The elephant in the room for energy tech? Uncertainty.

This year, though, there was an elephant in the room, and it’s the current state of the US federal government. Or maybe it’s climate change? In any case, the vibes were weird. The last time I was at this conference, two years ago, climate change was a constant refrain on stage and in conversations. The central question was undoubtedly: How do we decarbonize, generate energy, and run our lives without relying on polluting fossil fuels? This time around, I didn’t hear the phrase “climate change” once during the opening session, including in speeches from US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and acting ARPA-E Director Daniel Cunningham. The focus was on American energy dominance, on how we can get our hands on more, more, more energy to meet growing demand. Last week, Wright spoke at an energy conference in Houston and had a lot to say about climate, calling climate change a “side effect of building the modern world” and climate policies irrational and quasi-religious, and he said that ... Read full article.