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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In this episode the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-Silver paste usage in the solar industry continues to rise, but the steeper the silver shortage gets, the more alternatives like copper metallization and zero-busbar are incentivized.
-Interest rates have obstructed new investments including in copper mining – but the Federal Reserve intends to take rates down from 5.5% to 3.5% this year.
-Tesla’s Q1 profit is down 55% year on year – but its shares are up and the company is shifting towards more relevant EV products.
In this episode the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-New sanctions have required the Chicago Metal Exchange and the London Metal Exchange refuse any new Russian copper, aluminum, and nickel – but this won’t cause a price shock at all comparable to the first sanctions rounds.
-The prices of polysilicon and solar modules fell yet again, ending four months of price stability and prompting us to ask where the bottom line actually lies.
-Japan has invested in hydrogen fuel cell propulsion research which could lead to its domestic aviation being decarbonized ahead of many other places in the world – starting with its 66-strong turboprop fleet.
In this episode the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-The conclusions from the Hydrogen Europe conference in Amsterdam, including why gaseous hydrogen will take longer than liquid to get online in the market.
-The Department of Energy’s $1.5 billion funding for a nuclear plant recommissioning in Michigan – which will give the facility a total 80 year lifespan.
-Janet Yellen’s China trade visit, which seems unlikely to move the needle at all on Chinese exports – but does demonstrate a continued protectionist strategy from the US government.
In this episode the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-Huamin Technology’s 40 micron thickness photovoltaic wafer, prompted by ferce cost competition in the solar industry – compare to 140 micron thickness in the industry as a whole.
-Chinese EVs are forecasted to grow to 25% market share in the EU this year, with no good options for European authorities trying to decide on a trade and reshoring strategy.
Tandem PV’s CEO Scott Wharton joins us to discuss his efforts to bring a perovskite tandem solar module product to market in the near future in the US, with utility-scale developers likely to be the first customers. We cover degradation and other technical hurdles, plus how perovskites fare in the current solar market situation – with steep silicon PV cost declines, trade barriers with China, and reshoring efforts including IRA incentives.
In this episode the Rethink Energy team discusses:
-an astonishingly low $299 per kW pricetag for a 500 MW wind farm in Inner Mongolia – and while that’s the record, there are others for just $320 per kW, which means LCOE has halved in a couple of years.
-The first E-diesel production facility in Texas, launched by Infinium, using a green hydrogen supply combined with C02 from Howard Energy Partners’ neighboring gas processing plant.
Energy Vault’s Marco Terruzzin joins us to talk about his company’s wide array of energy storage solutions including: gravity energy storage, lithium-ion battery systems, and hydrogen storage – all backed up by the VaultOS energy management system.
In this week’s episode the team discusses:
-First Solar CEO Mark Widmar’s warning that Chinese manufacturers are significant beneficiaries of the Inflation Reduction Act’s 45x incentives, effectively making the US itself another location hosting downstream Chinese solar manufacturing.
-A startup has demonstrated 10-year lifespan for its SOEC electrolyzers, which are more efficient and cost-effective than ALK and PEM in theory, but have more technical hurdles to address.
In this week’s episode the team discusses:
-The new polysilicon factory ($1.3 billion, 100,000 tons, 40 GW) which is under construction in Oman, and who is likely behind it.
-Airbus’s head of ZEROe hydrogen demonstrators, Mathias Andriamisaina, has stated that the company will need to make a choice between hydrogen combustion and fuel cells by some time in 2026 to 2027.
In this week’s episode the team discusses:
-The scale of solar manufacturing in 2023, with Chinese outputs up by 67% to 622 GW at the wafer level, while its wafer exports – almost the sole supply source for all solar cell manufacturing in the rest of the world – up by over 90%.
-Multiple delayed green hydrogen investments and negative coverage may open a space for blue hydrogen, while still only representing a temporary problem for the scale-up of electrolysis-based hydrogen technologies.