Last week, I spent most of the week in Europe meeting with people from different parts of the ecosystem.
The excitement for the energy transition remains strong in Europe. As one person said, “Americans have healthcare. We have energy.” Her point was that American healthcare is broken, so we spend billions attempting to fix it while the EU has Russia next door as wants to break it’s reliance on it.
I left Europe with a sense that while progress continues to be made, and they are ahead of the US in a lot of ways, many of the similar problems remain.
Labor continues to be in short supply. As a result, many a focused on enabling or empowering the frontline worker to do more.
The slow down in EV sales caught attention. While many expect the growth to continue, it’s clear we’re crossing a chasm and the next group of customers will be harder to capture.
Battery deployment and grid forecasting are entering a new phase of growth. New tools and business models have emerged to solve the problems have a more dynamic grid.
The carbon markets are still early. Everyone agrees that some form of carbon market should exist, but the framework of a durable market will take time to build.
Overall, like the US, the excitement for the space remains robust, even if muted due to concerns with interest rates, geopolitics, and the coming elections. European founders and investors will create many of the winners in this generation, and seeing that first hand was a great reminder of how global the energy transition will be.
P.S. – The time in Europe also gave me time to think about the structure of what I post here regularly. I learned of one writer that posts everyday, and then sends a recap at the end of the week attached to a longer post.
That’s the process I’ll be following moving forward, so this is the last daily post for now. I’ll continue to write daily and share on social media. But, to spare inboxes, I’ll send one recap per week where followers can opt-in to which posts sounded interesting.
As always, thanks for following along here as I figure things out a little at a time!
Kevin Stevens 