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

    Panasonic Is the Latest Company Betting on Electric Vehicles, Powering Past Its Tesla Partnership to Explore a Venture in Norway

    This article by Jack Denton for Barrons may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Europe is one of the fastest-moving spaces in the race to dominate an expected boom in electric vehicles, with at least 12 countries planning a ban on internal combustion engine vehicles in coming years. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday a ban on the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars, to come into effect by 2030.

    Tesla is building a gigafactory in Germany and is reportedly planning one in the U.K., while one of its key rivals, Northvolt, is building a gigafactory in Sweden. Established European car makers like Daimler, Volkswagen, and BMW are racing to build electric vehicles on their own or through partnerships, and Panasonic has previously supplied batteries to Volkswagen and Peugeot.

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    Batteries of the Future Are Weightless and Invisible

    This article by Daniel Oberhaus for Wired.com may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Unlike the carbon-fiber and lithium-ion sheets being developed by Asp and Greenhalgh, Kotov and his students created a zinc-air structural battery for their automatons. This cell chemistry is able to store much more energy than conventional Li-ion cells. It consists of a zinc anode, a carbon cloth cathode, and a semi-rigid electrolyte made from polymer-based nanofibers that is nanoengineered to mimic cartilage. The energy carriers in this type of battery are hydroxide ions that are produced when oxygen from the air interacts with the zinc.

    While structural batteries for vehicles are highly rigid, the cell developed by Kotov’s team is meant to be pliable to cope with the movements of the robots. They’re also incredibly energy-dense. As Kotov and his team detailed in a paper published earlier this year, their structural batteries have 72 times the energy capacity of a conventional lithium-ion cell of the same volume. For now, their batteries are being used to power robotic toys and small drones as a proof of concept. But Kotov says he expects they’ll be used in midsize robots as well as larger hobby drones in the not-so-distant future. “Drones and medium-size robots need to have new solutions for energy storage,” Kotov says. “I can guarantee you that structural batteries will be a part of that.”

    The battery has always been an addendum, a limiting factor, and a parasite. Today it’s vanishing before our eyes, melting into the fabric of our electrified world. In the future, everything will be a battery, and stand-alone energy storage will seem as quaint as landline telephones and portable CD players. It’s a disappearing act worthy of a great magician: Now you see it—and soon you won’t.

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    World Energy Outlook 2020

    This summary report from the IEA may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Renewables grow rapidly in all our scenarios, with solar at the centre of this new constellation of electricity generation technologies. Supportive policies and maturing technologies are enabling very cheap access to capital in leading markets. With sharp cost reductions over the past decade, solar PV is consistently cheaper than new coal- or gasfired power plants in most countries, and solar projects now offer some of the lowest cost electricity ever seen. In the STEPS, renewables meet 80% of the growth in global electricity demand to 2030. Hydropower remains the largest renewable source of electricity, but solar is the main driver of growth as it sets new records for deployment each year after 2022, followed by onshore and offshore wind. The advance of renewable sources of generation, and of solar in particular, as well as the contribution of nuclear power, is much stronger in the SDS and NZE2050. The pace of change in the electricity sector puts an additional premium on robust grids and other sources of flexibility, as well as reliable supplies of the critical minerals and metals that are vital to its secure transformation. Storage plays an increasingly vital role in ensuring the flexible operation of power systems, with India becoming the largest market for utility-scale battery storage.

    …but the downturn creates risks for the backbone of today’s power systems
    Electricity grids could prove to be the weak link in the transformation of the power sector, with implications for the reliability and security of electricity supply. The projected requirement for new transmission and distribution lines worldwide in the STEPS is 80% greater over the next decade than the expansion seen over the last ten years. The importance of electricity networks rises even more in faster energy transitions. However, the financial health of many utilities, especially in developing economies, has worsened as a result of the crisis. There is a disparity in many countries between the spending required for smart, digital and flexible electricity networks and the revenues available to grid operators, creating a risk to the adequacy of investment under today’s regulatory structures.

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    Email of the day on hydrogen investments

    Given hydrogen powered energy is an emerging trend I would be grateful! Mr. Treacy could mention the name of related ETFs or any other tradable security that would provide exposure to this trend.

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    Pfizer Soars After Vaccine Prevents 90% of Covid Cases in Study

    This article by Robert Langreth, Naomi Kresge and Riley Griffin for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
     

    However, the strong reading from the first large-scale trial to post efficacy results bodes well for other experimental vaccines, in particular one being developed by Moderna Inc. that uses similar technology. Its big trial could generate efficacy and safety results in weeks. If that study succeeds as well, there could be two vaccines available in the U.S. by around year-end.

    Pfizer expects to get two months of safety follow-up data, a key metric required by U.S. regulators before an emergency authorization is granted, in the third week in November. If those findings raise no problems, Pfizer could apply for an authorization in the U.S. this month. A rolling review is in process in Europe.

    So far, the trial’s data monitoring committee has identified no serious safety concerns, Pfizer and BioNTech said.

