THUNDER SAID ENERGY

the research consultancy for energy technologies

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Energy technology research

The energy industry is going through its greatest ever period of change, driven by new technologies, impacting the production, transformation and consumption of energy. We help leading decision makers find opportunities in this energy transition, with data-driven research and economic analysis, covering conventional energy, new energies, industrials, metals and materials.

Economic analysis is crucial. We all see hyperbolic headlines, around AI, power grids, wind, solar, batteries, hydrogen and other breakthrough technologies.  But what is their true impact? Are they technically ready? What do they cost? Where are the risks?  What are the resource bottlenecks to ramp them up? Which companies have patented the leading technologies? How do they impact established energy markets in oil, gas, LNG and power; or existing metals, materials and industrial supply chains? And most excitingly, what are the ‘non-obvious’ opportunities that are not yet widely recognized?

These are the questions that we answer in our energy technology research. Each week, we publish a deep-dive report into a specific topic. Each day, we also publish new economic datapoints and models. The goal is to make our readers smarter decision-makers.

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All of our energy technology research is linked on the TSE insights page. Additionally, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Full details on our subscription service are linked on the work with us page. Please scroll down the page for our research philosophy, an overview of our conclusions into the energy transition, and a summary of some of our recent research…

Our Philosophy

What is our energy research philosophy? The world needs better energy. To make this happen, economic opportunities must be better understood by leading decision-makers. 

Our mission is to bridge this gap, with differentiated, data-driven analysis into the energy transition, energy technologies and their impacts. 

Our philosophy is that research should be unbundled and transparent, hence all the data-files underpinning our work can be downloaded via our energy transition research portal.

We help our clients find opportunities in better energy technologies, find opportunities in the energy transition and avoid the mounting risks and bubbles.

We practice what we preach and our organization has been CO2-neutral since its inception, including ongoing contributions to nature-based CO2 removal projects.

Our organization is named in homage to ‘What the Thunder Said‘, which is the final section, and the resolution, of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 masterpiece, the Waste Land.

We humbly hope our energy research philosophy can help the world avoid becoming a Waste Land of energy poverty and/or unmitigated climate change.

For a video overview of our research philsophy, we have also distilled our views around what makes great research?

Energy Technologies and Transition

Our research finds opportunities in energy technologies and energy transition, drawing on technical papers, patents, and economic modelling.

We screen new energy technologies with world-changing potential, including:

The Energy Transition. Our work points to a possible economic decarbonization of the entire energy industry by 2050, with a CO2 price that averages $40/ton. Although our latest outlook is that the world is not entirely on this path.

AI has gazumped decarbonization as the single most important theme, garnering interest, and likely re-shaping every energy, materials and industrial supply chain, as covered in our AI research.

The Ascent of Renewables will nevertheless deliver an enormous 50,000 TWH of energy by 2050, especially solar, but this also requires overcoming bottlenecks, in metals, materials and power grids.

Hydrocarbons retain a role in the future energy system. The Ascent of Gas and LNG will see clean-burning natural gas demand rising 1.5x in the energy mix by 2050, including the emergence of decarbonized gas.

The Industry Must Adapt. All of the changes above require incumbent companies to digitize, deflate, improve their use of technology, and offer products that consumers will actually pay for.

We Rank Companies’ technical capabilities, to quantify who is leading the field, based on a patent framework to help identify risks and identify companies with an edge.

Our “Top Technologies in Energy” are ranked here, tying all of our work together. We also screen which public companies and private companies tied to our thematic insights.

Latest Insights

Our latest ideas in the energy transition are summarized here in order of importance, across wind, solar, battery, gas, CCS and nature. Our full research portal contains a more comprehensive summary of all of our energy transition research.

The page below may also be useful, if you would like to read the outlines of all of our published research notes, and simply explore some of our ideas, around opportunities in the energy transition.