Our chosen companies tend to reflect several aspects of the current moment. Here are some of the companies we picked and the key themes worth highlighting.
China is the center of the climate and energy tech world
Forgive me—I know I’ve made this point before. Feel free to call me Captain Obvious. But I think China’s dominance in energy technology is a global trend that bears repeated mentioning.
China is home to the world’s largest grid, and renewables are coming online more quickly than I can wrap my head around. Contributing to that boom is Envision Energy, a renewables giant appearing on our list for the second time. The company has installed over 100 gigawatts of wind power worldwide, as well as over 50 gigawatt-hours of battery storage.
Like many other Chinese companies right now, Envision is looking beyond the crowded Chinese market and setting its sights abroad, with projects in Germany, Brazil, and Australia and upcoming work in Vietnam.
China is also leading innovation in key technologies. I’ve been fascinated by the potential for next-generation batteries coming out of its companies: All the big ones, along with a host of smaller ones, are racing to develop solid-state batteries. They could be both safer than existing EV batteries and longer in range.
WeLion New Energy is particularly interesting. The battery company announced a big lab result last year, achieving 824 watt-hours per kilogram—more than three times the energy density of a standard lithium-ion battery today. Lab results in battery research are notoriously difficult to scale, but WeLion is also working to deploy semi-solid-state batteries, which could come to fruition faster than purely solid-state cells while still improving on lithium-ion’s performance.
Everybody wants a piece of the data center pie
We included just three companies from the US on the list, and two of them have received a major boost from Big Tech as companies look to power data centers. (The third, Brimstone, is leaning into another political hot topic, critical minerals.) Technologies that can provide consistent power are in high demand.
Fervo Energy is bringing next-generation geothermal power to the grid by using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to make it practical in more places. The company went public in May, raising $2.2 billion in its IPO, and plans to have a gigawatt’s worth of plants operational by the end of 2030.