Form Energy Unveils Its Iron-Air Battery

07/30/21 • 50 min

Back in 2016, Mateo Jaramillo left Tesla, where he was leading the stationary energy storage business, and started looking for a new challenge to tackle. He took on long-duration energy storage -- not long duration like 8 hours or 12 hours, but days or weeks or more. In 2017 he came on the show to talk about it.

He formed a company, now Form Energy, that has been toiling on this problem in stealth mode. Apart from saying they were building a "metal air" battery, his team held the technology close to the vest.

That is, until last week.

The company announced a $200M Series D financing led by ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, and in the process finally made public the technology, which is an iron air chemistry.

Full disclosure: Shayle led Energy Impact Partners’ investment in Form.

Shayle and Mateo discuss the technology itself and the counterintuitive economics that Mateo believes will make it work. They also examine how it beat out the alternatives and how it might complement more efficient, but more expensive lithium-ion. It turns out financial modeling was far more important than spec sheets in understanding the tradeoffs.

They tackle the critical question: Where exactly are the profitable applications of this technology before we hit very high 80% renewables?

They also talk about the semantics of long-duration storage vs. multi-day storage, why Mateo hates holy grails, and potential partnerships with tofu companies.

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That is, until last week.

The company announced a $200M Series D financing led by ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, and in the process finally made public the technology, which is an iron air chemistry.

Full disclosure: Shayle led Energy Impact Partners’ investment in Form.

They tackle the critical question: Where exactly are the profitable applications of this technology before we hit very high 80% renewables?

They also talk about the semantics of long-duration storage vs. multi-day storage, why Mateo hates holy grails, and potential partnerships with tofu companies.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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The Crypto vs Climate Showdown

In the great debate over crypto mining vs. climate, there are two camps.

First, the crypto enthusiasts, like Square, say things like, "Bitcoin is key to an abundant, clean energy future".

And then there are the energy wonks, who point out that, if bitcoin mining were a country, it would already be in the top 30 for total energy consumption, rivaling Ukraine.

The energy camp tends to dismiss the crypto enthusiasts’ thinking. They’re skeptical of how crypto mines could be assets to a decarbonizing grid, rather than a strain on it.

So to cut through the noise, Shayle spoke to Nick Grossman, a partner at the respected venture capital firm Union Square Ventures. USV was the largest early investor in Coinbase, which currently has a $49B market capitalization. But USV has gone big on climate tech and raised a specific climate fund. Nick straddles both the crypto and climate worlds, so he's the perfect person to help me make some sense out of this madness.

Nick and Shayle break down the basics of crypto currencies as energy-backed assets. They examine the argument that crypto mines improve the economics of renewables, because they will always be willing to buy cheap renewable power. This, in turn, helps to finance the overbuilding of renewable projects to help meet peak demand, or so the thinking goes.

But do intermittent renewables improve the economics of crypto mines? In other words: Is it profitable to mine intermittently?

They also discuss green bitcoin certificates and alternatives to the energy-intensive proof-of-work crypto security model: proof of stake, proof of space-time, and proof of location

And they evaluate Shayle’s (surely serious) startup pitch to match crypto mines with seasonal renewables: put the mines on barges and shuttle them back and forth between renewable projects in the northern and southern hemispheres.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.