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The Guest Chair is where we share what we learn from inviting industry specialists into Eleven’s weekly meetings – practitioners who spend every day inside the markets and sectors we are building conviction in.
Our latest guest is Zlati Christov, CIO of JERA Nex bp, previously Head of EMEA Renewables at Morgan Stanley for 14 years, and someone who has seen the energy sector from every angle – the deals, the capital flows, and the day-to-day reality of building renewables at scale. Here is what he told us.
The money is not going where the headlines suggest
If you follow the news, especially out of the US, the energy conversation seems dominated by oil, gas, and geopolitics. The numbers tell a different story. Of approximately $3.5 trillion invested globally in energy last year, around $2.3 trillion went into clean energy. That is close to two-thirds of all capital deployed. Two decades ago, total global energy investment was roughly $150-200 billion per year. The scale of the shift is hard to overstate.
Even in the US, despite the current administration’s positioning, around 50% of energy investments last year went into clean energy. What is actually being built there right now is solar, storage, and wind. Not new gas plants.
“For me, investments are the real indicator. They reflect where the future is going.”
What "energy transition" actually means
The sector shorthand is “from molecules to electrons.” For most of the last century, energy meant molecules – oil, gas, coal. What is happening now is a structural shift toward electrification, the same outcomes delivered by electricity instead. Transport, home heating, industrial processes, all moving onto the grid. That shift is driving electricity demand up significantly and creating the need for new generation, new grid infrastructure, and new storage, all at the same time.
The economics are already clear. The system costs are not.
Solar electricity in Central and Northern Europe now costs €50-60 per megawatt-hour. In Southern Europe, €30-40. A new gas plant produces electricity at €120-130 per megawatt-hour.
"On pure generation cost, renewables have already won. The real question is what it costs to run the whole system – and what cannot be electrified at all."
Zlati Christov
CIO, JERA Nex bp
But running a grid on 100% renewables requires double or triple the installed capacity to cover intermittency. It requires storage, grid balancing, and flexibility services. When you factor in all of those system costs, the picture gets more complex. This is not an argument against the transition. It is an argument for why storage, grid software, and flexibility technologies matter as much as generation itself.
Current mainstream battery storage covers 4 hours. Advanced systems can do 8. A country like Spain, with 10+ hours of sunshine, still needs to cover the rest of the day somehow.
Long-duration storage, whether compressed air, alternative materials, or pumped hydro, is one of the more significant unsolved problems in the sector right now, and still just one piece of a much larger puzzle. To understand where the sector is heading, it helps to zoom out. Zlati pointed to five forces shaping where capital is going.
The five themes driving investment
- Surging electricity demand. Driven by electrification in transport, buildings, and industry. Data centres get the headlines, but transport is the larger factor.
- Grid infrastructure. Europe’s grid was largely built in the 1950s-80s. Integrating renewables at scale requires massive modernisation of both transmission and distribution networks.
- Energy security and geopolitics. Around 90% of solar panels and batteries are manufactured in China. The EU and US are spending heavily to change that, creating new industrial policies and market structures.
- Digitisation and AI. Every layer of the energy system is being digitised. AI is being applied to optimise production, consumption, and grid management.
- Cybersecurity. Europe’s energy system spans 27 countries with broadly unified standards. As it digitises, it becomes more vulnerable. Cyber-physical threats to energy infrastructure are a growing and underappreciated risk.
What we're looking at
Energy is one of the new areas we are moving into with our next fund. We have spent time building conviction in this space, talking to operators, investors, and founders, understanding where the real problems are and where new companies can make a meaningful difference. This is part of that process.
The verticals that stand out to us, and that Zlati’s perspective reinforced, are:
📍 New generation technologies. Next-generation solar cells, deep geothermal drilling using techniques borrowed from oil and gas. Both are areas where new companies can make real progress.
📍 Grid flexibility software. The grid needs software that can manage batteries, industrial loads, and demand response in real time, matching supply and demand as generation shifts minute to minute. Zlati pointed to Kraken in the UK as an example: a B2B software platform that manages flexible energy assets for utilities and grid operators, integrating weather data, consumption patterns, and grid signals to optimise flows.
📍 Distributed energy and home electrification. Germany has seen significant investment in companies offering turnkey residential solar, battery, and EV charging solutions, managed through an app and integrated with the grid. Business models combine installation revenue with recurring subscription income.
📍 Commercial EV and fleet electrification. Fleet operators need integrated solutions: charging infrastructure, fleet management, energy procurement, and battery lifecycle management together. One example Zlati raised: electric bus batteries degrade faster than car batteries, but once removed from a bus they still have enough capacity for grid services. At least one company has built a business around connecting those retired batteries to the electricity network as distributed storage.
📍 Cybersecurity for energy infrastructure. As grids digitise, the attack surface grows. This has specific technical requirements in the energy context but sits naturally alongside the broader cybersecurity investment landscape.
Why now
At Eleven, we do not stay in our lane out of habit. When we build conviction about a space, when we see the market scale, the founder opportunity, and a place where we can genuinely help, we move. Energy is that space for us right now.
If you are a founder building in the energy transition, we want to hear from you. And if you are an expert or investor in the space who wants to exchange perspectives, we are building that community. Reach out.
