Field notes on climate tech
What was measured, what changed, what it cost.
A weekly letter for people who read past the headline. We report figures, cite where they came from, and mark what we’re still unsure about. No hydrogen hype, no green-glow renders.
Thursdays, 6 a.m. UTC. One issue, unsubscribe from any footer.
Grid-scale battery storage crossed $118/kWh in blended procurement cost this quarter, the first time it has undercut new gas peaker capacity in every US interconnection queue we checked. Meanwhile the cost of green hydrogen storage for the same duty cycle sits at $342/kWh and climbing, mostly on electrolyser capital cost that hasn’t moved the way the 2021 roadmaps said it would.
That gap is the subject of this letter. Not whether climate tech is working — whether a specific bet, this quarter, paid off. We read the filings so you don’t have to skim past the marketing page to find the number.
Three numbers we recheck every issue
Cell cost. Lithium iron phosphate pack pricing fell to $71/kWh in Q2, down from $151 in 2020. We track this against BloombergNEF’s survey and three procurement filings we can actually read.
Grid carbon intensity. The US average fell to 367 gCO₂/kWh this year, mostly from coal retirements rather than new renewables — a distinction the press releases tend to blur.
Direct air capture cost. Still stuck near $615/tCO₂ a tonne, essentially flat for three years despite four new plants announced. We keep citing this one because the flatness is the story.
How we check a claim
Every figure in this letter traces to a primary source: a regulatory filing, a peer-reviewed measurement, or a supplier spec sheet we called to confirm. When a number comes from a company’s own announcement, we say so and we say what we couldn’t independently verify. When we’re wrong, the correction runs at the same length as the original claim, not a footnote.
We don’t run vendor-supplied case studies. We don’t take briefing calls off the record. If a company won’t show us the underlying data, we say that instead of running their number.
One issue, in full
Here’s what actually lands in your inbox — not a teaser, the real layout.
Green Future <field-notes@greenfuture.co>
Grid batteries beat green hydrogen on cost, again
Issue 47 · 5 min
Morning —
Three US grid-battery projects reached financial close this week at a blended $118/kWh, undercutting every green-hydrogen storage bid submitted to the same interconnection queue since January.
“We stopped modelling hydrogen as a storage medium two years ago. It’s a feedstock problem now, not a power problem.”
What we checked this week:
- Lithium iron phosphate cell prices, tracked against the three procurement filings we could get numbers from.
- Why one Texas electrolyser paused construction, in the developer’s own words, not a press release’s.
- A reader-submitted teardown of a residential heat-pump install, cost and all.
Full numbers and sources below. As always, we’ll tell you when we’re not sure.
— Dana Whitfield
writes Green Future, most Thursdays
What readers check us on
“You published the CCS capture-rate number I’d been trying to find for a client memo for two weeks. Then you told me which parts of it were self-reported.”
“It’s the only climate newsletter I forward to engineers without editing it first. The units are always right.”
“Flagged a DAC cost figure I’d cited from a press release as unverified. It was. I owed my reader a correction.”
Get the next issue Thursday
One email a week. Every figure sourced. We’ll tell you when we’re not sure.