Holiday Newsletter 2020
2020
SEP’s portfolio companies performed well this year in light of the restrictions and hardships resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The innovative and hard-working entrepreneurs that lead these companies pivoted where possible to increase revenue while being mindful of costs and market position. At our Boulder office, we doubled our space and added team members, built a cleantech research platform, expanded activities with leading research institutions, and developed deeper expertise in key areas of the cleantech ecosystem. We are thankful to all those individuals and organizations with which we work and are happy to say that the team has been healthy all year. We are looking forward to a prosperous 2021 and wish you the same.
Perspective
It has been nearly 2,500 years since Democritus co-authored the ancient atomist system that proposed a natural world made of indivisible units, not determined by some purpose or belief. Of course, modern scientists discovered that there are indivisible building blocks for all molecules and other structures. With a nod to the past, they assigned to them the ancient term “atom.”
It turns out that the structures built from atoms are fundamental to energy, materials, devices, and other technologies, each with unique characteristics that define whether it fits as a solution to a problem or not – regardless of politics or some other assigned purpose.
As a case in point, crude oil and other fossil fuels have allowed humans to make huge advancements in our quality of life. However, the continued combustion of fossil fuels is increasing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere to levels expected to cause long-term devastation. These energy sources no longer fit as a solution to power needs.
Innovation and adoption of technologies that can best mitigate the worst possible outcomes from climate change will likely define the 21st Century, not COVID-19 or other short-term disasters. There is a long list of such technologies, including those proposed by Project Drawdown, envisioned in the concept of a circular economy, and measured by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
We need to evolve our energy choices and industry practices toward a path based on facts about the characteristics of each climate change solution. Just like crude oil eventually displaced whale oil — the 3rd largest US industry in the mid-1800s — renewable versions of natural gas, hydrogen, and power generation could combine to displace fossil fuels with similar benefits for the next phase of life on Earth.
But we need to go further than just developing new solutions. We need to create whole system solutions. For example, we can’t ignore the fossil fuels often used to build silicon-based solar modules, the basket of traditional energy sources that power most of the grid today, minerals extraction needed for batteries, rare-earth elements for permanent magnets, etc. – and claim that electric vehicles alone are the clean transportation solution.
Together our task is to break down each cleantech solution into its supply chains, sub-components, and materials, then choose the best new ideas to displace incumbent technologies. At SEP, we are banking on customers placing the highest value on the most disruptive technology at each step in each supply chain that leads to the most potent climate change mitigation solutions. We call this disruptive sustainability.
Future
At SEP, everything we do relates to cleantech. We build companies in partnership with leading corporations, top research institutions, and great entrepreneurs. And, we have broken down the cleantech ecosystem into nine sectors, many sub-sectors, technologies, supply chains, climate metrics, and key regional innovation hubs. Our mapping of the relevant information has created our transactional research platform that connects all of these dots. We share it with our corporate partners, key stakeholders and use it in our investing activities.
The team at SEP is focused on the most valuable and critical new power sources, energy storage, advanced materials, and large climate change footprint end-products like new mobility and clean food. We are looking for high-impact ideas that enable traditional energy and other systems to reduce their footprint as they are phased out. However, our main focus is on new technologies that can create a sustainable future and a successful investment portfolio.
We define sustainability as the way of doing things that can go on forever – for all life on this Pale Blue Dot. We would like to work with you in 2021 and beyond to help make this a reality.
Seasons Greetings,