One Solar/Wind Energy Company Is Now More Valuable Than Exxon Mobil (msn.com) 69
The world's biggest provider of wind and solar energy is now more valuable than the giant oil company Exxon Mobil, "once the largest public company on Earth," reports Bloomberg:
NextEra ended Wednesday with market value of $145 billion, topping Exxon's $142 billion... NextEra has emerged as the world's most valuable utility, largely by betting big on renewables, especially wind. Exxon has seen its fortunes shift in the other direction as electric vehicles become more widespread and the fight against climate change takes on more urgency. "People believe that renewable energy is a growth story and that oil and gas is a declining story," said Jigar Shah, co-founder of the green financier Generate.
NextEra had about 18 gigawatts of wind and solar farms at the end of last year, enough to power 13.5 million homes. And it's expanding significantly, with contracts to add another 12 gigawatts of renewables. Its shares have surged more than 20% this year. At the same time, Exxon's shares have tumbled more than 50% as the pandemic quashed global demand for fuels. The company's second-quarter loss was its worst of the modern era and, in August, Exxon was ejected from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company was worth $525 billion in 2007, more than three times its current value.
Peter McNally, an energy expert at research firm Third Bridge, tells ExtremeTech that it all comes down to the cheaper price of renewable energy.
"Alternative power is now getting competitive with traditional forms of electricity, coal and natural gas fired generation."
NextEra had about 18 gigawatts of wind and solar farms at the end of last year, enough to power 13.5 million homes. And it's expanding significantly, with contracts to add another 12 gigawatts of renewables. Its shares have surged more than 20% this year. At the same time, Exxon's shares have tumbled more than 50% as the pandemic quashed global demand for fuels. The company's second-quarter loss was its worst of the modern era and, in August, Exxon was ejected from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company was worth $525 billion in 2007, more than three times its current value.
Peter McNally, an energy expert at research firm Third Bridge, tells ExtremeTech that it all comes down to the cheaper price of renewable energy.
"Alternative power is now getting competitive with traditional forms of electricity, coal and natural gas fired generation."
And dupes are more valuable than new stories (Score:2, Funny)
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Bonus points for a same day dupe
One Slashdot editor is still posting dupes. (Score:3, Informative)
If there ever was proof that they don't even read Slashdot themselves, ... at all...
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If everyone replaced their bulbs (Score:5, Interesting)
(and if there were reliable LED bubs nowadays) You could probably cut down a whole ton of need for the grid, usually at night.
Then you could go all in and install a heat pump (depending on your location) to minimize the need for electric heat, oil and natural gas.
I have a few incandescent lights left (stupid sizes or unreachable) but most are either LED or CFL, the CFL don't work well in the cold, but they're 20 years old...
My total electrical use for Sept was about 210 Kwh in a 2500+ square foot house.
Re:If everyone replaced their bulbs (Score:4, Insightful)
Lighting is about 11% of electricity consumption.
Air conditioners are the biggest consumers of power and are, by far, the fastest-growing category. ACs are notoriously inefficient. Better ACs would be a huge contribution to mitigating CO2 emissions.
Electricity use in homes [eia.gov]
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Lighting is about 11% of electricity consumption.
Air conditioners are the biggest consumers of power and are, by far, the fastest-growing category. ACs are notoriously inefficient. Better ACs would be a huge contribution to mitigating CO2 emissions.
Electricity use in homes [eia.gov]
Well where I live most of the electricity is in order, Hydro, Nuclear, NG, Wind, Solar. And the AC season is only about 2-3 months.
There is probably 6-7 months of "cold" weather when heat is needed. Most people use NG or propane, a few use just electricity.
Which is why I mentioned heat pumps.
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Better ACs would be a huge contribution to mitigating CO2 emissions.
Every time the government raises the minimum efficiency standards, the cost of the equipment goes up. It screws over low-income folks, and the higher upfront costs end up translating to a reduced (or in some cases, nonexistent) ROI. The price difference between SEER ratings is almost always pretty close to the cost of energy the unit is expected to save over its useful lifespan. You just can't win.
