The Four Eras
Every era of climate investment has beenmisdiagnosed while it was happening, and the misdiagnosis was never harmless:it decided how the next era's capital behaved. Three eras in, the patternreduces to one line: an era is not defined by its technology. It is defined bywhether the capital structure, the policy regime, and the operating model arealigned with the physics of the asset class.
Era 1.0 supposedly failed on technology. Itdidn't — Solyndra's chemistry worked. What killed the first wave was a costcurve: silicon solar fell roughly 85% in six years, driven by Chinesestate-backed manufacturing scale, and seven-year fund mechanics met companiesthat needed fifteen years and billions in capex. The vehicle was wrong for thephysics. Germany lived it first and hardest: the EEG built the world's leadingsolar industry, Q-Cells was the largest cell producer on earth in 2008 — andinsolvent by 2012, sold to Hanwha. A subsidy-built demand curve and astate-scaled supply curve are two different games, and China was playing thesecond.
Era 2.0 supposedly failed on policy. Wrongagain — 2.0 built the dominant decarbonization industries of the present:Ørsted, Vestas, more than a million German home batteries, and real exits atreal prices — Sonnen to Shell, Viessmann's climate division to Carrier for€12bn. What died was one assumption inside the business models: that policysupport, once granted, persists. The industries are intact; the durabilityassumption is dead. Conflating the two is how capital learns the wrong lessontwice.
Era 3.0 had everything — the capital, thepolicy, the demand — and produced the insolvency record the sector is stillabsorbing: Eigensonne, Compleo, Northvolt, Lilium, Volocopter. The market grewand the scaling companies died, and both are one story. Zoom out and you see aboom. Zoom in and you see a graveyard. Same picture, two altitudes. The teamswere not the problem — this was the era with the best tools and best operatorsthe sector ever attracted, and the worst growth-stage failure record of all three.What broke them was a demand signal that stopped being economic: German heatpump sales hit a record 356,000 units in 2023 and roughly halved in 2024. Sameproduct, same economics, same climate. The signal beat the spreadsheet.
Era 4.0 — Resilience Tech — is the first era inwhich the capital owner and the asset class actually fit: long-horizon holders,multi-decade vehicles, robustness priced in from day one. But its success isconditional, not assured. Eras are not survived. They are selected — by everydeployment decision that either read the alignment first, or didn't.
What this means for your seat
If you hold family capital: Your caution about this sectorisn't a bias to overcome — it's Era 1.0 correctly remembered. The question thefourth era asks you is different: your duration now matches the asset class forthe first time, and the only thing that protects it is reading each companybefore the money moves.
If you run a fund: Your LPs have read the vintage data. Thedifferentiator this cycle isn't access to deals — it's being able to show, dealby deal, that you read the alignment before you deployed. That evidence is whatthe next raise stands on.
If you lead a company: You are not being judged against afair era, and the essay says so plainly. Price policy at zero, plan for thedemand oscillation as permanent, and treat AI as table stakes — the companiesthat survive this era are built for its physics, not for its promises.
The full essay on Under Load goes further: thecomplete evidence base — the European casualty roster, the Northvolt anatomy,the demand oscillator, the six failure modes of Era 4.0 — with twenty sources.