Energy Is Not Roulette
Venture capital runs on power law. A few winners return the fund and pay for the losses of the rest. Inside a fund thatis arithmetic, and it works. Europe's energy transition now runs through exactly these companies, and for the system they serve, each loss stays a loss, whatever a winner earns elsewhere.
Germany used 526 TWh of electricity in2025. The monitoring report by EWI and BET puts 2030 at 600 to 700 TWh. The bigplants arrive too late for that curve. What Germany can add before 2030 itbuilds site by site: solar, storage, heat pumps, charging and grid technology.The companies that build it at volume are growth-stage scale-ups.
The capital is arriving, with the EU's €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund among it. What is scarce is the ability to carry it. Lilium invested about €1.5 billion, and its patents went for about 1.2 cents per euro. Volocopter fetched about 2 cents. Britishvolt went for about 4 pence on the pound. Northvolt's plants went to a buyer in the US.
In a portfolio, these are write-offs. For Europe, they are capacity that left at someone else's price.
Energy companies cross three chasms. The first is technology: does it work? The second is commercialization: will anyone buy it? The third is scaling: can the company carry the money it is about to receive? Two chasms crossed. The third one is funded, and that is where they break.
In the full essay
· Where the third chasm opens,and why the money itself opens it
· Why losses in energy add upinstead of cancelling out
· Who should carry this riskfirst, and why