More 2024 trends: ESG, carbon certifications, curtailment, and AI

There was so much to talk about in Nat Bullard’s 200-page slide deck on 2024’s biggest decarbonization trends that we broke the conversation into two parts. For the first half of our conversation with Nat, listen here. 

Nat has worked as an analyst and writer in climate tech for two decades and was BloombergNEF’s chief content officer until 2022.

In this second part of the conversation, Shayle and Nat cover topics like:

• How ESG has become the new third rail of finance, falling out of the spotlight of corporate reports and the annual Larry letter 
• The vexing problem of what to do with curtailed power and why we need to design around the intermittency
• Whether you can have too many carbon certification standards
• How biodiesel is eating up Europe’s biofuel supply
• First Solar’s underappreciated success in surviving the decline of U.S. solar manufacturing
• Plus: Declining hydropower, slowing coal growth, and the rising hype around AI

Recommended resources:

Nathaniel Bullard: Decarbonization: Stocks and flows, abundance and scarcity, net zero

Washington Post: ‘Greenhushing’: Why some companies quietly hide their climate pledges

World Economic Forum: Hydropower: How droughts are affecting the world's biggest renewable energy source

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