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Strategies & Market Trends : The Financial Collapse of 2001 Unwinding -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: robert b furman who wrote (12848)7/29/2024 11:32:16 AM
From: Elroy Jetson  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 13780
 
Those electric cars are virtually the only cars sold in China.

All very heavily subsidized by Xi's communist state.
.

Here in the free world hybrids are the big sellers.



To: robert b furman who wrote (12848)9/2/2024 2:59:42 AM
From: elmatador  Respond to of 13780
 
Hi Bob! Interesting your post about Natural Gas and Data centers in the Big Dog thread.

Gas pipelines are hot! Here in Kenya, we can connect data centers to readily available 90% renewable energy, but in the US it is tough. Your data center site needs to be served by a gas pipeline to generate on-site electricity.

Pipeline Firms are in Talks With Data Centers About Gas Supply
Companies Running Data Centers. , They Want to Ensure Gas Will Be Available — and Quickly Obtainable — When They Need It.
Williams Cos. CEO, Alan Armstrong, said on a call with analysts this week. “We, frankly, are kind of overwhelmed with the number of requests that we’re dealing with, and we are trying to make sense of those projects,”
https://www.ttnews.com/articles/pipeline-data-centers-gas
Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE: KMI)Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 41

Duquesne Capital's Stake: $134,185,000

Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE:KMI) operates as an energy infrastructure company primarily in North America. Many investors are focusing on the nuclear aspect of AI data center power needs.

However, natural gas is also expected to play an important role in the generation of new electricity that is needed for data centers of the future.

The company has a solid financial profile with an impressive dividend history. The firm is in prime position to capitalize on the AI data center boom as it controls more than 66,000 miles of natural gas pipelines that move 40% of the natural gas throughout the United States.

Last month, Argus analyst Bill Selesky upgraded Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE:KMI) stock to Buy from Hold with a $24 price target. In an investor note, the analyst detailed that the Q2 EPS growth of the firm reflected increased earnings results from the Natural Gas Pipelines, Products Pipelines, and Terminals segments.

He further added that the company was positioned for accelerating growth in the near term as demand for natural gas continued to increase in consumer, commercial, manufacturing and industrial applications.

Overall KMI ranks 8th on our list of stocks Billionaire Stan Druckenmiller is betting on. While we acknowledge the potential of KMI as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe.

If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than KMI but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.



To: robert b furman who wrote (12848)10/9/2024 1:10:50 AM
From: elmatador  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 13780
 
A Norwegian car dealership weighing selling petrol or diesel cars next year, a Swedish industrial start-up urgently needing fresh capital despite having raised an eyewatering $15bn already, the poor uptake for heat pumps across Europe this year.

Costs of the green transition loom large for European companies

Business leaders say Europe’s policymakers are ill prepared for just how expensive the shift is likely to be RICHARD MILNEAdd to myFT Despite raising more than $15bn in equity, debt and subsidies, the Swedish start-up Northvolt is fighting for its life..

Richard Milne AN HOUR AGO

A Norwegian car dealership weighing selling petrol or diesel cars next year, a Swedish industrial start-up urgently needing fresh capital despite having raised an eyewatering $15bn already, the poor uptake for heat pumps across Europe this year.

They may be three seemingly disparate news items, but together they offer signs of the struggles that some Europe business leaders report over the green transition of industry. They worry that Europe’s policymakers are ill prepared for just how expensive the shift is likely to be for the continent, pointing to hundreds of billions of euros in investments and subsidies that are needed. Otherwise, the business leaders warn, competitors such as China and the US are ready to pounce.

“I don’t think European governments have woken up at all to the realisation of just how expensive this will all be. But in terms of jobs, in terms of business, it is so important Europe does not get left behind,” one European industrialist told me.

Take the car industry. There is a big pushback from the continent’s carmakers over the proposed 2035 phaseout of fossil cars. But Norway has shown the way, looking on course to sell only electric cars by next year thanks to generous incentives. The beneficiaries are far from the traditional carmakers, however. Tesla regularly tops the Norwegian new sales statistics while Oslo’s main shopping street has just one car dealership: for Chinese brand Nio. Still, Norway’s budget presentation on Monday showed how vulnerable even this transition is. A small easing in taxes for fossil fuel vehicles led Norway’s biggest auto dealership to say it was considering reintroducing the sale of petrol and diesel cars next year.

Any sense of a reprieve for European industry could be shortlived though even as Brussels pushes ahead with tariffs on subsidised Chinese electric vehicles. Simulations by the European Central Bank, cited by its former president Mario Draghi in his report on competitiveness, showed that if Chinese carmakers received similar subsidies to the country’s solar industry then EU domestic production of electric vehicles would fall by 70 per cent and European manufacturers’ global market share would drop by almost 30 percentage points.

Vincent Clerc, chief executive of shipping giant AP Møller-Maersk, says Europe is facing a “stark choice”. It can impose tariffs “to make more expensive products that would accelerate the transition towards green to protect the old way of doing things”, or it could seek to create new industrial champions based on innovation.

The journey of one project — Northvolt’s Swedish battery factory — underlines the difficulties. It is perhaps the continent’s flagship green project, designed to fight back against Asian dominance of this crucial industry. But despite raising more than $15bn in equity, debt and subsidies, the Swedish start-up, is fighting for its life. It desperately needs fresh capital and has been only producing a small part of its capacity.

The US has responded with massive subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act. Northvolt estimated the IRA would give it more than €8bn in support over the lifetime of one battery factory while Volkswagen told EU officials it would be more like €9bn-€10bn. Some European governments such as Germany have offered incentives to Northvolt and others, but nowhere near the same scale. Meanwhile, Sweden has ruled out a state rescue of the battery maker. “What is Europe without cars, without batteries?” asks a Swedish business person, pointing to the 14mn people employed by the auto industry in the EU.

Northvolt AB Northvolt to cut more than 20% of jobs in battle for survival

It is a similar situation in many other industries as questions abound about the pace and cost of the green transition. Sales of heat pumps — designed to be more efficient and less polluting than gas boilers — almost halved in Europe in the first six months of this year as subsidies have declined. Germany has watered down a ban on new gas and oil boilers after it triggered a public and political backlash. Europe is even struggling in areas where it once dominated with Draghi pointing out that the EU represented two-thirds of early-stage venture capital for hydrogen in 2015-19, but only 10 per cent in 2020-22.

All this is causing European industrialists increasingly to sound the alarm, urging policymarkers to put up serious money to develop the right kind of green industry. Clerc says: “The green transition is a process that none of us have tried and that none of us can achieve alone. It has a high level of complexity, it’s long and drawn-out.”