Octavi Semonin ⚡️🚲

We must stop climate change so that our children can continue to shred the gnar pow ❄️

@vsiv @EmeraldAi_ @radicalvcfund @nvidia @amplovc @CRV @neotribevc 🙌 great to see this out in the wild

🚀Thrilled to announce that @EmeraldAI_ launches today with $24.5M in seed funding led by @radicalvcfund with participation from @NVIDIA, @amplovc, @CRV, and @neotribevc! ⚡We're transforming AI data centers into AI-powered grid allies. Today we unveil results of the first commercial demonstration of AI computational flexibility, in partnership with @EPRINews, @Oracle, @NVIDIA @SRPconnect. Read on for: ➡️@NVIDIA'𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗵𝗼𝗲𝗻𝗶𝘅 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀: blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-factor… ➡️@Axios 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 on Emerald AI's launch (thanks @Ben_Geman!): axios.com/2025/07/01/nvi… ➡️𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁, highlighting our deep bench of backers, including 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗝𝗼𝗵𝗻 𝗞𝗲𝗿𝗿𝘆, 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗝𝗲𝗳𝗳 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗻, 𝗔𝗜 𝗣𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳. 𝗙𝗲𝗶-𝗙𝗲𝗶 𝗟𝗶, 𝗞𝗹𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗝𝗼𝗵𝗻 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝗿𝗿, and distinguished advisors such as 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗚𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗥𝗮𝗶𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗼: prnewswire.com/news-releases/… ➡️𝗔𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗽𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁 with technical results from our demonstration: static1.squarespace.com/static/681cdff… And much more on emeraldai.co!

It might not feel like it these days, but I think America is great, and photovoltaics are too. A short history and a patriotic pitch, would love to know what people think. fightingentropy.blog/why-solar-is-r…

Everyone wants to debate the cause of the blackouts in Spain and Portugal, but isn't it surprising how quickly they got back up? From zero watts to basically normal in less than 24 hours is not what I was expecting.

Won’t this cause most people’s net taxes to go up?

@JigarShahDC @duncancampbell Interesting figure. I think these are actual subsidies like consumption subsidies and preferred financing?

Anyone have sources to good accounting of total historical global subsidies for all sources of electricity?

@RyanDionTaylor 💀

@OctaviSemonin BUD down $27bn v TSLA down $1tr 🤷🏾‍♂️

Who lost more market cap: Budweiser going woke or “Tesla” going anti-woke?

Applications received by Friday, March 10, 2025 will be prioritized for review. powerhouse.fund/ai-intern/

If you’re a passionate early-career professional interested in building your career in energy innovation, or If you know someone for whom this role would be a good fit, please forward the opportunity to them and encourage them to apply.

Powerhouse Innovation is hiring a full-time, paid AI & Product Development Intern to build database automation features, analytics tools, and visualizations to maximize the impact of our unparalleled data and superior network.

@gnievchenko @Tobias_Johan What if you just made biochar and used the CCS on normal fossil fuels?

@wang_seaver @duncancampbell This post shed some light for me. Even if corn farmers went fully solar-maxxed, it would only be about 20% of their land... energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/02/03/sho…

@wang_seaver @duncancampbell IMO this is the great unanswered question. Local regs kill a lot more energy projects than whatever kooky up EO Trump might try.

where are the accelerationists / ecomodernists shouting about this?

@CJHandmer Are you defining "value-optimal" as the configuration that maximizes MWh produced for a given total CapEx? (Or effectively minimizes all-in $/MWh?)

I've been gradually cooking this project, trying to understand what solar means in different places. This chart finds the optimal mix of solar and batteries for loads of any cost across six different geographic locations. What do you notice? They're all basically the same. There's not even a factor of two difference in power system cost between "sunny" and "less sunny" places - all parts of Earth are equally far from the sun - except for Britain for loads that are more expensive than AI training data centers! Second, there's a split between loads under $1m/MW ($1/W) which are primarily battery run at lower utilization (shown here with plot point saturation) and loads over $3m/MW ($3/W) which are primarily using batteries to load shift overnight. Driving to even higher utilitization requires marginally larger batteries and arrays to push down drop outs during consecutive bad weather days in winter - but with commensurately lower utilization of these power assets that drives up power system cost. Solar and batteries will continue to get cheaper, so the axes on this graph will scale - but the shape will stay the same. The future of power is solar!

@AlecStapp @freethinkmedia I’m a fan of permitting reform but I think you’ve overindexed on NEPA. Zoning and other local regs kill way more projects than environmental regs and it’s not even close. x.com/octavisemonin/…

Did an interview recently with @freethinkmedia about permitting reform and they made this pretty cool video — check it out!

