a startup.
I guess it's twenty years old, coming back to life now.
The final example that you have is a steel company,
and this is where you take h to green steel,
(26:46):
which is a hydrogen powered steel production, which may not
go down the green premium path as one would like,
but there are these other startups that are coming up
with even cheaper ways of making carbon free steel.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, there's only very few ways to decarbono steel. You
basically make it as you do and add carbon capture
always be more expensive. You instead reduce your iron ore
with hydrogen rather than natural gas, which is what Hdgreen
Steel is doing. Or you could electrify the whole process.
That's really tricky, not done currently at scale, but actually
(27:19):
we've now got three BNF pioneers winners who were doing
that in the past. We gave Boston Metal the award,
last year, Electra and this year Element zero. All three
are forms of basically electrolysis. Element zero is interesting, still
very early stage, but they promise a couple of things.
It's a bit different. One is they say they're not
using a membrane and they're not using carbon electrodes, so
(27:44):
there's no direct process zero two emissions from the carbon electrodes,
and the membrane is very expensive and technically kind of
fussy part of the systems. They're cutting out that cost
and that risk. The second cool thing is they say
that they can operate with renewable intermittent energy. So obviously
if you're in a xetrified process to make in a zero,
it needs to use clean power. The cheapest clean power
(28:04):
is solar and wind, but it isn't running all the time.
So unlike other electrification processes for industry that need to
be twenty four to seven really power liability, what Element
zero can do is actually be off for up to
four hours, which is really cool, is to do what
the heat capacity of the solvent it's using.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Now, I've been particularly fascinated by these electric options, and
the electrolysis part is very simply just using electricity to
do the chemical reaction that was being done either by
hydrogen or coal, where they basically take the oxygen atom
out from the iron ore which is iron oxide. Now Electra,
(28:44):
which is the other pioneer winner, has reached pilot stage.
They are actually making tons of this material sending it
out to steel makers. What stages Element zero at they're.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Still very early stage. I mean more like a lab stage.
I mean they might say pilot, but definitely behind Elektra.
They want to build their first commercial vicility in twenty
twenty nine, So that's there at Series A, if we
go back to the VC discussion, they're raised about ten
million dollars in there. At Series A. They have some
private wealthy individuals that also are helping fund them, but
really they're a way of building their first commercial project.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
And like you said, many of these startups like Element
zero are very early stage. With the funding landscape changing
so much, it'll be interesting to see how they survive
and perhaps thrive. Thank you, Claire, thanks having me for
more on decarbonizing steel. You can listen to an episode
of Zero from twenty twenty two on Elektra, and you
(29:39):
can hear more on climate investing trends on Bloomberg. Anyf's
podcast Switched On links to all that in the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Zero. If you liked this episode,
please take a moment to rate or view the show
(30:00):
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode with a
friend or with a science nerd. You can get in
touch at zero pod at Bloomberg dot net. Zero's producers
are Mithyle Rao, Magnus Henriksen and Somarsadi. Our theme music
is composed by Wonderly Special thanks to Kira Bindrim and
Jessica Nix. I'm Akshatrati back soon.
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