Welcome to the first entry of our blog. Through a series of articles, we’ll be sharing our team’s thoughts and perspectives on our investments and the energy sector at large. We’ll also invite guest writers from time to time. These might be our portfolio company leaders, other sector specialists, utility company executives… the list goes on.
But first, we would like to introduce ourselves.
Renown Capital is an investment firm that spun out of Moore Capital Management earlier this year. We launched with $250M of committed anchor investment from Moore and the Daily Mail & General Trust, whose “dmg events” business hosts some of the world’s premier energy-focused conferences. If you missed our press release last week, check it out here.
Renown invests in Series B+ technology companies that are helping to secure an efficient, affordable, and reliable energy system. We believe that this sector offers exceptional investment potential for several reasons, which we’ll discuss in much more detail in subsequent posts.
But the headline here is simple: the global energy system has never been more variable or complex.
This creates both challenges and opportunities.
To briefly illustrate some the issues that keep utility companies, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and consumers (as their bills rise as a result) up at night:
- Demand is rising at its fastest rate in years, driven by growing industrial production, changing weather, accelerating electrification, and the expansion of data centers worldwide. The IEA forecasts an increase of 3,500 TWh per year between 2025-2027, equivalent to adding Japan’s entire annual electricity demand to the global grid each year.
- Energy use was traditionally unidirectional: from power plant to consumer. With the rise of distributed energy resources like solar inverters and batteries, consumers can now also act as producers. This change has increased complexity and made it harder for utilities to accurately predict demand.
- The shift toward wind and solar — which are susceptible to weather conditions — adds to this complexity.
- The global supply chain is fragile and certain segments are dominated by a small number of players, further complicating the overall landscape. As just one example, China controls 61% of global natural graphite supply (traditionally a key component of EV batteries) and 98% of the processed material for battery anodes.
Things need to change.
While we’re coming off decades of investment in the next generation of energy solutions (e.g. smart meters, wind turbines, electric vehicles, etc.), much less attention has been dedicated to the systems that will allow them to be effective.
Utilities struggle to interpret and act upon the information they have, the grid is too antiquated to be able to onboard full wind and solar generation, and EV charging infrastructure is unreliable at best. Things need to change, and fast. Don’t believe us? Just ask Spain.
Fortunately, we live in an era in which technology can facilitate a transformation. This is the area in which we are excited to continue our team’s history of investment, with the added power of a new platform and strategic capital partners.
Keep an eye out for future blog posts where we will dive further into trends of the energy sector. If you’re active in the space and have a topic that you’d like to discuss, drop our Head of Platform a line: allison@renowncapital.com.