Unf*cking the Planet | Clea Kolster (Lowercarbon Capital)
A fascinating conversation with a climate scientist and many reasons to feel optimistic about our planet's future
In this Steelhead Investor Series post, I write about a conversation with Clea Kolster, Partner and Head of Science at Lowercarbon Capital. Lowercarbon is the leading global climate venture fund today, with over $2B in AUM and one of the largest portfolios in climate tech. Lowercarbon typically partners with founders at the very earliest stages of development (pre-seed, seed, series A) and when things are going really well, they can continue to back them through many subsequent rounds of funding with check sizes that can go from six figures to nine figures.
In our discussion, we covered Clea’s path to Lowercarbon, a bit about Lowercarbon and its famous mission statement, why she’s more optimistic than ever about climate tech, and two critical technologies to unf*ck our planet: carbon removal and nuclear fusion.
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Clea’s Journey to Lowercarbon
Clea epitomizes the term “international citizen.” By the time she finished high school, she had lived in the US, France, the UK, North Africa, and Denmark. This global upbringing was due to her parents’ careers as economists for development banks around the world.
Like many in venture capital, Clea didn’t initially plan to become a VC. She did, however, always have a keen interest in the environment. Clea told me how, when she was young, she was struck by how little attention adults paid to the importance of a healthy planet. “Development at all costs” seemed to be the prevailing motto. At an early age Clea sensed that climate change would be massively disruptive to all, but especially developing economies.
Keen to pursue this interest further, Clea studied Chemical Engineering in undergrad where she laid the foundation for what was to come. While her friends were heading off to consulting and investment banking after graduation, she enrolled in a PhD program at Imperial College London (ICL) to study Carbon Capture and Storage and Energy Systems Modeling. (And I thought my degree in Management Science and Engineering was a mouthful!)
Clea told me that it wasn’t immediately obvious that she had chosen the right path; yet in 2015 during her PhD at ICL, everything changed. The institute where Clea was doing her PhD took her to COP21 in Paris. She told me, “It was a game changer…we had countries coming together from around the world recognizing that climate change was a huge deal.”
At COP21 Clea saw that the policy makers were ready to put the environment first, but she knew that in order to make rapid progress towards the goals set out at COP21, policy wouldn’t be enough; we needed new technologies to have real and timely impact on our climate.
After a time doing research at Stanford and environmental consulting post PhD, Clea then joined Lowercarbon to help the world’s best technologists receive the support they need to create a healthy planet for centuries to come. Today, she leads scientific strategy at Lowercarbon across their investment areas, especially focused on energy, heavy industry, and carbon removal, and has led investments in dozens of companies across North America, Europe, and the UK.
Lowercarbon Seeks the Bold
If you’re not familiar, Lowercarbon and its founder Chris Sacca are famous for their mission to “Unf*ck the planet.” There’s a great podcast where Chris Sacca discusses this mission, which you can find here. You can also find it front and center on their website here (and below).
Clea mentioned that this bold statement is evidence of the culture at Lowercarbon - they back bold and ambitious founders with an abundance mindset. While some seek to have an impact by not eating meat or taking the plane, the reality, according to Clea, is that only 100M people of the 8B on the planet can afford to or be convinced to change their behaviors for the benefit of the planet.
The other 7.9B, Clea says, “need to become hippies without knowing it”. We’ll accomplish this, according to the folks at Lowercarbon, by producing cheaper and better products that also happen to be good for our planet.
The bold entrepreneurs they back will help us to get there.
💡 “Only 100 million people out of the 8 billion on the planet can be convinced to change their behaviors for the benefit of the planet. The other 7.9 billion need to be convinced to become hippies without knowing it.”
I asked Clea what it is like working at a venture fund with such a striking mission. She explained that Lowercarbon is a non-traditional venture firm — Chris Sacca was a lawyer before building one of history’s most successful venture firms returning 250X to their investors, Crystal Sacca is an award winning creative in advertisement, Clay Dumas worked at the Whitehouse before venture, and Clea and many others on the team come from non-traditional venture backgrounds.
I’ll go out on a limb and say this is likely a key ingredient to Lowercarbon’s (and before, Lowercase Capital’s) success.
