Venture capital (VC) firms got burned ten years ago trying to leverage a consumer-business model into the capital-intensive energy sector. As VC firms have grown, their appetite for making larger, transformative investments has returned. Many investments are stretching the bounds of traditional capital stack structure, with asset deployment-focused investors supporting VC-backed companies, corporate VC leveraging parent company balance sheets and networks, and infrastructure financers finding new ways to work with early-stage technology firms. How do recent investments in climate and clean tech stretch the ordinary bounds of energy investing? Will institutional investors redefine the market? With private equity increasingly comfortable with technology risk and VC increasingly comfortable with scale, how do energy companies differentiate between their counterparties and competitors?