Weekly Dose of Optimism #135

Solar, LNG, SphereX, Newsom, Packy in Austin, TBPN

Hi friends 👋,

Happy Friday and welcome back to our 135th Weekly Dose of Optimism. Packy is on his way back from a busy couple of days down in Austin, Texas -- word on the street is he's started lifting shirtless and joined a few Masterminds already. You can take the man out of Austin but it's really hard to take a few days of Austin out of the man, ya know? But the fun for Packy is just getting started -- the old man is hosting my bachelor party in NYC this weekend. Let's see if he can keep up. If you see us around town Friday or Saturday night...you didn't 🤝.

Let's get to it.

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(1) Wind and Solar Overtake Coal Power for First Time in U.S.

Perry Cleveland-Peck for WSJ

Wind and solar energy generated more electricity in the U.S. than coal for the first time last year, according to analysis from clean-energy think tank Ember. The two renewable energy sources accounted for 17% of the country’s power mix while coal fell to a low of 15%, it said.

For the first time ever, wind and solar energy outproduced coal in the U.S., supplying 17% of the country’s electricity compared to coal’s 15%. Solar led the charge, growing 27% year-over-year, and even outpaced natural gas in meeting new demand. The US installed over 50 gigawatts of solar in 2024, with Texas and California leading the way. This solar buildout was largely made possible by the plummeting costs of solar panels over the last decade, with costs down nearly 90%.

Replacing coal with renewables is an undeniable good. Coal is a highly pollutive and emits massive amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter. It’s also dangerous to mine and can pollute the environment around the mines. Coal is no bueno, especially when compared to the other energy sources at our disposal.

More energy is good. The more of it that’s clean and cheap, the better. For the US and the world to progress, the goal isn’t just reducing coal consumption. It’s generating abundant, cheap and relatively clean energy with lots and lots of solar, wind, nuclear, and, at least for the time being, oil and LNG.

(2) How Natural Gas Became America’s Most Important Export

Kevin Crowley and Ruth Liao for Bloomberg

The US, which in the span of about seven years transformed itself from an irrelevant supplier of LNG into the world’s largest, is set to expand its production capacity by 60% in the first half of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to an estimate from BloombergNEF. By the end of the decade, almost 1 in every 3 tankers carrying the superchilled fuel will originate in the US…

LFG, LNG!

A decade ago, back in 2015, the U.S. was a minor player in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. Today, the U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of LNG and has plans to expand that lead over the coming years. This transition to LNG super-producer has shifted the way the country interacts with global energy markets and transformed our entire approach to geopolitics.

This is how it happened:

• Fracking – Tech advances, like horizontal drilling, unlocked massive shale gas reserves.

• Infrastructure – Companies built massive LNG plants to liquefy and ship gas worldwide.

• Global Demand – Europe needed a Russia alternative, Asia needed fuel, and the U.S. was ready to supply.

• Policy – Trump lifted export limits and Biden sent LNG to Europe

And while LNG is still a fossil fuel, it has some key advantages to other fossil fuels and renewables. It’s cleaner than coal & oil and more reliable and scalable than renewables. In a perfect world 10 to 20 years from now, would we want to totally replace LNG with renewables? Of course. But as we build towards a cleaner energy future, the U.S. is extremely advantaged to bridge that gap with LNG.

(3) NASA Launches Missions to Study Sun, Universe’s Beginning

From NASA

NASA’s newest astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx, is on its way to study the origins of our universe and the history of galaxies, and to search for the ingredients of life in our galaxy.

Two missions for the price of one rocket launch.

Earlier this week, NASA NASA launched both the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. SPHEREx will map the entire sky every six months using spectroscopy to study the origins of the universe, galaxy formation, and the building blocks of life. PUNCH, a set of four small satellites, will observe the Sun’s outer atmosphere and solar wind to improve understanding of space weather.

Both missions are live, having established communications and are now entering their respective commissioning phases. SPHEREx’s data will complement existing telescopes like James Webb, while PUNCH will help predict solar storms that impact Earth.

These specific missions aside, it’s really cool to watch momentum pick up in space. Writing a newsletter that covers these types of stories makes that momentum all the more obvious. It seems like every week now there’s a new NASA mission or SpaceX milestone or startup breakthrough.

(4): This is Gavin Newsom

Yes, Gavin Newsom launching a podcast made this week’s list of top optimistic stories. Hear me out.

I’ll be honest: I am not a fan of Gavin Newsom. I don’t particularly like Charlie Kirk. And I’m certainly not a Steve Bannon guy. But what I do like is bipartisan dialogue and engagement, especially in long form podcasts.

Coming out of the 2024 elections, it was clear that the Democrats — as silly as this might sound — had a podcast problem. The medium was dominated by right wing/conservative/Trump-supporting hosts, and those hosts were often visited by Republican politicians that were willing and able to engage in multi-hour, unscripted conversations. Not only does appearing on podcasts with millions of listeners for three hours make you more notable, but for skilled politicians, it provides the opportunity to explain your ideas in a compelling manner and connect with the audience on a deeper level. We saw this with the Trump children on Lex, JD Vance on Rogan, and Trump on Theo Von.

The Democrats did not have the same roster of friendly podcasts hosts — Kamala ended up tapping Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy for her first ~longish podcast of the campaign — and did not have the roster of politicians that were willing and able to engage in more casual, long-form discussion. As an example, ahead of the election, the Dems sent John Fetterman on Rogan, the guy who (to no fault of his own) can barely communicate. And sending Mayor Pete on The Daily does not exactly bring new folks into the tent.

