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The Gist
The Gist is the monthly newsletter of The Ad Hoc Group that covers everything at the intersection of climate tech and policy. Subscribe at the link here to have The Gist mailed to your inbox each month.

The Ad Hoc Gist: The Inauguration is Over. Now What? Predictions for 2025
2025 is off to quite a start. LA is on fire. Homes, schools, and entire neighborhoods have vanished. The loss is profound for so many. We all know someone affected.
Last week, the Biden administration doled out its final climate billions before exiting stage left. On Monday, the Trump administration released a flurry of executive orders launching an all-out assault on Biden’s climate legacy.
In this month’s Gist, we turn to allies to share their predictions for the year. From resilience to AI to carbon removal, there’s a lot on the docket. One thing is certain: 2025 will not be dull.

The Ad Hoc Gist: The Big Energy Surprises of 2024
As the holiday season begins, our trusted senior advisors reflect on the biggest energy surprises of 2024 and why they matter for the climate and the energy transition. From artificial intelligence’s unquenchable thirst for energy to the existential demands of an increasingly vulnerable electric grid, a lot has changed this year.

The Ad Hoc Gist: The Red Wave’s Casualties and Silver Linings
We’ve known for some time that a second Trump presidency was a high-probability event and that even a Republican trifecta could be a reasonably expected outcome of the election.
Though the dust has hardly settled, in this month’s Gist we give you an “inside-the-Beltway” view on what we and our lobbyist friends believe is the emerging state of play on climate policy.
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Press

Where the Smart Climate Tech Venture Money Is Going in 2025
This year is shaping up to be a dramatic one for climate tech investors.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House is set to shift the US landscape, with the possible rollback of key provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, Energy Department loans drying up and weaker regulations. Beyond the US, the prospect of more trade wars is scrambling the economy in ways that will determine which climate tech sectors to bet on.
Meanwhile, headwinds for hydrogen are throwing doubt on its viability, and artificial intelligence is now fully on investors’ radars.

The Regulator’s Dilemma, Part 3
Virtual power plants (VPPs) are poised to revolutionize the power sector by orchestrating distributed energy resources (DERs) — like smart thermostats, household appliances, solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles — into real-time networks of dispatchable capacity. The opportunity is especially significant for advanced VPPs, which aggregate multiple device types, are fully automated and optimized by price signals, provide multiple reliable grid services, are compensated on a pay-for-performance basis, and serve as a true supply-side resource.
Advanced VPPs can offer grid operators significant value by reducing stress on generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure at lower cost than conventional solutions like large-scale batteries, peaker plants, or additional poles and wires.

C&IÂ customer needs are rapidly changing. How can utilities maximize their relationship?
In the blink of an eye, large commercial and industrial customers present big challenges and opportunities.
Commercial and industrial customers have historically been boring to utilities. As long as power was reliable and reasonably priced, utilities hardly ever heard from these customers. They were so boring that, according to a 2023 J.D. Power study, only 15% of C&I customers even had a utility account rep assigned to them. The feeling has been mutual. A representative from a major C&I customer with a large trucking fleet recently said “why would I want to talk to a utility? My job is to move boxes from warehouses to stores.”
Podcast
Hear more from our leadership on My Climate Journey and Technopolis.