@Jordan_W_Taylor Do these results change your mind? gov.wales/safest-summer-….

I don't usually post politics, but… This month the Irish government starts reducing speed limits by 20kph across local & regional roads, to the limp-hand clapping of people who enjoy having their time stolen. So what, you only lose 10 minutes, right? Here's my good/ bad take… There is one truly non-renewable resource on this planet, and it's not petroleum. It's time. We each have an allotment of eighty six thousand, four hundred seconds a day to spend, and you can't buy more. You used up a few reading that. Another one here too. Tension is rising, and I don't want to waste your time, except… someone does. Tick. You spend 7 hours asleep. Sometimes more, often less. Sometimes much less. Tock. You'll sell another 9 hours, cook and eat another 2, spend 30 minutes making yourself presentable, 90 minutes commuting, an hour working out… Tick. Suddenly you've only got three hours of evening quality time left, two where your children will be awake, and only one of them where you're not urging them through pre-bedtime routine. Tock. Two hours left. One hour to bond with your children, another with your wife or husband as the big hand moves relentlessly to bedtime again. Where does it all go? In your twenties your blood constantly boils with urgency, but that's nothing compared with life as a working parent of young children, where time is so rarified you practically awake with a digital countdown timer clicking into being in the corner of your vision. Life pared down to the minute. No room for error. In a civilised age there is almost no greater insult than to waste someone's time. It comes with unspoken insult: “Not only is my time more important than yours, but yours is worth nothing at all.”  You wouldn't sit someone down in a chair and waste their time for 10 or 15 minutes a day. Yet that is exactly what is about to happen in Ireland, as regional & rural speed limits are ratcheted down by 20kph nationwide, to be followed by default 30kph limits in urban areas. Championed by the consistently-vexing Eamonn Ryan and Jack Chambers, the traffic act will add the humiliation ritual of enforced sloth to your daily commute. But it's only 10 or 15 minutes of your time, and it saves lives? Fair enough, but let's be pragmatic about this. Ireland averages 150 traffic deaths a year, which are obviously all tragedies, and this measure might save a couple. In the eyes of many that alone might be worth it, and it's hard to argue against that without sounding like a monster.  Well someone has to. Let's say 12 minutes a day extra in the car for a million motorists (it could easily be 2 million, but we'll be conservative). If the average person lives to 80, that becomes 71 extra lifetimes a year wasted in cars, probably much more. Is that a cost we're willing to bear? And what if I told you that you might be wasting the best bits of your life this way? I'm serious. Getting home from work is where we connect with our family. For me, that 10 minutes is the difference that decides if I bathe my toddler, where we play silly games and she fills a jug with bubbles & water to give to her dad as a ‘wonderful drink’... or medicine if I look tired. It's something just between us, and it'll be gone in a year or two. If traffic is slow I lose that opportunity forever. Multiply this kind of thing by 1 or 2 million people. It gets more insidious than that: Our opportunities, social circles, jobs, houses, lovers are all limited by our ability to get places. Slow down & that shrinks. Nobody will resign their job in November because of a speed limit change, but the cumulative effect, over years, is powerful. It's a subtle, nasty form of theft. Theft of time, opportunity and precious moments. More time in your car. We need to make our roads safe, but there are good and bad ways of doing that, and a blanket speed reduction is the latter. It's flypaper on the road to civilization, anti-progress and anti-opportunity. We should resist it.

@paces_ai Another good one from @NatBullard’s new deck nathanielbullard.com/presentations

@paces_ai have done great work identifying where zoning outright bans solar, for example paces.com/post/permittin…

I like that everyone is excited about permitting reform, but it seems overindexed on NEPA. If you look at the top causes of project failure, it's zoning, interconnection, and community opposition. Environmental restrictions are a distant 5th.

@CJHandmer @TerraformIndies Yeah too much structure and oversight IMO

@OctaviSemonin @TerraformIndies The central limit theorem causes any grant evaluation process that diffuses responsibility to choose technically okay non-offensive proposals, which are low variance.

We're unaffected at @TerraformIndies by grant freezes because despite spending years asking DoE to help out our process of increasing the supply of cheap carbon free hydrocarbons, we were awarded 0/20 grants. The officials were friendly and helpful but the emergent behavior of the agency industrial complex produces incomprehensible outcomes that only occasionally accidentally help solve big problems. This is a textbook case of Dittemore's Law, where collective outcomes are counterproductive. The Manhattan project cost $35b. NIH spends $50b a year and has discovered ~nothing about slowing the aging process. This is strong evidence of misallocation of capital.

@JosephMajkut So are heat pumps just refining of thermal energy??

Subtle way to announce one’s position on cost allocation