the research consultancy for energy technologies
Our written research into the energy transition profiles different opportunities, “how they work”, their costs, technical challenges, and leading companies; in PDF research reports that are available to TSE subscription clients.
Our philosophy is that research into the energy transition should help decision-makers by breaking down this enormous topic into concise research notes, each of which tackles a single specific question. Then tackles that question as concisely as possible. In no more than 10-20 pages. (Our job is not to write ‘War and Peace’. It is to save you time and get you the right information quickly, simply).
All of the underlying data behind our research into the energy transition is published transparently on our website. If there are any specific questions that you would like to be addressed with a TSE research note, then please do email us, and we are happy to add your questions onto our research list.
All of our written research into the energy transition is summarized on this page, in chronological order, for clients with our ‘written insights subscription’.
Solar trackers are worth $10bn pa. They typically raise solar revenues by 30%, earn 13% IRRs on their capex costs, and lower LCOEs by 0.4 c/kWh. But these numbers are all likely to double, as solar gains share, grids grow more volatile, and AI unlocks further optimizations? This 14-page report explores the theme and who benefits?
Energy transition is a triple challenge: to meet energy needs, abate CO2 and increase competitiveness. History has now shown that ignoring the part about competitiveness gets you voted out of office?! We think raising competitiveness will be the main focus of the new administration in the US. So this 15-page report discusses overlooked angles around energy competitiveness, and updates our outlook for different themes.
Howmet is an engineered metals company, and the world’s #1 supplier of airfoils (blades and vanes) for jet engines and gas turbines. The company has claimed an edge in direct-casting cooling channels (rather than drilling them) and bond coats that improve the adherence of Thermal Barrier Coatings. Our Howmet gas turbine technology review found support for these claims, via reviewing a dozen patents.
Howmet Aerospace is a US engineered metals company, which goes back to 1888, has 23,200 employees, and is listed on NYSE.
Howmet’s business is c50% engine products (in turn, 70% of which comprise blades and vanes for both jet engines and gas turbines, where it is the world’s #1 supplier), 20% fastening systems, 15% engineered structures and 15% forged wheels.
Our recent work has argued that the global gas turbine market will double from 50 GW pa in the past five years to 100 GW pa in the 2024-30 timeframe, and in turn, our cost breakdown of a gas turbine ascribes about 20% of total installed costs to engineered metal components such as blades, vanes, rings, seals, bearings, nozzles, guides and fasteners.
The laws of thermodynamics dictate that hotter inlet temperatures will lead to more efficient and more powerful turbines, both in jet engines and in gas turbines. But very hot metals tend to deform and melt, even when made from super-alloys.
Howmet has claimed an edge in manufacturing engine and turbine components, hinging on the ability to cast (rather than drill) cooling channels, improve the adherence of Thermal Barrier Coatings to metals using bondcoats, and via automating high-labor operations.
Our Howmet gas turbine technology assessment found strong support for these claims, with key patents locking up cast cooling features, platinum-aluminium-hafnium bond coating ‘recipes’. Full details are in the data-file, including our best guesses on the patent expiry timings.
It was also interesting to note that Howmet’s products are essential to the F-35 fighter jet, lighter aircraft with >50% carbon fiber use 2-3x higher-value fasteners, Howmet’s largest Forging Press is 50,000 tons and 10 stories tall, while Howmet is also the largest producer of forged aluminium wheels that are 45% lighter than steel, improving fuel efficiency by 5% and/or 3% greater payload capacity on 18-wheeler trucks.
Advanced metal businesses might be considered an example of companies meeting the triple challenge of energy transition.
Groq has developed LPUs for AI inference, which are up to 10x faster and 80-90% more energy efficient than today’s GPUs. This 8-page Groq technology review assesses its patent moat, LPU costs, implications for our AI energy models, and whether Groq could ever dethrone NVIDIA’s GPUs?
Groq is a private company, founded in 2018, with 250 employees, based in Mountain View, California, founded by ex-Google engineers. The company raised a $200M Series C in 2021 and a $640M Series D in August-2024, which valued it at $2.8bn.