What we really need is clean, cheap power. You can use old 13 SEER beasts for cooling and resistive heat st
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Every time the government raises the minimum efficiency standards, the cost of the equipment goes up.
And that doesn't matter in the least.
Why? Because everyone doesn't throw away their 2 year old shit and buy new when that happens.
I replaced my furnace and AC this month. Why? The house I bought had a 17 year old furnace and AC in it. They don't make the parts for them anymore, so if they die I need to replace them. I made the decision to be proactive and replace them at the end of the season when I could get a good discount, rather than in February when I'd pay through the nose.
The models I chose were far
Lighting 3%-4% of electricity, 1% of energy usage (Score:2)
It may be 11% of the electricity you use *in your home*.
It's only 3-4% of total electricity usage. Your office computer and similar machines are near the top of the list. Turning off your computer when you leave the office (or hibernating it) will make a bigger difference.
Driving to work and running errands after work uses more *energy*. So home lighting is around 1% of energy usage.
I think we should almost always talk about percentage of *energy* usage. That avoids confusion when we see a headline "Foob
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Your office computer and similar machines are near the top of the list.
Bullcrap.
Turning off your computer when you leave the office (or hibernating it) will make a bigger difference.
More bullcrap. Is this just a bad attempt at trolling?
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DoE says office computers and equipment are number 1 usage of electricity in the United States.
So have any facts or sources of any kind whatsoever, or just curse words?
Household lightbulb - 6-8 watts, turned in for a few hours per day, so they use maybe 24 watt-hours in a day.
Computer and monitor - 50-250 watts, left on 24 hours per day = 2,400 watt-hours per day. The computer uses about one hundred times as much electricity.
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DoE says office computers and equipment are number 1 usage of electricity in the United States.
No they don't. They say it is #1 in the commercial sector, after residential and industrial consumption are excluded.
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And the entirety of residential is 38%.
Meaning home lighting is 10-11% of 38%, which is about 4%.
Of course you can just do the math yourself.
100 watts X 24 hours = 2,400
8 watts X 3 hours = 24
You know which is more. You aren't stupid.
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A typical air source heat pump has an efficiency of around 350 to 400%, and can both heat and cool.
Emissions wise they are better than pretty much any active system, including gas. As we transition to renewable energy they will get even better.
Combined with better insulation it's possible to eliminate the need for AC.
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A typical air source heat pump has an efficiency of around 350 to 400%, and can both heat and cool.
Heat pumps are more efficient at heating than resistive heaters, assuming you're using them within the temperature range (and temperature differential range) where they function. But they are no more efficient than old school air conditioners at cooling, because they are old school air conditioners plus a reversing valve. Nothing more, nothing less. They may have differently sized evaporators and condensers since both have to do both jobs sometimes, but that's literally the only fundamental difference betwe
Re: If everyone replaced their bulbs (Score:2)
An issue with better residential insulation is that it keeps radon in the house longer, which will raise the incidence of lung cancer...
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You should be keeping radon out of the house by sealing the floor, and sufficiently ventilating any basement or sub-floor space.
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"You should be keeping radon out of the house by sealing the floor, and sufficiently ventilating any basement or sub-floor space."
In many houses this is not possible or financially feasible. Plenty of houses have "finished basements". Reasonable ventilation of those areas is not sufficient to clear out radon, particularly in the winter months. The point is, there has been a drive in the '80's and '90's to make houses more heat efficient by sealing them off, replacing windows, etc. A largely unforeseen conse
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Where is that mythical Radon comming from?
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The mythical radon is real (we even know where the risk is greatest [epa.gov]) and comes from decay of isotopes in dirt [cdc.gov]. It's the reason why you shouldn't inhabit poorly ventilated basement spaces, period. And it's also why homes should be sealed against gases coming up from below. It's not necessarily trivial to do so, but it is worthwhile, as radon is a major source of lung cancer. Insulating and sealing the subfloor is also an often-neglected means of improving HVAC energy efficiency.
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The "mythical Radon" is only at certain places.
