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Renewable Player NextEra Overtakes ExxonMobil In Market Value (techxplore.com) 45

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechXplore: After decades of embracing fossil fuels, Wall Street appears to be shifting its allegiance to renewable energy, a sharp turn apparent in the contrasting fortunes of NextEra Energy and Exxon Mobil. Florida-based NextEra is the biggest producer of wind energy in North America and among the biggest solar producers in the United States. It has overtaken the global oil giant as the most valuable US energy company by market value. NextEra's market capitalization has surged to $145 billion compared with ExxonMobil's $142 billion, another emblem of the Texas giant's diminished status after it was bumped this year from the prestigious Dow Jones index after more than 90 years. In 2019, NextEra reported $3.8 billion in profits on $19 billion in revenues. During the same period, ExxonMobil garnered $14.3 billion in profits on revenues of $265 billion.
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Renewable Player NextEra Overtakes ExxonMobil In Market Value

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  • Trend (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jemmyw ( 624065 ) on Friday October 09, 2020 @11:25PM (#60590824)
    I think it's reasonable to assume this is a trend that will continue and is not a bubble (although there may be mini bubbles along the way). Governments and investment groups are under pressure to divest from fossil fuels and invest in renewables. While that is the case I see things going this way. Although I also note that the profit income ratio for NextEra is considerably better, if that continues they'd only need a revenue of $72B to make the same profit as Exxon.
    • Re:Trend (Score:5, Informative)

      by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Saturday October 10, 2020 @12:13AM (#60590872)
      Nextera Energy (Formerly FPL Group) embarked on a wind energy strategy in the 90's. It wasn't the in thing to do at the time. But they stuck with it and by the time it WAS the in thing they were experts. They've successfully weathered several energy market downturns by not overextending themselves financially. Last week they made an offer to acquire Duke Energy. [forbes.com] They have always played the long game.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        I'm amazed people didn't see this coming really, the smart money was ALWAYS on renewables, it wasn't exactly hard to see that, I mean:

        Fossil fuels:
        - Diminishing resources, increasingly expensive and difficult to acquire
        - Healthcare and pollution externalised costs historically pushed onto the public increasingly hard to hide
        - Dependence on petro-dictatorships

        Renewables:
        - Unlimited resource
        - Energy independence
        - Impacts on health and the environment not externalised, generation costs are true costs

        It really

    • There's certainly a trend for renewables to be on the rise, now that they are beating fossil fuel power generation on cost. And keep in mind that there is still a lot of innovation going on, not just better windmills or solar panels, but also better support equipment that makes operating an offshore farm or installing a solar roof a lot cheaper, for instance. (That could be an interesting angle for the oil majors too, some of them have extensive experience in operating and innovating offshore.)

      On the o
  • How long until we hit peak wind?

    • by Z80a ( 971949 )

      When we solve the whole power storage thing.
      Then you just can ramp up all the turbines and solar panels etc and don't give a crap to things like supplying just the demand, keeping it in sync with the main grid etc..
      Its just turbines go brrr, fill battery and battery does the rest of the job

  • For 130 years, the oil drillers hoped for a well that would increase profits...and about 15% of them did and 50% about broken even with the best discover techniques and 35% were duds. For the past 20 years each windmill planted means less future profits for the wind energy provider. With enough surplus energy windy days will cost the companies money to dump to a grid or the breaks will be thrown. The politicians throw some money at the problem and just make the market imbalance worse. Renewables the
      • Also pumped hydro.

        • Pumped hydro is fine for a village that happens to be at the base a large dam in the hills, particularly with a backup grid connection (to natural gas plants). For pumped hydro to meet the needs of the US, we'd need to use the Appalachians as the east side of the reservoir, flooding Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and parts of Texas. Alternatively we might be able to use the area between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada - Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico etc.

          • PS also see Banqiao Dam. Putting large reservoirs is a really, really bad idea. (As in kill millions of people bad).

            So you'd need ~ 20% of a typical nation's land area flooded to build reservoirz AND you can't have any cities between the reservoir and the ocean.

            Here's hoping we get some truly magic batteries.

            • That was supposed to be:

              Putting large reservoirs above cities is a really, really bad idea. (As in kill millions of people bad).

              When a dam eventually fails (and everything we make eventually does break) you have to figure on anyone in-between the dam the sea is dead. So for example putting a dam in the California mountains is how you wipe out most of LA when an earthquake hits and the steel used to reinforce the dam doesn't perform exactly like you thought it would.

    • You are missing energy storage angle. While in the past some energy producers would simply pump water up the dams so they can later reuse that energy in their hydro generators (it works ok btw), the recent trend is batteries. Perhaps you've heard little new crappy company called Tesla Motors which already sell batteries to utilities, including this one:
      https://www.tesla.com/blog/int... [tesla.com]
      They are not the only ones, but they are leading the field today. There are other companies (eg. Nissan) which are even expe

  • It's about time. That's all.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday October 10, 2020 @01:53AM (#60591040)

    Could we put all the windmills on one side of the planet and move the Earth slightly further away from the Sun? Will have to brake in time to avoid ramming into Jupiter or something. Hmm .. I think I just solved global warming. I better start working on my Nobel speech.

  • "market value" - a score for how much the professional gambling thugs think they can rip everyone off with it.

    I wonder if their current target being something good is good for us because it backs something good, or if it is bad because it is more like bait that's gonna get killed in the process.

    • Exxon was recently replaced in ^DJIA by Salesforce.com. You decide which is more valuable in reality. Perhaps by wondering what would happen if either disappeared tomorrow.

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Stocks are not chosen for stock indices because they're *valuable*; they're chosen because they're *representative* of something. Exxon shares lost a lot of value this year; maybe whoever chooses stocks for the index thinks in current conditions it's too volatile at the moment to play the role it's supposed to in the index.

        Exon and Salesforce are different animals as far as stocks go; XOM currently has a P/E that is significantly below the market average. This probably reflects investor attitudes towards t

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