“Politicians, donors, think tanks, and media outlets in the UK and U.S. are working increasingly closely to scupper climate policies and promote fossil fuel extraction,” reports the Progressive Left climate group DeSmog. The chart below attempts to capture the players, but far too many are missing from the U.S. side. [1]
Let DeSmog know that you want in Now! Please contact Adam Barnett, the author of the article above, or DeSmog head Brendan DeMelle, at editor@desmog.com.
[1] A live interactive map can be accessed by scrolling down here.
Nishant Gupta set up a green energy hedge fund last year managing about $100m in assets, but he probably wishes he hadn’t.
His words are about as blunt as any hedge fund owner could possibly get.
Bloomberg
“The whole sector — solar, wind, hydrogen, fuel cells — anything clean is dead for now,” said Nishant Gupta, founder and chief investment officer at London-based Kanou Capital LLP.
Against a barrage of political headwinds in the US, a war-fueled energy crisis and stubbornly high interest rates, large parts of the clean-energy industry are stalling. In the past year, the S&P Global Clean Energy Index has lost 20%, a period during which the S&P 500 Index gained 16%. And with the Trump administration shredding climate policies in the world’s largest economy, many green investors are taking a timeout.
Over the last year clean energy stocks have lost 20% of their value, whereas stocks in fossil fuels are up 13%.
So ofter the last year, skeptical investors are 30% richer than their believer friends. As it should be.
Gupta now says that ““The fundamentals are very poor”. Which is true if you were fundamentally investing in government handouts.
He still claims there is some long term need for a clean energy transition, but his big plan is to find the “corners” of the market where he can identify “supply-chain bottlenecks as core investment opportunities”. Apparently that means he’s moved into companies that make compressors, vacuum systems and switches and fuses. Which sounds a lot like a man who’s stepped right out of the clean energy space.
The fall for clean energy shares started at the end of September last year, presumably as it dawned on green investors that Kamala was not going to win and keep the subsidies rolling.
The great unravelling of the Green delusion continues. Amazing that there is still 80% of the clean energy sector value left on the chopping block.
“While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
And so far, over the last 10 years, we’ve had 10 of the hottest years on record.
Didn’t he also say that restaurants would have signs in their windows that read, “Water by request only.”
Under the greenhouse effect, extreme weather increases. Depending on where you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get more of whatever you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts can get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by request only.”
When did he say this will happen?
Within 20 or 30 years. And remember we had this conversation in 1988 or 1989.
Does he still believe these things?
Yes, he still believes everything. I talked to him a few months ago and he said he wouldn’t change anything that he said then.”
First published JoNova; I wonder how many fossil fuel plants and nuclear reactors are required to service 99GW of new energy demand?
Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
Demand on the Texas power grid is expected to expand so immensely that it would take the equivalent of adding 30 nuclear plants’ worth of electricity by 2030 to meet the needs.
Author of the article: Bloomberg News Naureen S. Malik
…
The data centers “present a reliability risk to the Ercot system,” said Springer, who spoke on a panel at Infocast’s ERCOT Market Summit in Austin this week.
“We’ve never existed in a place where large industrial loads can really impact the reliability of the grid, and now we are stepping into that world.”
Risk of Grid Stress
Ercot said it’s gotten requests equal to 99 gigawatts for new connections to the grid from big power users, including data centers, bitcoin miners and hydrogen producers, according to an internal grid presentation Thursday. That’s up from 40.8 gigawatts last March.
It’s not just Texas. Across the world, new nuclear and fossil fuel capacity is being frantically constructed, by companies and governments who are frightened of falling behind.
No state is immune to this pressure. My prediction, even über green states like California will shortly cave and permit providing the gigawatts of cheap, dispatchable energy big tech requires to stay in the game, from any source available – fossil fuel, nuclear, imported, whatever they can get their hands on.
The USA isn’t the only player in town. China is going all in on artificial intelligence. Their disadvantage of being subject to sanctions is more than balanced by their enormous low cost computer chip industry and their energy surplus.
China announces high-tech fund to grow AI, emerging industries
Fresh off the global success of DeepSeek’s latest artificial intelligence reasoning model, China’s top economic officials have vowed to set up a state-backed fund to support technological innovation.
The “state venture capital guidance fund” will focus on cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology and hydrogen energy storage, Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s state economic planner, told reporters Thursday on the sidelines of the annual gatherings of China’s rubber-stamp national legislature and advisory body.
The fund is expected to attract nearly 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) in capital over 20 years from local governments and the private sector, added Zheng, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.
India is ramping up its artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem with a US$1.25 billion (Rs 10,372 crore) investment to expand its computing infrastructure and develop an accessible data repository.
Through public-private partnerships, IndiaAI Mission plans to set up a computing capacity or ‘compute’ of 10,000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Over the next five years, it will build a platform stacked with non-personal data, such as environmental data, for Indian startups and researchers.
…
India’s AI market, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 25-35% is expected to touch $US17 billion by 2027, fuelled by a growing AI workforce and an increase in generative AI investments.
Europe is showing a flicker of interest, though they are so far behind in the cheap energy game, it is doubtful if they will ever catch up. France is the only European nation which appears to be taking AI seriously.
France tempts AI firms with its nuclear electricity
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
UK-based AI cloud provider Fluidstack has signed a memorandum of understanding with the French government to construct one of the world’s largest decarbonised AI supercomputers in France. Meanwhile, utility EDF has identified four sites on its own land that it will offer for data centres.
Announced at the AI Action Summit in Paris, under the leadership of President Emmanuel Macron, the memorandum of understanding was signed by the French Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Eric Lombard, the French Minister for Industry and Energy, Marc Feracci, and Fluidstack co-founder and President, César Maklary.
If you are interested in why AI requires so much energy, this article provides some answers – and you get to play with a real artificial intelligence.
There is no chance the AI push will fizzle. Certainly the current wave contains a lot of hype, in the next few years we shall see the usual bankruptcies as companies riding the wave but with nothing substantial to offer run out of shareholder’s cash. But the underlying technology is sound. Companies are already making enormous profits using artificial intelligence to perform accelerated drug discovery and repurposing, intelligence analysis, semantic analysis and collation of news and events, and bringing greater than human capabilities to forward planning, strategy and scientific research.
At least one political leader gets it.
In this race, there is no prize for second place.
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