That is why I asked the parent where his mythical radon comes from, as the likelihood that he lives at a place that actually emits radon is close to zero.
as radon is a major source of lung cancer. As basically no one is exposed to Radon: nope.
Insulating and sealing the subfloor is also an often-neglected means of improving HVAC energy efficiency. That is done in any sane country anyway :P
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There's a simple solution - a geothermal heat pump [wikipedia.org]. When you're constructing the house, you bury a series of pipes and hoses about 20 ft underground. The house's AC/heat pump then runs water through those pipes to use the ground as a heat sink. The advantage is that if you go about 20 ft down, the ground re
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If you do it right, you actually build a "reservoir" underground, either an insulated pile of sand, or a water tank. :P
So the heat you pump down in summer helps to warm in winter. All nearly 40 year old "technologies" / ideas
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I haven't replaced a light bulb in 6 years.
Best fucking money ever spent. But ya- you're right. They were damn expensive, and I'm sure they don't cost anywhere near that to make.
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If you are buying just the LEDs it would be more than the cost of the incandescent bulbs. But you also need to have a driver to convert the AC power to DC current. An incandescent bulb runs straight off the AC. If that were the case then you ore I could go into business making our own LED bulbs and put them on the market for half the cost. Capitalism does keep the manufacturers honest to some degree.
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Then you could go all in and install a heat pump (depending on your location) to minimize the need for electric heat, oil and natural gas.
Great for the environment, probably not so good for your wallet. Thing is, there are probably better investments you could make with what would very likely be close to $10k, for a brand new high efficiency heat pump (assuming the average American suburban McMansion).
Yeah, it's a sunk cost if your old system has bit the shit and you're staring down the business end of a replacement anyway, but a new HVAC system is one of the worst investments you can make if you're trying to keep money in your pocket. Get
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Don't forget double glazing and things like seals around external doors and windows, to keep all the drafts out. Internal walls should also be high mass, they hold temperature balancing out heating.
As to why the fossil fueller investments are doing so bad, they have multi-billion dollar clean up issues, which they can not afford to actually do. So those companies 'WILL' all go bankrupt, unless they are one of the energy producers shifting out of fossil fuel, normally setting up another corporations with no
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Don't forget double glazing and things like seals around external doors and windows, to keep all the drafts out. Internal walls should also be high mass, they hold temperature balancing out heating.
As to why the fossil fueller investments are doing so bad, they have multi-billion dollar clean up issues, which they can not afford to actually do. So those companies 'WILL' all go bankrupt, unless they are one of the energy producers shifting out of fossil fuel, normally setting up another corporations with no assets but oil wells it can not afford to make good, plus a shit bucket ton of debt, designed to get bankrupt from the get go and taking those losses away from the really quite corrupt parent corporation.
LOL, the walls on my first floor are 2 feet of brick wide. I also have about 43 windows in the house and have replaced about 20 of them over the last 20 years.6 doors and I've only replaced one. I did toss a pile of caulk on the 7 basement single pane windows and one of the doors (the one with windows in it)
Re: If everyone replaced their bulbs (Score:2)
Drafts are good as they clear out radon, unless you want lung cancer..
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That is really good. I run around 1KwH - 1.1KwH for 1700 Sq. Ft. during the coldest and warmest months, but am 100% electric here with geothermal and pulling water up 100 - 150 feet from a well under pressure. Otherwise, I have LED or CFL (CFL don't last NEAR as long as they say, at least not at this location) in the most-used positions. There's some old incandescent bulbs positions I rarely use.
S
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Not everyone has the same energy profile. Your result is admirable. I'm at 275kWh for September and I've only got a 1000sqft apartment. No A/C, no electric water, and 100% LED bulbs.
Different people need to save in different ways. For us, replacing the CFL backlit monitor I use all day every day for work would be a start. Maybe consolidating the number of HDDs in the server, replacing the fridge with one made this decade and cooking with gas would help a lot.
Mind you this year is an oddity. Working from ho
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I have a few incandescent lights left (stupid sizes or unreachable) but most are either LED or CFL, the CFL don't work well in the cold, but they're 20 years old...