The Groq LPU is already in use, by “leading chat agents, robotics, FinTech, and national labs for research and enterprise applications”. You can try out Meta’s Llama3-8b running on Groq LPUs here.
Groq is developing AI inference engines, called Language Processing Units (LPUs), which are importantly different from the GPUs. The key differences are outlined in this report, on pages 2-3.
Across our research, we have generally used a five-point framework, in order to determine which technologies we can start de-risking in our energy transition models. For Groq, we found 46 patent families, and reviewed ten (chart below). Our findings are on pages 4-5.
Our latest published models for the energy consumption of AI assumed an additional 1,000 TWH of electricity use by 2030, within a possible range of 300 – 3,000 TWH based on taking the energy consumption of computing back to first principles. Groq’s impact on these numbers is discussed on pages 6-7.
NVIDIA is currently the world leader in GPUs underlying the AI revolution, which in turn underpins its enormous $3.6 trn of market cap at the time of writing. Hence could Groq displace or even dethrone NVIDIA, by analogy to other technologies we have seen (e.g., the shift from NMC to LFP in batteries). Our observations are on page 8.
For our outlook on AI in the energy transition, please see the video below, which summarizes some of the findings across our research in 2024.
Gas turbines should be considered a key workhorse for a cleaner and more efficient global energy system. Installations will double to 100GW pa in 2024-30, and reach 140GW in 2030, surpassing their prior peak from 2003. This 16-page report outlines four key drivers in our outlook for gas turbines, and their implications.
Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are a game-changer for industrial separation, which consumes c10% of global energy. Activity is surging. This 18-page report reviews MOFs’ recent progress and future promise. As a case study, CALF-20 can deflate CCS costs by c50%, per Svante’s TSA process.
Bi-Directional Bipolar Junction Transistors are an emerging category of semiconductor-based switching device, that can achieve lower on-state voltage drops than MOSFETs and softer, faster switching than IGBTs, to improve efficiency and lower component count in bi-directional power converters. This data-file screens B-TRAN patents from Ideal Power.
LFP batteries are 20% lower-cost than NMC, and as low as $50-60/kWh in China in 2024, per our recent research note into the rise of LFP. But they are also 15% less energy-dense, which reduces the range of electric vehicles. So could range be restored by improving electronics?
Ideal Power is a small-cap US company, commercializing bi-directional junction transistors (B-TRANs), with ultra-low voltage drops in their on-state (better than a MOSFET) and soft-switching even amidst rapid switching (better than IGBTs). The company states that this could improve electric vehicle efficiency by 7-10%.
Ideal Power’s patent library was high-quality, based on using the usual criteria in our patent-based technology assessments, with over 60 Patent Families in EspaceNet, mostly optimizing the performance of BTRANs, securing a moat around the technology.
Several patents specifically addressed the optimization of these devices, challenges that have been encountered and overcome, and the manufacturing of double-sided semiconductors, in an industry that has historically only fabricated components on the front side of chips.
How does a bi-directional bipolar junction transistor work? We have pieced together the diagram below from Ideal Power’s disclosures.
Key challenges that stood out to us, with Ideal Power’s bi-directional bipolar junction transistors, are noted in the data-file.
For helpful background into how semiconductors work, which may be useful context alongside this review, please see our overview of semiconductor physics.
The commodity intensity of global GDP has fallen at -1.2% over the past half-century, as incremental GDP is more services-oriented. So is this effect adequately reflected in our commodity outlooks? This 4-page report plots past, present and forecasted GDP intensity factors, for 30 commodities, from 1973->2050. The -1.5% pa decline in the oil intensity of global GDP is anomalous and could even slow from here. While surprisingly many other commodities show demand increasing in line with, or above GDP growth.
This 9-page study finds unexpectedly strong support for co-deploying grid-scale batteries together with solar. The resultant output is stable, has synthetic inertia, is easier to interconnect in bottlenecked grids, and can be economically justified. What upside for grid-scale batteries?
Modeling US gas supply and demand can be nightmarishly complex. Yet we have evaluated both, through 2035. This 13-page report outlines the largest drivers of demand, requires a +3% pa CAGR from the key US shale gas basins, and argues the balance of probabilities lies to the upside.