Social Wealth and Financing the Energy Transition

Sina Sinai

Senior Research Associate

Sina Sinai is a Senior Research Associate at JFI. He started his career at BlackRock working as a quantitative analyst supporting systematic investors across global equity markets. After spending time as a data scientist at a San Francisco startup, he joined the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign as Data Director. Immediately prior to JFI, he worked as a data scientist and machine learning engineer at Grow Therapy, where he designed and implemented the algorithms powering their marketplace. He is currently a graduate student studying Economics at CUNY John Jay College and holds a degree in Applied Mathematics from UCLA.

Related Publication Series

Financing the Energy Transition

This series presents at investors and policymakers with a high-level picture of the factors influencing the financing and bankability of green technologies in the United States. For each technology -- including nuclear, solar, wind, hydrogen, long duration energy storage, carbon capture, and industrial decarbonization -- our team of data analysts and market experts conducts in-depth interviews with investors and scholars to ground sector-specific levelized cost models. These models, in turn, allow us to capture the key sensitivities governing each technology's cost profile and identify the most important levers for optimizing their financial viability. With these reports, we aim to equip decisionmakers, on both the investment and the policy sides, with the insights they need in order to make informed decisions that will accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Mineral Wealth and Electrification

The energy transition represents a significant opportunity for countries producing the materials critical to electrification. In this series, we look at eight such materials: aluminum, cobalt, copper, natural graphite, iron, lithium, manganese, and nickel. As demand for so-called “critical minerals” grows, producer countries must develop robust strategies for effective value capture to transform a temporary windfall into an opportunity to grow shared wealth and climb the value chain. Doing so demands both institutional capacity and political will.

Related Initiatves

Financing the Energy Transition

Social Wealth

We build tools, conduct research, and develop partnerships to help transform public assets into long-term financial portfolios in service of the public interest.