David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Energy

    Tesla Shares Drop After Investor Day Without Any New Models

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “I’d love to really show you what I mean and unveil the next-gen car, but you’re going to have to trust me on that until a later date,” Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s design chief, said at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. “We’ll always be delivering exciting, compelling and desirable vehicles, as we always have.”

    Tesla shares fell as much as 8.6% as of 8:40 a.m. Thursday in New York, before the start of regular trading. Anticipation of the event contributed to a surge in the stock that added more than $300 billion of market value in two months.

    Letdown
    Musk, 51, confirmed Tesla will build a new plant in Monterrey, Mexico, in what he said was probably the most significant announcement of the day. The chief executive officer said Tesla will make its next-gen vehicle there, and that the company will hold a grand opening and groundbreaking at an
    unspecified date.

    When asked when the carmaker will show a prototype and if he could share details about the size, content and performance of the vehicle, Musk responded that Tesla also will hold a “proper sort of product event” at some point, but didn’t say when.

    “We’re gonna go as fast as we can,” said Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering. “We expect that to be a huge-volume product.”
     

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    First Solar Shares Surge to 14-Year High as Order Backlog Swells

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    The surging demand comes as the company is poised to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate bill signed last year by President Joe Biden that subsidizes domestic manufacturing. Even before the bill passed, First Solar saw strong demand for its modules. It has since announced a new factory in Alabama and Chief Executive Officer Mark Widmar indicated on an earnings call that further expansion is possible.

    The years-long backlog of orders caught the attention of analysts and investors. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Brian Lee boosted the price target on the stock to a Wall Street-high of $260 from $231 on Wednesday, noting the company is “booking well into the 2nd half of the decade at this point.”

    The US is expected to significantly boost its reliance on solar power in its push to slash carbon emissions. First Solar, the country’s biggest panel maker, has focused on dominating that market.

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    France Forges Pact to Make Nuclear Part of EU Clean Energy Shift

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    “The US, the UK, South Korea, China, India and even Japan are contemplating using nuclear energy as an important means to decarbonize their economies, and we need to be on the same level playing field,” Pannier-Runacher said Monday.

    The next battleground is a definition of “green hydrogen” in an EU directive known as RED3, which would set targets for using the fuel in industry and transport. France is pushing for nuclear to be considered a clean energy source, while countries such as Spain and Germany are focusing on hydrogen derived from renewables such as wind or solar.

    The EU sees hydrogen as a key pillar of its efforts to slash emissions by 55% by 2030. The outcome of the negotiations could jeopardize a flagship project to pump the fuel from Barcelona to Marseille and then onto Berlin via a pipeline, known as BarMar or H2Med.

    France’s Hydrogen Pipeline With Spain at Risk Over Green Rules For “green investments,” France has already reached a compromise with Germany to allow nuclear energy and natural gas to receive funding from environmental investors. While that added the two energy sources to the so-called EU taxonomy — a list of activities deemed in line with the bloc’s transition to climate neutrality — there are still concerns the move could divert investment away from renewables.

    The French initiative was welcomed by a number of other EU nations. “We are happy that nuclear somehow came back to the discussion in the EU  — years ago it was kind of a forbidden topic,” said Anna Moskwa, Poland’s minister of climate and environment. “It is of our common interest to build stable sources, that is why Poland decided to develop nuclear.”

     

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    European Gas Reaches Tipping Point to Price Out Coal in Power

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    European gas prices rose amid expectations of higher demand from power producers, after a recent slump improved the profitability of the fuel compared to coal. Benchmark futures have been fluctuating near €50 over the last few days after plunging about 35% since the start of the year. Together with surging carbon prices, that could rein in an increased reliance on coal to produce electricity, but also prevent gas prices from falling further. 

    Last year, coal-fired power generation in Europe increased by about 1.5 percentage points versus 2021, ending a steady decline in coal usage rates, according to Eurasia Group. That was mainly driven by a surge in gas prices after Russia cut supplies. 

