Energy Efficiency or Uptime First?

​The hosts:

• ​Jan Palasinski, Future Energy Ventures

• ​Adele Unneberg, Sandwater

​What is this Ripple about?

​Everyone talks about energy efficiency in industry, but operators are concerned over machines going down. In this Ripple, we’ll discuss what really drives buying decisions: saving energy or avoiding downtime and what that means for climate tech founders and investors.

​⁠Why this topic timely or urgent in 2026

​Industrial AI and predictive maintenance tools are gaining real traction, while many pure efficiency solutions still struggle to get through long procurement cycles. At the same time, industry is under pressure facing tighter margins, volatile energy prices, and rising decarbonization targets. In this environment, companies invest where the pain is highest, and that may not always be energy bills. Understanding this shift is crucial for anyone building or backing industrial climate tech.

​⁠Key questions or challenges being explored

• ​Whose KPI wins: the energy manager’s savings target or the operations manager’s uptime target?

• ​Which solutions stick: If energy efficiency is a cyclical priority, what are the attributes of related technology solutions that drive staying power through price cycles?

• ​Will AI-driven operations and maintenance systems unlock energy efficiency as a side effect?

• ​In such a fragmented market, can there be a global winner or rather many local champions?

​⁠The main tension or debate at the heart of this discussion

​Industrial sovereignty: can it be a VC case or not?

​Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?

​Founders building AI solutions for industrial customers, corporate innovation teams, and investors trying to understand what actually scales in industrial decarbonization.