Peridot Acquisition Corp, Clean Energy, and the Biden Plan
Peridot Acquisition Corp (PDAC) is a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) that is targeting “opportunities and companies that focus on environmentally sound infrastructure, industrial applications and disruptive technologies that eliminate or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and/or enhance resilience to climate change, a thematic that we refer to as Mitigation and Adaptation.”
Peridot’s team consists of experts in the energy space. Members of the team also have had working relationships with President-elect Biden.
From extreme environmental events to global instability, climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet. President-elect Biden has expressed that there is no greater challenge facing our country.
By targeting companies that focus on environmental infrastructure Peridot is going to bring a company to market that will benefit from federal funding via the Biden Plan. On top of potentially being a lucrative investment, it is also a morally conscious one. If Peridot stays true to its target, the company will play a role in the sustainability of our planet for generations to come.
Article breakdown:
- Overview of Peridot’s leadership team
- Summary of the Biden Plan and how Peridot fits into it
- The Target
Leadership Team
Peridot’s leadership team has an immense amount of experience in the energy industry. They also have strong backgrounds in general financing, mergers/acquisitions, and structuring loans. This combination, expertise in the target area and bringing companies to market, are the two things anyone investing in SPACs should be looking for.
At the time this article was written Peridot is relatively “under the radar” and is seeking an acquisition target in one of the highest growth areas.
Alan Levande — Chairman and CEO
Mr. Levande has spent most of his career as an energy executive across the entire space. He was CEO of Covey Park Energy which was acquired for $2.2 billion. Having a CEO who has successfully exited a company can make investors confident in his ability to bring another company to market.
Mr. Levande co-founded Tenaska Capital Management LLC, where he managed $4 billion in private equity. He spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs and Saloman Brothers in their energy investment banking division.
Education
- M.B.A from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania
- B.S. from The University of Pennsylvania
Markus Specks — CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development
Mr. Specks was Managing Director with Värde Partners, a global alternative investment advisor managing approximately $14 billion in assets. Mr. Specks is an energy investor focusing on investments across the energy landscape, including upstream, power, renewables, and energy infrastructure.
Education
- B.A. from Lawrence University
Jonathan Silver — Director
Mr. Silver has been recognized as one of the United States’ Top 10 Green Tech Influencers, marking him as one of the nation’s leading clean economy investors and advisors.
From 2009 to 2011, Mr. Silver served as Executive Director of the Loan Programs Office during President Obama’s administration, leading the government’s $40 billion clean energy investment fund and its $20 billion advanced automotive technology fund, providing financing for a wide range of solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, fossil, nuclear energy and electric vehicle projects.
Mr. Silver has been a managing partner and executive in a multitude of companies. He has served as a policy advisor to four U.S. Cabinet Secretaries — Energy, Commerce, Interior, and Treasury. Mr. Silver currently serves on the boards of National Grid (NYSE: NGG), an FTSE 15 utility company, Plug Power (NASDAQ: PLUG), the country’s leading manufacturer of hydrogen fuel cells.
Mr. Silver is the direct connection to President-elect Biden. His track record shows that he not only knows how to choose successful clean energy companies to invest in but also how to bring them to market.
Education
- B.A. from Harvard University
Dr. Varun Sivaram — Director
Dr. Sivaram is a physicist and author. He is a clean energy technologist. He was the CTO of ReNew Power Limited, India’s largest renewable energy firm.
He is currently a senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center for Global Energy Policy and was formerly fellow and director of the energy program at the Council on Foreign Relations, senior energy advisor to the Los Angeles Mayor and New York Governor’s office, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and consultant at McKinsey & Co. He also serves on multiple advisory boards.
TIME named him to its TIME 100 Next list of the next hundred most influential people in the world. His books include:
- Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
- Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission
- Digital Decarbonization: Promoting Digital Innovations to Advance Clean Energy Systems
Dr. Sivaram is a Rhodes and Truman Scholar.
