For a series of climate-related conversations organized by the global venture firm SOSV, we interviewed famed investor Chris Sacca, whose investment firm Lowercarbon Capital is managing $2 billion in capital across one fund that is focused on nuclear fusion.
Questions about whether carbon capture can work at scale were dismissed by Sacca. The naysayers kind of give me strength. He said that he has "no doubt that we will have multiple companies worth trillions of dollars that emerge from our portfolio." You can watch the entire conversation at the bottom of the page.
The biggest news of the moment is the Inflation Reduction Act. More than $300 billion is allocated to energy and climate reform, $60 billion for boosting renewable energy infrastructure, and $10 billion for manufacturing. It wasn't what climate activists wanted to see. Do you think it's a good idea?
The president said it was a big fuck deal. It is. It is a huge step forward for our industry and our country. It's good to bless the activists. We don't have time for purity tests so we have to be pragmatic about where their hearts are. We are glad everyone got to the table and hammered out a solution because it was better than we could have imagined.
Did anyone in Washington give you any input?
We weren't I have an allergy to the capital city. After years of rebuilding the democratic tech stack, I got burned out by a process that is so many degrees removed from the ultimate solution. It is up to us to deliver something that consumers and businesses want to buy from us now that Lowercarbon has been built. If free money falls out of the sky, we'll take it, but everything we've done now makes sense because the unit economics are there to go ahead and compete. We weren't counting on it, but it was just a bonus.
Climate investing is relatively bulletproof due to the fact that this money is going to be flowing into the economy even if we enter into a recession at this point.
Even without the IRA climate investing is recession proof. We are doing everything we can to provide a substitute good. It almost feels like it is unfair. You spent a lot of time building a social network and then you put it up in the app store, hoping someone will take notice. It might be a well-designed product, but we know the demand for it, so maybe no one cares. We will grow the market if we deliver a better, cheaper, faster, cooler, easier-to-use product. This is one of the easiest investments we have ever made.
The war in Ukraine, the shortages of energy facing Europe, the commitments that companies have made to decarbonize, and the reality that clean energy and clean products are reaching price parity are just some of the tailwinds that we are trying to achieve.
A year ago, you had an $800 million fund. The $350 million fund was dedicated to carbon removal. It's not a stand-alone effort.
We have to get carbon pollution out of the atmosphere in a variety of ways. We have a fund devoted to that. We have partnerships with companies such as the Frontier Group and Stripe. The cost of building this stuff came down so quickly that it reminded us of the early days of Y Combinator.
Money doesn't always work out. It is exciting that there are so many options, but do you worry that the industry will put money into carbon capture so that it can continue?
When we remove dinosaur bones from a process or a product, we make money. Carbon has value. There are uses for carbon captured by us. It's upcycled into jet fuel. There is value in the fact that it is embedded in concrete. Bad behavior can be continued by companies, but that is not good business. Greenwashing and fake Esg funds are bullshit. The biggest economic transformation in the history of the planet is going to leave anyone who continues down that path behind.
Skeptics don't know if carbon capture will work at scale. The world's largest carbon direct air capture facility that is currently under construction is expected to remove only a small amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
It sounds like the person thought there wouldn't be need for more than seven computers. If you want to line up against the bet of betting against technology, chemistry and physics, I'm here for you.
We continue to see step functions and geometric progression in technology. I like to stand back and watch. At this point in my life, I don't want to give a shit and either you help or get out of the way. People who say that they haven't been in the lab. They bet against what we are seeing as a rate of change in technology that is greater than ever before. It's the power of computation. It would have cost half a million dollars eight years ago for a team of three scientists to have the compute power they now have. Experiments that used to take a year or two to design, execute and digest can now be done hundreds of times a week. That steep curve is what it is.
You made a lot of money by investing in the social networking site. I don't know if he is the owner. Is it thumbs up or thumbs down.
In the early days, we had the best intentions, and it used to be a good thing. It feels like we invented cigarettes again. I don't think it's a good idea to use social media. It preys on our dopamine-driven instincts and is addictive. I don't think anyone who wants more freewheeling content and less moderation will improve the environment.
I am sad that we didn't see it, and I wish we had. We were naive about how democratization would be weaponized and we were excited about giving everyone a voice.
The full interview will include a discussion about some of the bets Lowercarbon has made.
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