This problem was, and now certainly is, obvious to the Democrats. They’ve been searching for an answer to “Who is the Left’s Joe Rogan?” since before the election. And, for better or worse, the Left’s new Joe Rogan is…Gavin Newsom? Do I think this show will have a major impact on Newsom or Democratic politics? Probably not. But do I think the Left trying to engage in more honest, authentic, long form conversation is a good thing for American politics? Absolutely. The party’s ideas are in desperate need of sunlight — it’s the strongest disinfectant — and they’ve been stuck in the cool shade of 3 minute CNN spots and overly accommodating Crooked Media interviews.

And why is the Democratic party getting their shit together a good thing? Is it because I am a big lib that wants to see Democrats dominate elections and shape culture and control policy? Certainly not. But I do fear that, at this current point in time, Republicans are starting to pull away with it — demographic changes, blue state exoduses, anti-woke sentiments, etc etc. And when any one party starts to run away with it, we start to see very shitty ideas become very shitty policies. So yes, I want a stronger Democratic party right now. And that, believe it or not, starts with Gavin Newsom apologizing on his podcast for his Covid reservation at The French Laundry.

(5): Arc Boat, Aalo, Base Power Company, Pipedream, Too Cheap to Meter, and Fuse

Packy here. This week, I went down to Austin and up to Montreal to spend time with some Vertical Integrators generating, storing, and taking advantage of cheap, clean electricity, and to watch a documentary about how we can achieve the holy grail of producing energy too cheap to meter. I am fired up.

On Tuesday, I kicked off the day with a ride on Arc’s insanely cool Arc Sport. Before I went out, Arc’s CEO Mitch Lee told me that the difference between an electric boat and a gas boat was bigger than the difference between an electric car and a gas car. I didn’t get that until I was on it; then I got it. It whips, and it’s incredibly fun to drive.

Fresh off the boat, I headed to visit Matt Loszak at Aalo Atomics to check out the facility where they’re going to be manufacturing lots and lots of nuclear right here in the US of A, starting with a “50 MWe power plant purpose-built for data centers.” They’ve already begun: this picture is me and Matt next to the pressure vessel that Aalo made in the facility.

After that, I grabbed coffee with Garrett McCurrach, the CEO of our portfolio company Pipedream Labs, which is building a hyperlogistics network underground (click the link, read the thread, it’s wild).

That night, I went to the screening of Jason Carman’s new Frontier Film: Too Cheap to Meter, put on by our friends at the Abundance Institute. As we’ve talked about a thousand times in this newsletter, there’s nothing more important to civilization than energy production. Jason does a characteristically excellent job telling that story through the people and companies building the good future. He’s doing a screening in SF this weekend, and if you’re around, you should 100% go.

On Wednesday, I spent the whole day at Base Power Company’s HQ to hang out with a bunch of the team, see the batteries, and feel the … energy in person. If you’re not familiar with Base Power, you will be soon, and I wrote about them last year to get you up to speed. More to come…

To top it all off, yesterday morning, I flew to Montreal to watch another portfolio company, Fuse (Deep Dive here), successfully test fire its TITAN Impendence-Matched Marx Generator, an important step towards both selling radiation-as-a-service and, eventually, selling fusion power to the grid. Watch it here and here.

A few things struck me after spending time with all of these teams:

1. They’re very real. It’s one thing to read about a pulsed power generator. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to see it up close and personal, to watch it charge up its capacitors, and release oodles of energy on a target. In the facility, it doesn’t feel like a science project but an engineering and manufacturing one. Aalo is making actual reactors. Base Power Company is installing batteries on real peoples’ homes every day. Pipedream is out there laying that pipe. And you can actually ride on and buy an Arc Boat and feel the difference between gas and electric for yourself. All of these companies sound very cool, but I don’t think people fully realize that they’re actually happening. These are businesses.

2. The future is electric. An electric boat just performs better than a gas boat - it’s quiet, fast, turns on a dime, is a breeze to dock, and gets better with every software update. Our things will be delivered to us in minutes under our feet via electric robots in pipes. Tons of entrepreneurs — the ones I met with and the ones Jason featured in the documentary — are working on generating, transmitting, storing, and discharging megawatts, then gigawatts, then terawatts of sweet sweet power. I think it’s still underappreciated how electric the future will be, and what that will mean for the quality of products and experiences humans have access to. It also means a whole new toolkit for people who want to rebuild the world.

3. It’s really fun. Working on really hard, important problems with really smart, motivated people is as good as it gets. The vibes in each of these offices and facilities are excellent. If you’re thinking about what to do with your life, I couldn’t recommend looking at these companies’ jobs pages more strongly.

What a week for the optimists.

BONUS: TBPN

Anytime I have the excuse to pump the Technology Brothers, I will. They’re building the ESPN for startups, starting with daily 3 hour long streams and call-ins. Think of it like (and I mean really visualize it) Howard Stern, Bill Simmons, Jim Kramer and Jason Calacanis banging each other and having the cutest little media baby. That’s TBPN.

ESPN changed sports. Suddenly sports became a 24/7 spectacle. Being a sports fan no longer meant watching every game. It meant watching the pre and post game coverage, consuming hours of analysis, debating that analysis with your friends, and getting to know the stories behind the teams. ESPN raised the profile of sports: more athletes became celebrities, more people cared and cared deeply about sports, and sports became more culturally relevant. Startups deserve their own version of ESPN. With think John and Jordy can deliver that.

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Have a great weekend y’all.

Thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring! We’ll be back in your inbox next week.

Thanks for reading,

Packy + Dan