Volts community thread #30: what should I ask the Danes?

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❓ This month's question: what should David ask the Danes?

David’s Notes

1. 📚 Last Monday I sat down with Leah Stokes at Town Hall Seattle to talk about The Carbon Wave, her book about the fight for the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s a fantastic read, even for someone like me who tracked most of the ups and downs. It fills in the details and even more so weaves in personal stories that are genuinely gripping. (I was so worried about her twin babies!) It also, you will not be surprised to hear, renewed my eternal, depthless hatred of Joe Manchin. I highly recommend picking up a copy.

We talked about that stuff on Monday (she’s softer on Manchin than I am) and our conversation will be out as a Volts pod soon. It was great to see local Volts fans at the event! Love y’all.

2. 🔌🚨 While I’m here at Climate Week, I’m trying to spread a simple message: if we’re not careful, the incredible public fury toward data centers threatens to metastasize into a more generalized hostility toward electrification. If people start thinking of batteries, solar, and transmission projects as “projects to power AI,” we are truly screwed. As I’ve said a million times, electrification is the heart of decarbonization, the heart of economic growth, the heart of everything. We desperately need the public to understand and support it.

People need to take this seriously! It’s happening and I don’t see anybody acknowledging or doing anything about it!

Abner’s waiting for me to get home and throw this stick.

3. 🤫 Another thing I’ve discovered through Climate Week conversations: I need to be fitted with a shock collar that zaps me every time I use the phrase “on the pod.” I have completely become That Guy and it’s obnoxious. Quit talking about your pod, pod guy!

4. 🇩🇰 Most of what I’m doing in Denmark is touring various “industrial symbiosis” projects, wherein one company’s waste is another’s raw material. I’m not going to formally cover or write about them — I’ll just be a looky-loo, taking pictures. However, on my first day in Copenhagen I will be sitting down to interview Kristian Jensen, CEO of Green Power Denmark. GPD is a trade group of companies involved in various green supply chains, but Jensen is also an ex-gov’t official who held high office in Denmark for many years, so he knows what’s what. What should I ask him?

Nate’s Notes

Hey y’all, Nate here. I’ve been producing Volts since July: the episodes, the monthly best-of, the support inbox, and now these threads. David and I are splitting the notes from here on. His are above. Mine are below, and mine are mostly about you. If you’re shy about posting, if you’ve made something with a Volts episode, if you have any fun ideas for the community, if you’re hiring, or if something about your subscription is broken, nate@volts.wtf is the door.

David said I’d be cheating you if I didn’t share my dog, so here’s Storm.

Storm or Sterm if she’s being a derp. I will give one pat for every hello out there.

1. ✅ Community comment winner 🍗🍽️ when I was going back through posts from the last year this comment jumped out. Sodium-ion batteries are about to be a real thing, and three of you had a better conversation about what that means than most of what I’ve read on it.

Robert Roth: Wondering what folks think the implications of CATL and BYD production startup of sodium batteries. The energy density a bit lower than LFP but much larger temperature range and about 2.5 times the life. The initial cost is also a bit lower but the projection as volume ramps up is a 90% reduction in cost compared to LFP batteries in 3 years. Seems like big news for EVs and grid batteries.

John Seberg: Volts covered Sodium ion stationary storage with Landon Mossburg, CEO of Peak Energy. I think that Sodium could eventually dominate newer stationary storage and will likely be the death of some other long duration storage ventures. I guess drop-in Sodium replacements for NiMH hybrid traction batteries already exist. So, that’s a little wrinkle I didn’t expect.

Peter A: If we get anywhere close to the promised $10/kWh target for Sodium Ion, electrification’s price propositions get real appealing, real fast. The EcoFlow Delta battery pack, and the Anker B6000 Battery Modules hold 6kWh and costs $2-3k (LFP batteries). If I crudely use a battery chemistry-to-final sale price scaler, that would imply a Sodium-ion versions would cost something like $300-500.

The Peak Energy episode they’re talking about is here. Thanks, all three of you.

2. 📅 Where to find David this week. He’s in New York for Climate Week, four stops:

• Tuesday, 9am: the data centers panel convened by the Southern Environmental Law Center, with Bill McKibben, Abre’ Conner, and LaTricea Adams.

• Tuesday, 3:50pm: interviewing Matt Traldi of Greenlight America at Canary Media’s Rural America and the Clean Energy Transition event.

• Wednesday morning, 8am: the Climate Mayors leadership forum, on stage with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb.

• Wednesday evening, 5pm: moderating a panel with Ashley Kang of Grid United, Katie Lau of AES, and Tammy Kramer of SHINE Technologies about building community trust around new projects.

• Thursday, 12:45pm: a moderated discussion with Maxine Joselow of the New York Times, about “opportunities for progress in a divided politics,” at the Institute for Policy Integrity’s Climate, Energy, and the Political Divide.

If you’re in the city, go say hi.

3. 🏭 Denmark homework. Next week David lands in a country that gets about half its electricity from wind, heats about two-thirds of its homes from district pipes, and invented industrial symbiosis by accident. Kalundborg, an hour and a half west of Copenhagen, has had neighboring plants swapping steam, cooling water, and gypsum since 1972. There are seventeen companies and thirty-some exchanges by now, and nobody planned any of it — each swap saved somebody money and the next one followed.

I’m reading up so I can ask him dumb questions when he’s there. Add yours below.

4. 💸 For paid subscribers: the Best of August episode is out for you now — eight August conversations in one hour. When September’s comes out, August opens to everyone, which means the July edition is open to everyone now. If you know somebody who’s been meaning to check out the show, that’s the one to send them.

Monthly Thread — How It Works

This is the monthly place to share. Reply under the pinned headers in the comments:

• ASK DAVID (keep it light): the questions David likes answering. The top few go into his next bonus episodes, or get a one-line answer here.

• EPISODE IDEAS & GUESTS: who or what should be on the pod. When one becomes an episode, this thread says who asked.

• ASK THE COMMUNITY: the hard technical and how-do-I questions. Readers here answer a lot of these before David can. Keep doing that.

• JOBS & HIRING: hiring, or looking. Three rules, post only if you are actually filling the role and will reply to applicants; one post per organization per thread; this month’s thread is the one people read, so post here, not in last month’s.

• EVENTS & MEETUPS

• SHARE YOUR WORK: newsletters, sites, projects, asks for collaborators.

• EVERYTHING ELSE: including replies to David’s notes and the Denmark question.

Reply directly under a header so people can find you. A few rules of the road: a link on its own gets removed, tell us in a couple sentences why it matters to this crowd, anything inappropriate or spammy may be removed. Be nice. Have fun out there.

Also…

• Prefer not to post publicly? Send your question for David to nate@volts.wtf and we’ll bring it in.

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