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Past Issues
The Ad Hoc Gist: Carbon Removal Hits the Brakes
Carbon removal is in another difficult cycle. Investment has slowed, policy support in the U.S. has evaporated, and big buyers like Microsoft are reevaluating their commitment.
For this month’s Gist, Ad Hoc’s Max Tuttman spoke with Neil Renninger, a longtime climate-tech entrepreneur and investor to unpack the meaning of this moment. Neil co-founded Amyris and later founded Ample Carbon, which aims to convert retiring coal plants into carbon-negative power facilities, but is now pressing pause.
The Ad Hoc Gist: Google Plans to Unlock Grid Capacity. Will Regulators Let Them?
Can data centers become part of the solution to the grid constraints they’re helping create?
That’s the premise behind Google’s latest work on distributed energy resources
— from batteries and demand response to energy efficiency.
Ellen Zuckerman discusses why Google is investing in these resources, whether they can meaningfully free up grid capacity, and what regulators need to do to make these models work at scale.
The Ad Hoc Gist: The Case for Utility Wildfire Suppression
Utilities have spent years reducing wildfire ignition risk, and much of that work has been necessary. But prevention has limits. Trees come down. Equipment fails. Lightning strikes. And when an ignition occurs, the first minutes can change the trajectory of an event.
In our latest piece, we argue that rapid suppression should be part of the utility wildfire conversation — not as a replacement for firefighters, but as part of a broader consequence-reduction strategy in the highest-risk areas. The question for regulators is no longer just: how do we prevent ignitions? But also: what is the plan for the fire that still starts?