    Leading the Race
    The positive preliminary data mean the U.S. pharma giant and its German partner are on track to be first with a vaccine, after signing advance deals with governments worldwide for hundreds of thousands of doses. The companies have said they should be able to produce 1.3 billion doses -- enough to vaccinate 650 million people -- by the end of 2021. About 50 million doses are expected to be available in 2020.

    “It shows that Covid-19 can be controlled,” BioNTech Chief Executive Officer Ugur Sahin said in an interview. “At the end of the day, it’s really a victory of science.”

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    Correction Here. Now What?

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Morgan Stanley which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    China's Fifth Plenum: Reading the Initial Tea Leaves

    This article from the Center for Strategic & International Studies may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    As expected, the plenum declared that China had met the critical political goal of becoming a “moderately prosperous society” in 2020. By the end of the year, China’s GDP is expected to reach nearly 100 trillion yuan (RMB)—equivalent to $14.3 trillion—a figure higher than the plan’s forecast of RMB 92.7 trillion, which makes China’s economy in nominal terms about 66.7 percent the size of that of the United States in 2019 ($21.4 trillion), up from 40.6 percent the size of the United States in 2010. China reportedly lifted 55.75 million people out of poverty and created 60 million jobs in urban areas over the past half-decade. By the end of 2020, there will be basic medical insurance coverage for 1.3 billion and basic pension support for nearly 1 billion citizens.

    Looking ahead, the plenum emphasized that the 14th Five-Year Plan will build on the 13th Five-Year Plan’s principles of innovation, regional coordination, green development, international openness, and social equity. That said, there was a distinct emphasis on strengthening the domestic economy. There was no mention of a growth rate target; instead, the country will focus on improving quality and raising productivity. The plan will highlight China’s need to gain technological independence; become a powerhouse in manufacturing, cyber, and the digital economy; and raise China’s international competitiveness. At the same time, China will need to expand domestic consumption as a share of the economy, which will be dependent on raising wages, building a more complete social safety net, and expanding economic opportunities in rural China.

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    Email of the day - on solar/wind power to generate hydrogen

    The Australian government just approved fast tracking the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (asianrehub.com) proposed to be built in the Pilbara. It will generate green hydrogen from water using solar and wind energy that can produce clean ammonia to power ships, generate power and be used as a feed-stock for industrial processes. They say it will be the world's biggest power station at 26,000MW, covering 6500 square kilometers of land. It will start exporting in 2028.

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    The Race to Hydrogen Goes Beyond Brexit With Italy-U.K. Deal

    This article by Chiara Albanese and Alberto Brambilla for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Italy’s Snam SpA will brush aside Brexit and invest 33 million euros ($39 million) in ITM Power Plc, which produces electrolyzers, a crucial component in the hydrogen technology.

    The investment is part of a 150-million pound ($197 million) capital increase by ITM. The accord is part of Snam’s expansion in the technology after the European Union put hydrogen at the heart of its measures to cut greenhouse gases and become climate neutral by 2050. Hydrogen, if made with renewables, could replace coal, oil, and eventually natural gas, and help eliminate about a third of emissions from industries like steel and cement by mid-century, according to BloombergNEF.

    “The hydrogen sector is like the internet before the dot com boom,” Marco Alvera, chief executive officer of Snam, said in an interview. “What matters now is to unlock potential technology and to find the right positioning.”

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    Belt up for the coming 'Global Super Cycle' and a $100 trillion World by 2023

    Thanks to a subscriber for this note from EM Capital Advisors. Here is a section:

    The Emerging Market (EM) share of world output in the last 20 years doubled from 19% to 38% with the EM world growing at about double the rate of the Developed world (DM). This kept the total world growth at a 3-3.5% range over the last decade despite every region in the world growing a little slower than in the previous decade.

    The implications of the swings in the global deflator and the FX on businesses and global incomes was much larger than most imagined which is visible in Fig 1 above. It breaks down the nominal world output and its components showing that the world in real terms grew at a pretty even rate of 3-3.5% through most of the last twenty years, with the swing in the ‘Deflator+FX component’ creating the big booms or bust feel in the world.

    We are entering another such ‘Supercycle’ which was born about a quarter ago. Our definition of a supercycle is nominal World Output growing at 8-10% for a few years lifting most boats globally. Our view on the components of this global Supercycle are essentially building in a few key assumptions –

    1. The World growth in real terms continues in the 3% +/- 1% range after normalizing to pre Covid levels in real terms by 2022. This is line with the IMF and many other estimates.

    2. We expect the Global deflator to stay elevated in the 2-4% range for the next few years driven by stimulative fiscal and monetary policy by most large world economies. This would be aided by a weaker US$ and concurrent to it.

    3. The US$ weakens 3-4% per annum for the next few years with rising deficits, with the Chinese Yuan doing the heavy lifting on the other side. The Yuan weakness in the previous few years had prevented this from playing out earlier. This paves the way for a strong Asian and EM FX basket which together account for about half of the world output. This is in a way similar to what happened in 2003-2005.

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