Tag Archives: fossil fuels

Three Mile Island

A lot of people probably don’t realize that 2 of the 4 reactors at Three Mile Island have been operational without issues since the 1970s. They are projected to be shut down next year.

Across the U.S., more communities are grappling with such questions, as the owners of nuclear plants dating back to the 1960s and ’70s begin to put their facilities into premature retirement. That’s because the plants are having trouble staying competitive in an era of cheap natural gas, a product of the shale boom. Also, nuclear power’s attraction as a clean energy source has been eclipsed by no-emissions alternatives such as wind and solar power.

One enemy of the nuclear industry in Pennsylvania is natural gas lobbyists.

Even so, nuclear advocates have thus far had better success mobilizing resources at the state level. In Illinois, the state that leads the U.S. in nuclear power generation, lawmakers passed controversial legislation in 2016 to subsidize nuclear plants with so-called zero-emission credits. Exelon, which operates the largest nuclear fleet in the nation, owns the state’s six operational sites.

States including New York and New Jersey have enacted similar policies. Pennsylvania has been a tougher sell. A nuclear energy caucus in the state legislature has failed to pass anything helpful yet. Its efforts have been stymied, in part, by forces supporting the state’s booming natural gas industry.

 

Vicar of Bray

Michael Liebreich at Bloomberg New Energy Finance describes renewable energy investments some oil and gas companies are making, which he calls the “Vicar of Bray”. I don’t quite get the reason for that name.

Under the first strategy – which we could call the Vicar of Bray  – oil and gas companies attempt to maintain leadership of the commanding heights of the energy industry as it shifts away from fossil fuels to clean energy, through a perfectly-timed and elegantly-executed redirection of capital and human capacity.

Early attempts at the Vicar of Bray include BP’s famous “Beyond Petroleum” rebranding under Lord Browne in 2000 – which was followed by the investment of $8 billion in clean energy, some of which was later written off. Similarly, Shell tried to gain a leadership position in the nascent solar sector by buying Siemens Solar in 2002; six years later it sold the sub-scale and failing operation. David Crane, former CEO of NRG, famously failed in his attempt to turn it into a clean energy company.

Today, it looks like all the major European oil companies are planning on some variant of Vicar of Bray. Shell (disclosure: whose New Energies Advisory Board I recently joined) has announced its intention to invest $2 billion per year in its New Energies division until 2020, out of its total capital spending of $25-30 billion; BP is investing a more modest $0.5 billion out of its $15 billion capex budget. French oil giant Total has committed to 20 percent low-carbon businesses within 20 years (although this includes mid-stream and down-stream gas). Statoil has been investing in floating offshore wind as well as carbon capture and sequestration, and this year announced its relaunch as Equinor, removing “oil” from its name, if not from its cash flows.

Boulder vs. Exxon

Boulder, Colorado is suing Exxon.

The politically liberal town known as the gateway to the Rocky Mountains and two counties in the same neck of the woods said Colorado’s economy depends on snow, water and cool weather when they accused Exxon Mobil Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. of “causing and exacerbating climate change” in a state-court lawsuit filed Tuesday…

The Colorado communities said they’re facing expenses and costs related to earlier snow melt, which has increased the risk of forest fires, dried-out soil, beetle outbreaks and drought.

The lawsuit joins others against fossil fuel companies filed by California and New York communities, but this is the first brought by an interior state. “Colorado is one of the fastest-warming states in the nation,” Elise Jones, Boulder County Commissioner said in a statement. “Climate change is not just about sea level rise. It affects all of us in the middle of the country as well.”

big banks divesting from dirtiest fossil fuels

A number of banks have stopped funding new coal and tar sand projects due to climate risk, including HSBC.

Europe’s largest bank HSBC said on Friday it would mostly stop funding new coal power plants, oil sands and arctic drilling, becoming the latest in a long line of investors to shun the fossil fuels.

Other large banks such as ING and BNP Paribas have made similar pledges in recent months as investors have mounted pressure to make sure bank’s actions align with the Paris Agreement, a global pact to limit greenhouse gas emissions and curb rising temperatures.

I might like to believe that the finance industry has become socially responsible, but I don’t. It is completely amoral. Still, that means that when it thinks there is a significant risk to investment returns and takes action as a result, we can assume the risk is real.

 

Exxon vs. climate

Exxon is getting in trouble in Massachusetts:

Exxon Mobil Corp. suffered another legal defeat in its attempt to dodge state investigations into whether the company’s public comments about climate change misled investors for years.

Massachusetts’ top court on Friday affirmed a judge’s decision that Exxon must hand over documents dating back to 1976 to Attorney General Maura Healey. The court also agreed that Exxon’s 300 Mobil-branded franchise service stations in the state give Healey jurisdiction over the Texas-based company.

Weighing in on the overall environmental threat at the heart of the dispute, the court wrote that Healey’s investigation concerns climate change “caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions — a distinctly modern threat that grows more serious with time, and the effects of which are already being felt in Massachusetts.”

coal industry collapse

The stocks of U.S. coal companies have almost completely collapsed.

But times have changed, and the market value of coal companies has collapsed. The four largest coal companies were worth a combined $21.7 billion dollars in June 2010. Now they’re worth $1.2 billion. Two other large coal concerns, Patriot and James River, have both filed for bankruptcy in recent years. And one market analyst told the Financial Times in February to expect “multiple bankruptcies in US coal over the next 12-18 months.”

They blame it on a combination of low natural gas prices and government regulation. I think it has more to do with the former – natural gas is cleaner and newly cheap, so there is just no reason to stay with coal. The regulators have probably been emboldened because they see that there are clear alternatives. There is no mention of renewables in this article, but I suspect they play a role.