Why this Blog?

I'm John Wall, the company founder. I began my career as an engineer in the oil fields of Arabia and have come full circle since then. In the past decade I've invested in and/or worked on assignments with developers and professional services firms operating in climate tech. These include: biomass (W2E/EFW); regenerative aquaculture; industrial scale heat pumps; decarbonisation in the marine environment; utility scale solar; grid connections; BESS. I've also tackled the energy efficiency in our family home and have succeeded in making real progress. I learn something important in every assignment or investment.

Though I feel I'm relatively well informed, I've often found it a struggle to explain why the energy transition is so important, or even what it is. People get confused by what to do to reduce their energy bills and move to a greener model of living, even when motivated by the purest of intentions. A few years ago, as we kicked off our research programme at Armax Energy and I started to write components of a business plan, I came to the realisation that I wanted to share what I was learning in the hope that it might help others, maybe even inspire a few. Here's my effort in the form of this blog which I hope to add to periodically. I hope it helps simplify the energy transition and put certain technologies, terms, initiatives or policies in better context.

There have been other energy transitions, e.g. coal in the industrial revolution, oil & its derivatives in mass transportation. The current Energy Transition is arguably the most consequential and historically urgent. It represents a structural shift away from a world dominated by fossil-fuels to one where clean energy becomes the dominant source. This Energy Transition positions the world for a future where carbon emissions are drastically reduced. In addition to the provisioning of clean energy, the Energy Transition demands improvements in energy efficiency, improved technologies for energy storage and energy demand management.

We want to be part of that movement. We're developing a thermal storage technology that we hope will make an important contribution to the transition to cleaner energy. It's early days, but progress is encouraging. We have a particular interest in thermal storage materials and how they can be used to drive down the cost of electrified heating or cooling (sometimes both at the same time).

The cheapest of electrical energy in any 24-hour cycle is usually the cleanest¹. Our goal is to build thermal storage devices that provide a time-buffer between when electric energy is cheap (and usually clean) and when heating or cooling is needed.