Investment

Sierra Club Welcomes MassPRIM Climate-Risk Review, Urges Accountability in Manager Selection

7 hours Sierra Club 0 Comments

Massachusetts pension fund says review findings will inform manager-quality evaluations & selection. The Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board (MassPRIM) has completed a review of how active equity managers assess climate-transition risk in high-emitting portfolio companies and incorporate that analysis into their investment decisions. The fund plans to use the findings in … [continued]

TFIE infographic unpacking Germany’s nearly 6 GW hydrogen reservation headline into 2.7 GW of entry capacity, 2.3 GW of exit capacity and 0.6 GW of inter-cluster transport. It shows reservations equal only about 3.3% of planned entry capacity and 2.7% of planned exit capacity, while reservation fees are only 2.5%–4% of annual capacity tariffs. Germany’s 6 GW hydrogen headline shrinks sharply once the reservations and planned network are unpacked.

Germany’s Hydrogen Industry Is Overselling Its 6 GW Reservation Headline

1 day Michael Barnard 0 Comments

Germany’s hydrogen industry finally has a demand number it can put in a headline: nearly 6 GW of paid reservations on the country’s emerging hydrogen core network. FNB Gas presented the reservations and customers’ willingness to pay as a strong indication that the hydrogen economy is gathering momentum. Six gigawatts … [continued]

TFIE Strategy Briefing graphic showing a nuclear plant under construction above four supporting layers labeled state direction, public finance, ratepayer support, and guarantees and backstops. The graphic asks “Who carries new nuclear?” and emphasizes that there is no revenue during construction and years of risk before payback. New nuclear becomes financeable by shifting construction, financing or revenue risk toward governments, state institutions and regulated electricity customers.

New Nuclear Gets Built When Governments Run Development & Taxpayers Take The Risk

3 days Michael Barnard 0 Comments

Nuclear power works. It produces low-carbon electricity, avoids the health burden of fossil-fuel combustion, provides firm generation and can operate for many decades. My skepticism about building large new nuclear fleets has never depended on pretending otherwise. The more interesting question is why countries that have built nuclear successfully have … [continued]

TFIE Strategy Briefing graphic showing electricity planning, markets and project pipelines flowing toward a central grid-delivery bottleneck before reaching operating flexibility, illustrating that power systems often understand and plan for flexibility faster than they deliver it. Across 25 assessed power systems, planning, markets and project pipelines are consistently more mature than the delivered portfolios needed to provide dependable flexibility.

Power Systems Have More Flexibility Plans Than Flexible Grids

4 days Michael Barnard 0 Comments

Grid flexibility is easy to mistake for a technology market. One jurisdiction announces several gigawatt-hours of batteries, another creates a new ancillary-service product, and a third launches a capacity auction, pumped-hydro program or demand-response target. Those are meaningful signs of activity, but they do not answer the harder question: can … [continued]

TFIE graphic contrasting a compact closed-loop supercritical CO₂ industrial system with large carbon-capture pipeline infrastructure and a proposed supercritical-CO₂ power cycle, illustrating that a useful fluid does not automatically make a viable large-scale system. Supercritical CO₂ is genuinely useful in compact, controlled industrial systems, but those successes do not by themselves justify climate-scale carbon pipelines or a broad new thermal-power market.

Supercritical CO₂ Is Useful. The System Claims Are The Problem.

5 days Michael Barnard 0 Comments

Supercritical carbon dioxide is genuinely useful stuff. Above roughly 31° Celsius and 73.8 bar, CO₂ enters a state that combines gas-like flow behavior with densities that can become much closer to liquids. Engineers have found good uses for that combination. It can extract caffeine from coffee, separate valuable compounds from … [continued]

Sierra Club Urges SEC to Preserve Climate Disclosure Rule as Comment Period Closes

1 week Sierra Club 0 Comments

Sierra Club submits grassroots comment letter from more than 2,000 members and supporters alongside WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the public comment period closes today on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposal to rescind its 2024 climate disclosure rule, the Sierra Club submitted and joined multiple filings opposing the rollback. These include an … [continued]

Rivian Posts Positive News, Stock Price Drops

2 weeks Z. S. 0 Comments

Rivian’s second quarter financials and shareholder call this week came with some good news. Naturally, that means the stock price is down. (Sorry, Rivian stock holders.) I’ll come back to that at the end. Followup interviews have also brought positive news. First, let’s just do a quick bullet list of … [continued]