Category: News

July 27 2017

How Many Billionaires Would It Take to Save the Planet?

Could a handful of the world’s richest people giving away their wealth make a real impact on climate change? Bloomberg’s Robin Hood Index calculated what slice of each top billionaire’s fortune would be needed to buy all the carbon credits required to offset all domestic greenhouse gas emissions in their home country over a year. As an intellectual exercise, […]

July 27 2017

A Different Kind of Car Factory Is Opening Up in Los Angeles

While President Donald Trump is rooting for more car plants in the rust-belt states of Michigan and Ohio and more coal mines in Appalachia, California has a different idea for creating jobs: electric-vehicle factories. California Governor Jerry Brown, scheduled to attend Proterra Inc.’s opening of an electric-bus factory in Southern California on Wednesday, described the […]

July 27 2017

Growth-Starved Utilities Have Found a New Way of Making Money

There’s a new model emerging for growth-starved utilities looking to profit from America’s solar and wind power boom. American Electric Power Co. is using it for a $4.5 billion deal that’ll land the U.S. utility owner a massive wind farm in Oklahoma and a high-voltage transmission line to deliver the power. NextEra Energy Inc.’s Florida unit […]

July 26 2017

The Market Will Kill Oil Before the Government Does

European governments are making a big splash, pledging an assault on traditional cars to help clean up polluted air in cities. The latest strike came Wednesday in the U.K., which says it will ban the sale of diesel- and gasoline-powered cars by 2040. Those plans might not be quite as ambitious as they first seem. Consumers, automakers, […]

July 26 2017

Trump Is Selling Out the Midwest, Biofuel Industry Says

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump spent a lot of time currying the favor of the ethanol industry, barnstorming its rural Midwest base and repeatedly expressing his support for biofuels made from corn and soybeans. He was rewarded in November: Of the 184 counties with an ethanol plant in the U.S., 95 percent voted for […]

July 26 2017

U.K. to Ban Fossil-Fuel Cars by 2040 as Automakers Race to Adapt

The U.K. became the latest European country to mark the end of the line for diesel and gasoline fueled cars as automakers such as Volvo race to build electric vehicles or face the consequences of getting left behind. In London, the government said it will ban sales of the vehicles by 2040, two weeks after France […]

July 26 2017

A Worldwide Gas Glut Claims $27 Billion Victim in Canada

A $27 billion energy project in Canada just became the latest casualty of a worldwide glut of natural gas. Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd abandoned on Tuesday its plans for the Pacific Northwest LNG terminal, a plant that would have liquefied Canada’s gas and sent the fuel by tanker from the western shores of British Columbia […]

July 25 2017

SunEdison Sets Bankruptcy Exit With Nothing for Shareholders

SunEdison Inc. won final approval for a bankruptcy plan that will leave what was once the world’s largest renewable-energy firm as a shell of its former self, with nothing for shareholders whose investment at one point had been worth about $10 billion. SunEdison, known for gobbling up other companies and expanding at breakneck speed, will […]

July 25 2017

Traders Think Hedge Funds Are Missing a Trick With Oil

Hedge funds are still holding large bearish bets against oil and OPEC, yet out in the real world traders and refiners buying and selling actual barrels say it’s starting to look somewhat more bullish. “The market is looking a bit better,” Ian Taylor, chief executive officer of Vitol Group, the world’s largest oil trader, said […]

July 25 2017

Shale Boom May Finally Have Succumbed to Oil’s Price Slump

Oil’s bear market may finally be taking its toll on the shale boom. Hours after Halliburton Co. warned Monday that explorers are “tapping the brakes” on drilling, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said it’s trimming spending in the first earnings report this quarter from a major shale producer. That could make this week a turning point for […]