    Not all countries in Europe still use significant amounts of coal, but for those that do — such as Germany and the Netherlands — the switch to gas is becoming more likely, according to Fabian Ronningen, a senior analyst for power and renewables research at Norwegian consultant Rystad Energy AS. 

    “The situation we have seen over the last few weeks has been the closest competition between coal and gas in a very long time,” he said. It remains to be seen whether increases in gas generation will outpace the rise in coal usage this month, he added, since infrastructure bottlenecks and fuel availability
    can have an impact.
     

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    US Natural Gas Futures Slump to a 28-Month Low on Warm Weather

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest. Here is a section: 

    US natural gas futures slumped to the lowest in 28 months as weather forecasts have shifted milder since last week, further eroding the prospect for heating demand this winter.

    Gas for March delivery dropped 4% to $2.183 per mmbtu as of 8:51 a.m. in New York
    Futures touched $2.168 earlier, the lowest since Sept. 2020

    Weather across the eastern two-thirds is looking warmer next week when compared with Friday’s outlook, with above-usual temperatures expected for southern states: Maxar.
    See WHUT for a map of latest 6-10 day weather forecast: NOAA

    “The market appears ready to push natural gas steeply lower until storage surpluses stop ballooning and/or production responds more vigorously to lower prices,” analysts at EBW AnalyticsGroup said in a note to clients

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    George Soros on Climate Change, China, Elections

    This video of George Soros’s speech at the Munich security conference over the weekend may be of interest. 

    How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

    This article from Seymour Hersh’s Substack may be of interest. Here is a section: 

    In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.

    It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to the President be reversible—such as another layer of sanctions and currency restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?

    What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of the President.

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    Baltic Nations Go LNG Hunting as Prices Fall, Terminal Opens

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Several customers on our different markets, who used alternative fuels in the meantime, are already returning to natural gas,” Margus Kaasik, chief executive officer of Eesti Gaas, said in a statement. 
    While demand in the Baltics is small compared with major consumers such as Germany or France, the increased buying activity may be a sign that the uptick in demand is here to stay. 

    Europe has been lucky with mild weather this winter, which means that gas stockpiles are 68% full, compared with an average of 48% for this time of year. Utilities are now shifting their focus to restocking for the summer season. 

    Eesti Gaas also secured three slots at the Klaipeda LNG terminal in Lithuania, with one cargo delivered in January by Equinor ASA, and two more to follow in March. 

    The company is now preparing a tender for the seven slots it has booked at Inkoo. The floating terminal arrived at the end of last year and by mid-January, the facility was ready to receive shipments. 

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    Dash for $10 Trillion of Metals for Energy Transition Starts Now

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest. Here is a section: 

    Getting to net zero could require almost $10 trillion of metals between now and 2050, according to BNEF, with annual demand peaking at close to $450 billion in the mid-2030s. While steel and aluminum are expected to see the most demand growth in terms of absolute volume, copper is set to be the most valuable opportunity, with an estimated $3.4 trillion of the red metal needed to avert climate disaster.

    In total, a whopping 5.2 billion metric tons of metals will be necessary to underpin a net-zero transition, with nearly four times as much metal due to be consumed in 2050 versus today.

     

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    In the Struggle for Big Oil's Soul, the American Vision Wins Out

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    Shell Plc, BP Plc and TotalEnergies SE have spent the last few years trying to convince investors about the merits of net-zero carbon and investment into renewables. But in 2022 they switched to showering them with tens of billions of dollars earned from pumping oil and gas, just like their US peers. 

    The change of course was triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which shifted governments’ focus back to energy security and created a huge gap in Europe’s oil and gas supplies that the majors are well placed to fill. 

    “Oil production will be back above 2019 levels,” said BP Chief Executive Officer Bernard Looney, a change in tone from 2020 when he suggested that peak demand may already have been reached. “Demand for this product is strong.”

    Shell has said it will pause the growth in spending at its renewables unit while expanding gas output. BP slowed the planned decline in its fossil fuel production and scaled back its target for emissions reductions. TotalEnergies is opening new liquefied natural gas import terminals in Europe so it can keep growing a business that expanded by 15% in 2022.

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