“We need new technologies to be developed so that we can reach net zero”
Having started down this path over a year ago, Alejandro Solé, Director of the Tecpetrol Investment Fund, is uniquely placed to tell us all in this second installment of the Techint Energy Transition podcast.
The Tecpetrol Investment Fund was set up to accelerate the development of solutions able to clean up our energy matrix, as explained in this latest episode of the Techint Energy Transition podcast conducted by Tecpetrol, which features Alejandro Solé, Director of the TechEnergy Ventures Investment Fund. The executive discusses the future of energy, investment plans and possibilities, and the creativity and ingenuity of his team’s approach to finding solutions. In other words, they’re looking for ideas that can be supported financially and technically: initiatives related to hydrogen, with new sources of clean energy, for carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), and the extraction and processing of minerals that are critical for the energy transition, for instance.
“In our area, we welcome any project presented. We study and review it and then we provide feedback. Over this first year, we identified some three hundred companies with interesting ideas. We’ve invested in five so far and plan to do the same in another five.” As of the publication date of the podcast, the Fund has announced 12 investments in total.
The Investment Fund that Alejandro is working on saw the light of day barely a year ago, in a context of sharply defined priorities: decarbonization tops the list for all humanity, an issue that has come to the fore during the last decade. Although fossil fuels have characteristics that make them very competitive when it comes to providing energy, reducing emissions is the number one objective of the energy transition.
TechEnergy Ventures is gathering together ideas that can drive this transition, a task that has the potential to add the greatest value, apart from financing itself. "What we offer, as well as resources, is the ability to support entrepreneurs so that they can develop their ideas more quickly."
Yet there is still a great deal to be done, since the energy market is extremely fragmented and the solutions for each region markedly different. This dynamism is also what makes the energy transition so interesting, as each market presents its own unique challenges, resources and solutions. Clearly, technology has a key role to play here, especially with respect to speed.
Listen to this podcast about the future of energy and about everything we’re doing on the road to decarbonization in the words of one of our specialists and leaders, Alejandro Solé.
You can listen to this new episode on our Spotify channel: Techint Energy Transition. Don’t forget to follow and activate the ping to be notified of the latest release.