breakthrough energy ventures, part 1

=companies =startups =energy =analysis

 

 

 

When it comes to venture capital investment in "hard tech", Breakthrough Energy Ventures is sometimes considered a gold standard. They have Big Names involved! They have relatively extensive technical due diligence, including analysis by professors and even Lowell Wood, who we know is smart because he has thousands of patents. Sure, none of them turned out to be particularly useful, but surely a guy who constantly thinks new ideas are good when they aren't would be a good judge of startups, right?

 

Well, let's take a quick look at some companies in their portfolio. I'll go in alphabetical order.

 

 

44.01

Accelerated weathering for CO2 capture. Considering how much it costs to dig rock up, grind it, and truck it around a bit, that's >$100/ton CO2 mitigated, and anything >$100/ton isn't worth considering.

 

 

75F

Smart sensors for commercial buildings. I'm not really sure what their advantage is supposed to be over existing thermostat systems, but sure, wireless sensors make sense in some cases, even if "smart buildings" have been oversold.

 

 

Aeroseal

During construction, spraying a polymer solution mist with pressure inside a house, to seal small holes and reduce air leakage to improve insulation. This plus a heat-recovery ventilator makes sense to me.

Developed by Mark Modera in 1993 at Berkeley National Laboratory, this has been around for a while. Carrier licensed it for ducts and it's been used for that sometimes for 20 years. Aerobarrier is charging $1 to $3 / ft^2 for houses but it should be a bit cheaper than that: it's kind of an obvious idea and I think there are ways around their current patents. I'm not sure what Breakthrough Energy Ventures contributed, exactly.

 

 

arnergy

They bundle solar panels with Li-ion batteries. But why? People should buy those separately.

 

 

baseload capital

This is a company that buys and builds conventional geothermal power plants. Locations for those are very limited. I don't see anything really new, so I'm not sure why a VC firm is funding that instead of a bank.

 

 

Biomilq

They're trying to use cell cultures to replace human breast milk. See this article on doing that for meat; similar issues apply. I'd be more optimistic about genetically engineering cows to get different milk properties, despite that being difficult.

 

 

Bloom Biorenewables

This has some kind of solvent pulping process. That's not a new idea; it just hasn't been competitive with kraft pulping, and I don't see that changing soon.

Their innovation seems to be adding formaldehyde to depolymerize lignin better, but there's not a lot of demand for the resulting products.

 

 

Boston Metal

This company is trying to make iron by electrolysis instead of blast furnaces.

Making iron with natural gas instead of coal makes sense and is used now. If a lot of electricity is made by burning natural gas at 60% efficiency, does it make sense to use electricity to produce iron instead of natural gas? No.

In addition to the electricity being too expensive, electrolysis is inherently more expensive than just mixing things together. For example, aluminum is a lot more expensive than steel. Also, iron is relatively hard to do electrolysis with, because iron atoms have multiple charge states, so they can carry electrons back and forth without being reduced to metal. Sure, that problem can be solved, but not without extra costs.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures seems to be investing in a bunch of things on the presumption that photovoltaic solar power will be unreliable but almost free, but I don't see such big further cost decreases at this point. In fact, solar prices are up this year. Also, it doesn't make sense to only run an electrolysis plant for 6 hours a day: they're expensive. Anyway, arguably coal usage should have already completely stopped, but trying to eliminate natural gas usage now is premature.

 

 

brimstone energy

Their website doesn't say what they're doing, so I can't comment...anyway, their idea is reacting Ca silicate with sulfuric acid to get Ca sulfate, then heating Ca sulfate for CaO + SO2 + O2. That's definitely much too expensive. The temperatures required are even higher than the sulfur-iodine cycle, which is also completely impractical. And of course, SO2 is corrosive. And this requires a large transfer of heat to solid material at high temperature, which is always a bit awkward industrially. These people are just...not very serious compared to the engineers doing proper exergoeconomic analysis for petrochemical processes.

They're also trying to do electrolysis of SO2 to make sulfuric acid and hydrogen, which could be viable as part of sulfuric acid production, but currently isn't. They should probably focus on just that part (try to do one new thing at a time, people) but while it might eventually be cheaper than regular water electrolysis, I don't see it being cheaper than hydrogen from natural gas.

 

 

C16 Biosciences

Growing palm oil isn't inherently worse than any other crop, but the founders fell for the "palm oil bad" memes in US media, so they want to make palm oil by sugar fermentation instead. The amount of sugar required means this can't be cheaper than palm oil even if the fermentation itself is free. Also, metabolic engineering of bacteria has failed to get high concentrations of fatty acids or esters; microorganisms really don't like doing that, and I very much doubt this startup has done better than what's in the academic literature.

 

 

CarbonCure

They put concrete in a pressure vessel containing CO2 as it cures. Putting concrete in a pressure vessel during curing makes it a lot more expensive - too expensive for construction.

 

 

ClearFlame

They're working on adapting diesel engines to use ethanol or methanol. Those fuels have low cetane numbers, and dissolve a lot of rubbers, so they don't work in existing diesel engines.

Dimethyl ether and diethyl ether work much better as diesel fuel. They have high cetane numbers and work with existing engines. They give less pollution than petrodiesel. They have higher energy density than the alcohols. Converting methanol to dimethyl ether is very easy. Using those is a much better idea than new diesel engines that use ethanol, which has a high octane rating and makes more sense for spark ignition engines.