This Isn’t the 2010s of Climate Investing
Recalling that the Solyndra disaster wasn’t that long ago, I asked Clea how today is different from 10 years ago in climate tech? The corollary is why is now a good time to invest in this space?
Her response:
First, renewable energy is much cheaper today, often cheaper than fossil fuels. This means that costs have come way down for processes that are electrically driven.
Second, advances in synthetic biology and DNA sequencing allow for rapid understanding, building, and iteration of molecules and systems in the biological realm.
And third, computing power and AI have both improved significantly, allowing for fast and relatively inexpensive modeling of hardware in bits before they become atoms.
All of these taken together means that creating technology in the physical world is much cheaper and faster than it was even just 10 years ago.
For example, in Lowercarbon’s portfolio:
• Arc Boats built their first electric boat for under $20M.
• Carbon capture prototypes now cost just a few million dollars.
• Dioxycle is building modular systems for a low tens of millions of dollars that previously would have required an order of magnitude more capital.
This is a great representation of how technology compounds on itself; new technology enables new technology, leading to large improvements over time. It’s a good thing that this happens, because we’re going to need it to unf*ck our planet.
How We Unf*ck The Planet
Before Clea and I met for our conversation, we agreed ahead of time to focus our conversation on two important topics - nuclear fusion and carbon removal
To start our deep dive into these topics, I asked Clea, “We’re here to talk about two important topics - nuclear fusion and carbon removal. If we take a step back though, run me through the totality of what we need to do to unf*ck the planet. Surely it requires more than just CO2 removal and fusion?”
Clea explained that the solution rests on three key pillars:
Reduce emissions to zero as soon as possible:
Energy production accounts for 73% of global emissions. The main constituents of energy production are industry, buildings, and transport.
Remove carbon from the atmosphere:
Actively reduce CO2 levels in addition to preventing new emissions.
Adapt to the climate changes already underway:
The climate has already changed, nearing 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. We must manage and mitigate these impacts.
So, while nuclear fusion and carbon removal are key components of (1) and (2) above, respectively, there is much to be done to secure a healthy planet for us and the generations to come.
Nuclear Fusion
Clea started off this discussion with a brief history of nuclear fusion. About 100 years ago, she said, scientists thought, “The sun is a seemingly infinite source of energy, it would be cool if we could capture it’s power on Earth.” The sun is, after all, a set of never-ending fusion reactions. This idea led to the pursuit of nuclear fusion, which promises to provide nearly unlimited clean and affordable energy to us here on Earth.
While it’s been a long journey, we’ve made significant progress in this field, especially over the last ~5 years.
How Fusion Works
Fusion involves fusing isotopes of hydrogen, like deuterium and tritium. When these isotopes fuse, they release energy. A lot of it.
This is of course different from how nuclear reactors work today, via nuclear fission (splitting atoms).
Clea explained this clearly:
Fission splits atoms, going from heavy atoms to lighter ones. Fusion takes two light atoms and fuses them to create one heavier atom. In both cases, energy is released as the mass of the atoms at output is less than the atoms at input.
Why Fusion is Exciting
There are a few reasons why Fusion is so exciting.
First, unlike wind and solar, it’s non-intermittent. Meaning, Fusion can produce power 24/7, no matter the time of day, solar index, amount of wind, etc.
Second, it’s much denser than other energy sources. Fusion is 1 million times more energy dense than solar, 1,000x more energy dense than coal, and 100x more energy dense than fissile material. This means that the same amount of energy can be produced with a much smaller footprint compared to other forms of energy production.
Third, the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for fusion is expected to be competitive with solar energy, potentially under $50 to $100 per MWh. This is huge if true, as solar (along with onshore wind) has the lowest LCOE of any energy source.
Recent (Very Recent) Advances
Recent advancements in high-temperature superconducting magnets and computing power have accelerated progress in fusion technology. The progress in fusion, measured by the “triple product,” has grown as fast or faster than Moore’s Law. According to Clea, this is largely due to cheaper computing power, allowing for high-fidelity simulations of reactor designs.
National labs have also made important demonstrations. In 2022, a national lab showed more energy output than input in a fusion reaction, doubling their results within six months. Private companies, being more nimble and requiring less money than public initiatives, are making even faster progress.
With this exciting rate of progress, expectations are high. Clea mentioned that many people in this field expect that the first electrons will be produced by nuclear fusion reactors on earth within ~10 years.
