The Rethink Energy Podcast complements the Rethink Energy weekly strategy bulletin, as we dive deeper into the dynamic factors of the energy market. We discuss the week’s key issues, while providing insight into our own research and forecasts to give clearer direction of where momentum is building through the energy transition.
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-China’s export controls will spur further price increases for high-end semiconductor and other materials
-Battery prices set for consistent gradual decline through 2025 and beyond
-More investments into perovskite factories and pilot projects – is low-light performance good enough to conquer cloudy regions?
-China’s perovskite sector keeps announcing new factories – but what’s needed to produce a Minimum Viable Product solar panel using the new semiconductor?
-Germany’s 215 GW solar target for 2030 implies up to $100 billion investment also needed in energy storage batteries on the grid.
-Policy contrast widens on Chinese EV import tariffs between US exclusion, Australian free trade, and EU indecision.
This week’s topics include:
-Northvolt, Europe’s flagship battery manufacturer, has filed for bankruptcy – in keeping with the region’s weakness in upstream manufacturing.
-Entrion has patented a guyed monopile design which blurs the distinction between fixed-base and floating wind projects.
-China’s government has issued tighter guidelines for solar manufacturing investments – in a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.
This week’s topics include:
-China has exported 116 GWh of energy storage batteries and battery systems in the first 10 months of 2024, indicating 140 GWh full-year and a global manufacturing scale well north of 200 GWh, meaning the industry is grow between 50% and 100% year on year
-India became a net exporter of solar equipment in Q2 – and with President Trump in office, India is very likely to become the main supplier of solar wafers to the US industry in the future.
-All-solid-state batteries are still years away from being a mature product for the EV industry – but have begun to be used in the lucrative eVTOL market.
This week’s topics include:
-The EV industry’s initial adoption of solid-state batteries remains set for 2027, just one of the quality upgrades which will offset the pain inflicted by tariffs.
-Global solar manufacturing has fallen by over one-third if you measure from the historic peak in March 2024 to October, with the industry’s growth decelerating amidst module stockpiling, while price cannibalization forces investment into co-located battery energy storage.
-The looming Trump Administration has identified fracking CEO Chris Wright as its pick for Energy Secretary – but will oil and gas production really expand in such a way as to reduce energy prices, thus undercutting the motive to invest in renewables?
-The second Trump Administration will disrupt the energy transition in three ways – disrupting equipment imports, cutting federal funding, and preserving the fossil fuel industry.
-Energy storage batteries will go from strength, with ever more price volatility including negative pricing on the one hand, and consistently low manufacturing costs on the other.
-Carbon fiber production capacity already reached 300,000 tons in 2023, with Chinese companies looking to double it again, allowing the wind industry to expand its usage of the expensive material.
In this episode of Rethink Energy Talks, we’re joined by Paul Moonie, CEO of Australia’s perovskite company Halocell, to discuss perovskites’ performance in low-light conditions, dusk, and dawn – starting with a Microquanta test from a few months ago in which perovskites had 38% more usable light-hours under 75% cloud cover compared to standard silicon. We also discuss Halocell’s various routes to market and research efforts.
In this week’s episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-The true price of China’s solar panels – they’re being sold below cost, but how far below cost?
-Carbon fiber production capacity is set to expand dramatically, courtesy of China, with just three factories in the past couple of months amounting to 82,000 tons – half of global demand
-India’s $386 billion in energy transition finance pledges heavily feature solar manufacturing expansion – but how much wafer output will they achieve?
-Li Auto has disclosed some details of its AI-centered approach to Full Self Driving (FSD) development – including the size of its database and the scale and cost of the necessary computing capacity.
In this week’s episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-The 14th ICAO Air Navigation Conference has called for streamlining regulatory processes for implementing new aircraft designs which will accompany the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen and battery power.
-Rethink Energy has published a new forecast on perovskites – which will take over the solar industry by 2040, with certain segments being revolutionized ahead of 2030. Solar’s quality improvements will keep rolling in through 2050 and beyond.
-Carbon fiber prices have almost halved in the past 14 months in China – allowing wider usage in wind turbines.
In this week’s episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-Tandem perovskite modules are being shipped to customers by Caelux, Oxford PV and others – these are still small-scale trial shipments, but this signifies that the technology has reached the threshold of parity on lifetime power output with conventional silicon modules.
-Per a new study from Boeing, 12% of global feedstock requirement for SAF could be met from South-East Asia alone – but SAF’s logistical hurdles extend beyond simple creation of the feedstock.
-Typhoon Yagi has destroyed some wind turbines – but for the most part the disaster has acted as a proof of reliability for the new plus-size turbines deployed in south China.