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Analysis

Long-form pieces

Theses, breakdowns, supply-chain deep-dives. New analysis lands roughly weekly during the build phase.

Nuclear power plant cooling towers (file photo)
thesisnuclear

Nuclear's comeback is real. The timeline isn't what the headlines say.

AI power demand, Palisades proving brownfield economics, and the NRC advancing multiple advanced-reactor permits have made nuclear the most-discussed energy story of 2025. The tailwinds are real. But new-build timelines run 8–15 years, SMRs won't move the needle before 2032, and the near-term investment thesis is brownfield restart and power uprates — not greenfield.
Open-pit mine (file photo)
thesiscritical-minerals

The US is ally-shoring, not reshoring, and that's probably the right call

The DPA executive orders, IRA sourcing requirements, and the Pentagon's MP Materials equity stake are building allied-nation supply chains, not domestic ones. True US domestic mineral production requires permitting timelines of 7–15 years. The real chokepoint — refining, not mining — is where the domestic strategy has the most leverage.
Offshore wind farm at sunset (file photo)
thesispolicy

What the IRA cuts actually did and didn't do

The 'One Big Beautiful Bill' clawed back some clean energy credits and created real uncertainty for projects in development. But the most commercially embedded credits — Section 45X for domestic manufacturing and investment credits for operating facilities — survived largely intact. The transition math doesn't reverse. It slows, unevenly.
Utility-scale solar farm (file photo)
thesissolar

The tariff shock is accelerating the US solar supply chain rebuild

CVD rates above 3,400% on Southeast Asian imports are painful for projects buying modules today, but they're also the forcing function the IRA alone couldn't deliver: a US domestic manufacturing buildout with real urgency behind it. First Solar's structural position is understood; what's less discussed is how the module-cost shock reshapes developer strategy from 2026 onward.
High-voltage transmission lines (file photo)
thesisgrid

Transmission is the binding constraint and we're not building fast enough

There are 2,600+ GW of clean energy projects sitting in the US interconnection queue. The median wait is now 5 years. Every GW of solar, wind, and storage that gets built but can't connect to the grid is money and policy credibility lost. Reconductoring and MISO's LRTP are two of the few concrete moves. Neither is moving fast enough.
Lithium-carbonate refining facility (file photo)
weekly-digestalbemarle

Weekly digest, May 4-9, 2026

Albemarle's Q1 prints +148% adjusted EBITDA on a +51% pricing snap; Century Lithium drops a draft mine plan into BLM review at Angel Island; SQM calls 25% market growth for the year. The rebalance arrived. Underneath, the capital cycle keeps biting marginal names. Nothing yet that bends the thesis.
EV charging station (file photo)
thesisdemand

The EV slowdown is a misread of the lithium decade

Q1 2026 prices nearly doubled. Morgan Stanley and UBS now both forecast 2026 deficits. Storage-application demand grew ~71% in 2025. The 'oversupply' narrative that ran through 2024–2025 is breaking down, and EV-cycle thinking missed why.
Industrial refinery facility (file photo)
refiningpolicy

Refining is where the real chokepoint sits

Mining gets the headlines, but the supply-chain bottleneck for the next decade is refining. ~70% of refined lithium routes through China today, the spodumene-to-carbonate spread is the cleanest signal, and the marginal IRA-funded refining dollar is the most important number in the space.