Education
- Ph.D. Oxford University
- Undergraduate degrees from Stanford University
Thomas Ackerman — Director
Mr. Ackerman is a Co-Founder and a Partner of Carnelian, where he oversees Carnelian’s efforts in sourcing investments, transaction negotiation and execution, monitoring of portfolio companies, and firm management and strategy. He also was an energy investor at Natural Gas Partners.
Education
- M.B.A. from Harvard Business School
- B.B.A from The University of Texas at Austin
Preston Powell — Director
Mr. Powell is a Managing Director of Carnelian, where he is responsible for leading investment sourcing, transaction due diligence and execution, and monitoring portfolio companies. Powell was an energy investor at Denham Capital Management and KKR & Co.
Education
- B.B.A from The University of Texas at Austin
Scott Prochazka — Director
Mr. Prochazka most recently served as the President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of CenterPoint Energy, an NYSE-listed, Fortune 500 energy delivery company with electric transmission and distribution, power generation, and natural gas distribution operations.
Education
- B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin
June Yearwood — Director
Ms. Yearwood is a Managing Director and the Head of Private Specialty Strategies for CPF, a multi-billion dollar private pension fund, and has served in this capacity since 2006. In her role at CPF, Ms. Yearwood focuses on private equity, real estate and real assets, including natural resources and infrastructure.
Ms. Yeearwood spent over a decade with J.P. Morgan, where she served in debt capital markets, public finance, and community development roles of increasing seniority.
Education
- M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business
- B.A. Yale University
The Biden Plan
“Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan ensures that — coming out of this profound public health and economic crisis, and facing the persistent climate crisis — we are never caught flat-footed again. He will launch a national effort aimed at creating the jobs we need to build a modern, sustainable infrastructure now and deliver an equitable clean energy future.”
The statement from the Biden Plan lines up nicely with Peridot’s mission statement, “we are targeting opportunities and companies that focus on environmentally sound infrastructure, industrial applications and disruptive technologies that eliminate or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and/or enhance resilience to climate change, a thematic that we refer to as Mitigation and Adaptation.”
Main Points from Peridot’s Mission Statement
All quotes are from the Biden Plan. The headings in bold are the key points from Peridot’s mission statement indicating a potential target.
Environmentally Sound Infrastructure
Infrastructure: Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure — from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband — to lay a new foundation for sustainable growth, compete in the global economy, withstand the impacts of climate change, and improve public health, including access to clean air and clean water.
Industrial Applications
Auto Industry: Create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, and auto infrastructure, from parts to materials to electric vehicle charging stations, positioning American auto workers and manufacturers to win the 21st century; and invest in U.S. auto workers to ensure their jobs are good jobs with a choice to join a union.
Transit: Provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments with strong labor protections that create good, union jobs and meet the needs of these cities — ranging from light rail networks to improving existing transit and bus lines to installing infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Power Sector: Move ambitiously to generate clean, American-made electricity to achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. This will enable us to meet the existential threat of climate change while creating millions of jobs with a choice to join a union.
Buildings: Upgrade 4 million buildings and weatherize 2 million homes over 4 years, creating at least 1 million good-paying jobs with a choice to join a union; and also spur the building retrofit and efficient-appliance manufacturing supply chain by funding direct cash rebates and low-cost financing to upgrade and electrify home appliances and install more efficient windows, which will cut residential energy bills.
Agriculture and Conservation: Create jobs in climate-smart agriculture, resilience, and conservation, including 250,000 jobs plugging abandoned oil and natural gas wells and reclaiming abandoned coal, hardrock, and uranium mines — providing good work with a choice to join or continue membership in a union in hard-hit communities, including rural communities, reducing leakage of toxics, and preventing local environmental damage.
