Amidst a recovering stock market, solar tracking company Nextracker went public at a $3.5 billion valuation last week. This marks the largest IPO of the year and shines a sunny light on public market appetite for climate technology.

The world has about 8 billion people. We have built a fantastic world. We can see a black hole in the center of our Milky Way, and the Apple Watch will call 911 when we wipe out on the ski slope. We have built this stupendous world by burning coal, oil, and gas. It is a very reasonable question to ask how we can power our future now that we must immediately and drastically cut carbon emissions to protect the delicate thermal balance of the atmosphere. Solar surely will not be able to entirely power the modern world, right?

Sustainability think tank RMI publishes an ongoing series that explores how demand for fossil fuels is peaking, or has already peaked in many countries and sectors, and will soon enter a phase of accelerating decline. One article in the series provides a fascinating and entertaining history of past energy transitions. Its central argument is this: Once an energy source reaches its peak, its decline into irrelevance is inevitable and only a matter of time.

The New York Times recently published an article with a title that may have made the cover of an exuberant 1960s issue of Popular Mechanics, “Could Air Someday Power Your Flight? Airlines Are Betting on It.” It was accompanied by the utopian graphic shown below of a plane emitting flowers

After the recent winter storms in California, a potential customer, named Andy, reached out to us. He already has a 6kW solar array and a backup solution consisting of two Tesla Powerwalls. Andy’s total cost for the combined system, which he purchased in 2021, was $64K, including installation and before-tax credits.