I'm curious what those are (the funny sizes). I even found G9 warm-dim LED bulbs recently, and on the high end LED bulbs go very large. I bought a 30 or 4W bulb a while back. Though my oven uses an incandescent bulb, since presumably it needs to be heat proof up to 400 degrees C or so.
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Uh, you lost me somehow ...
How much is 400C in F?
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Google says 750
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Cool! So his oven can do 750F with a light bulb inside! Amazing!
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my oven yeah. It's a pyrolitic so the self cleaning cycle cranks the internal temperature up high and turns all the grime to ash.
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That makes me wonder if the cleaning cycle on an oven couldn't be abused to cook a pizza properly, since a real pizza oven can reach temperatures like that... You have to be able to open it in the middle of the cycle though
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That makes me wonder if the cleaning cycle on an oven couldn't be abused to cook a pizza properly, since a real pizza oven can reach temperatures like that... You have to be able to open it in the middle of the cycle though
The answer is yes, but you have to hack the safety interlocks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pizza... [reddit.com]
https://staff.washington.edu/f... [washington.edu]
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Wow! That is cool!!
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I bought a LED bulb a few weeks ago.
It came with a 10 years warranty. Not sure if my receipe will last that long, though.
Duplicate explained... (Score:2, Interesting)
Some Slashdot editor is heavily invested in NextEra. NextEra's stock was at 181.66 on March 23, and trading at 302.91 today. Despite the information in the duplicate articles being pushed by Slashdot NextEra is regarded as being overvalued. There are serious indications that this stock (to be fair, also the entire stock market) may be in rising on a bubble. Someone is trying to make that bubble bigger.
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If USA is playing catch up .... (Score:1)
Oil companies, their paid shills used misinformation campaigns and smearing and politicized the issue. The rank and file continue to trust their puppet masters and somehow feel great that the "enviro n azis" and "lib tards" are getting insulted and trolled and are made hopping mad.
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Germany is in first place, and the US in tenth, measured in percentage of energy used.
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That is "Energy" - missleading as it is not focused on electricity.
Germany produces about 40% of its electricity with renewables.
Obviously cars and houses still use lots of fossile fueles.
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If USA is lagging behind the world in solar and is forced to play catch up, please find the people who smeared Solyndra and prevented US Govt from supporting early investments in this sector.
Solyndra still looks like it was a pretty straightforward handout to political supporters. But if you tote up all the alternative energy investments made during the Obama administration, those investments were profitable overall. Solyndra just meant they were less profitable. But the people who decried investment in Solyndra did not in fact prevent the investments in other alt energy companies which occurred at the same time, so it's not clear what you're complaining about. Solyndra complainers prevented li
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Re:Well, kinda... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, most of the electricity generated by NextEra comes from natural gas and nuclear.
Only 24% comes from wind and solar.
http://www.nexteraenergy.com/s... [nexteraenergy.com]
NextEra Energy Owned Generation (% of total MWhs), by fuel type (year 2019)
Natural Gas 47.80%
Nuclear 24.60%
Wind 20.60%
Solar 3.40%
Coal 3.30%
Oil 0.10%
Landfill Gas 0.01%
bubblenomics (Score:1)
Although battery technology is changing the marketplace for electric cars and nonconventional electricity sources, durable 20MW wind turbines would be more of a marker with some reality.
Isn't this mostly just because of COVID (Score:3)
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Diminishing oil "burn" leaves more resources for plastics for years to come. That is a good thing...to a degree.
I'm not saying it isn't (Score:2)
Exxon (Score:2)
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Xoff was already in use.
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They were originally known as Standard Oil, abbreviated to SO. This was then spelled out as "Esso". Due to trademark litigation between different companies, they had to choose a different name than "Esso", so they modified it a bit to "Exxon".
Source [wikipedia.org]
anyone else terrified? (Score:2)
that the price of energy will go down?
meaning people will use even *more* energy now than before? re: jevons paradox/effect
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Bubble much? (Score:2)