Disruptive Technologies
Innovation: Drive dramatic cost reductions in critical clean energy technologies, including battery storage, negative emissions technologies, the next generation of building materials, renewable hydrogen, and advanced nuclear — and rapidly commercialize them, ensuring that those new technologies are made in America.
President-elect Biden remarks on 01/14/2020
Biden mentions clean energy and investments in his remarks. Watch from 16.36 to 18:30
The Target
Peridot has made it clear that it is targeting a company in the clean energy space. Utilizing Jonathan Silver’s connection with the Biden administration they most likely will target a company that is within an industry Biden is looking to invest in. This company will contribute some type of innovative technology that will help pave the way for a new infrastructure that America will be built upon, an infrastructure that will provide the foundation for sustainable growth.
Dr. Sivaram has written a book outlining a plan to make the United States the leader in clean energy, Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission. He calls on the President to lead the initiative getting buy-in from Congress.
This book is a literal roadmap with line items for how much the Federal Government should budget for each sector. Dr. Sivaram makes it clear that these companies cannot just rely on VC investments. Federal funding is something Jonathan Silver is extremely familiar with.
Dr. Sivaram outlines 10 Pillars that the Federal Government should fund
Pillar 1 focuses on Foundational science and platform technologies. Below is an excerpt from the book describing Pillar 1.
Foundational scientific research across a range of fields — including advanced materials, electrochemistry, quantum computing, and genomic sciences — can enable breakthroughs in energy technologies. Moreover, platform technologies developed outside the energy sector — including 3D printing, smart manufacturing, machine learning, and digitalization — are already transforming energy systems and have the potential to unlock future emission reductions. Scientific research and platform technologies are often complementary: for example, machine learning for materials discovery can enable rapid discovery of novel materials for electrochemical devices such as batteries, fuel cells, and electrolyzers (Sivaram et al., 2020).
The other 9 Pillars include:
- Clean electricity generation
Clean electricity supply can power much of a future low-carbon economy.
- Advanced transportation systems
Advanced transportation systems can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, reduce urban congestion, improve energy security, and lower costs to consumers.
- Clean fuels
Clean fuels — including sustainable biofuels, hydrogen, ammonia, and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels that are made using energy from renewables or other lowcarbon energy sources — will be needed for multiple hard-to-decarbonize sectors.
- Modern electric power systems
Modern electric power systems featuring enhanced flexibility and digital capabilities are needed to accommodate greater penetrations of distributed and variable energy resources, enable greater consumer preference over consumption, support electrification of building, transportation, and industrial energy applications, and provide enhanced emergency preparedness and resiliency
- Clean and efficient buildings
Residential and commercial buildings are the single largest energy-consuming sector in the US economy, accounting for roughly 75 percent of the nation’s electricity use and 40 percent of its total energy demand.
- Industrial decarbonization
Heavy industry — including cement, iron and steel, and chemicals production — is especially challenging to decarbonize, due to two sets of emissions which are difficult to eliminate: high-temperature heat, which is not easily electrified; and direct carbon dioxide emissions that result from chemical transformations.
- Carbon capture, use, and sequestration
Carbon capture, use, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies prevent greenhouse gases from reaching the atmosphere.
- Clean agricultural systems
Agricultural soils have tremendous capacity to hold carbon within the top few meters of soil, currently hosting three times more carbon than is in the atmosphere.
All quotes from (Sivaram et al., 2020).
Summary
I believe Peridot is using Dr. Sivaram’s book as a blueprint for the companies they are researching/targeting. His pillars are all represented in the Biden Plan. Utilizing Dr. Sivaram as a subject matter expert, Mr. Silver’s connection to the Biden Administration, the team’s energy investing backgrounds, and the team’s financing backgrounds they are positioning themselves to merge with an attractive target. This target will have access to capital from Peridot, a connection to an expert in federal funding, and a relationship with the Biden administration.
Disclosure: I own shares in Peridot. I wrote this article myself and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company mentioned in this article. This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Do your own research before deciding to invest in any company.