State of Investing in Fusion
Investment in private fusion companies has surged. Money to private fusion companies in the last four years has tripled. And this figure is 3x more than the prior 10-15 year period. However, this is still a relatively small amount. The total amount invested in fusion today is just over $6B.
There are now around 60 private fusion companies worldwide.
Some from Lowercarbon’s portfolio are:
Commonwealth Fusion Systems - Plasma taming fusion magnets
Zap Energy - Fusion without magnets
Avalance - Handheld fusion reactors (Foundation, anyone?)
Renaissance - Stellarator reactors
Given that the market size for limitless clean energy is - for all intents and purposes - also limitless, there does seem to be relatively little investment in this space in relatively few companies.
Carbon Removal
Carbon removal involves ensuring that the overall concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere decreases. Clea made it clear that it’s not just about preventing emissions, but actively reducing CO2 levels. Preventing emissions is the realm of carbon capture (for example on a smoke stack), while reducing overall levels of CO2 that has already gone into the atmosphere is the realm of carbon removal.
According to Clea, while removing carbon from the atmosphere sounds trivial, we have not been doing it in any meaningful way until recently.
As you can see in the graph below (from Stripe Climate), (1) we’ve made very little progress to date on carbon removal, and (2) we need to both reduce emissions and remove carbon to decrease the global temperature increase to ~1.5°C.
How Does Carbon Removal Work?
Carbon removal works via one of the following methods:
Photosynthesis (plants convert sun, water, and CO2 into sugar and oxygen)
Direct air capture (involves large fans sucking CO2 out of the air, like Carbon Engineering’s fans)
Dissolving CO2 in the ocean (like Ulysses)
How Do We Know if it Works?
Maybe you, like I was, are curious - how do we know how much CO2 is in the atmosphere at any time? How do we know if we’re reducing CO2 levels through different initiatives? Clea’s answer: satellites.
According to NASA’s site, satellites are able to measure CO2 levels with lasers. Previous generations used reflected sunlight.
The systems use lasers to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the air between the instrument and Earth’s surface. Existing satellites use reflected sunlight to gauge carbon dioxide, so they only work in daylight conditions. Source
What About Offsets?
We’ve all probably heard of carbon offsets. Individuals and businesses can purchase offsets to feel better about their plane travel and overall emissions. Traditionally when an offset is purchased, there is a promise on the other end of the transaction to plant trees to consume the amount of CO2 offset.
Clea made it clear, however, that this model is broken. “There is no way to guarantee that those trees will be planted or that they will remain (will not be burned or cut down)”, said Clea.
Enter Isometric, a Lowercarbon portfolio company.
Based in London, Isometric is the first to verify and validate that CO2 has been removed from the atmosphere. They validate the delivery of carbon removal that’s purchased, which is verified through a combined suite of sensors, audits, and physical inspections, all at the forefront of the latest science. Again, this process is different from carbon offsets, where there was no guarantee that trees planted would remain or not burn down.
Market Size and Growth
Just four years ago, the carbon removal market was worth a few million dollars. Essentially, the market didn’t even exist. Fast forward to today, and it’s worth a few billion dollars, expected to grow to a $10B market by 2030.
Why has it seen such rapid growth? Of course there is massive pressure to remove atmospheric carbon now. But a critical element is that carbon removal companies are also delivering on their targets. Collectively they will remove on the order of 100,000 tons this year, which is 100x what was removed last year.
💡 The market for carbon removal didn’t exist four years ago, and now we have multi-billion-dollar commitments. And carbon removal companies are delivering on their targets, removing around 100,000 tons this year—100 times more than last year.
Clea is bullish on the continued strong growth of this nascent industry, stating that she expects it to become a trillion dollar industry in a relatively near future.
Wrapping Up
As I do with each of my guests, I asked Clea what her Steelhead goal in life is. That is, something that is incredibly hard but will be well worth the effort. Her response was that she hopes to one day raise a child or two.
My only addition to her response is that I hope her children will be born into a world full of abundant & clean energy, healthy air, and hand-held nuclear fusion reactors. No doubt this is a more likely reality given Clea’s and Lowercarbon’s hard, focused work to unf*ck our planet.
Thank you, Clea!