Meo, Battle net 13 to help Coastal Carolina down South Carolina Upstate 73-51
Editor’s note : Chris Wright has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Energy secretary and this column is reprinted from March 27, 2022. The energy transition is not happening. Or not nearly at the pace that everyone believes or wishes. At rates the “transition” is set to finish in the mid-2600s. The U.N. Rio Convention and subsequent Kyoto Protocol launched the energy transition drive in 1992. Global energy consumption from hydrocarbons has grown massively since then, with market share only declining by four percentage points over the last 30 years from 87% in 1992 to 83% in 2022. I am not celebrating this fact as I have spent years working on energy transition technologies. The energy transition isn’t failing for lack of earnest effort. It is failing because energy is hard, and 3 billion people living in energy poverty are desperate for reliable and scalable energy sources. Meanwhile, 1 billion energy-rich people are resistant to diminishing their standard of living with higher cost and an increasingly unreliable energy diet. There is no “climate crisis” either. If there is a term more at odds with the exhaustive literature surveys of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change than “climate crisis,” I have not heard it. Climate change is a real global challenge that is extensively studied. Unfortunately, the facts and rational dialogue about the myriad trade-offs aren’t reaching policymakers, the media or activist groups. Or are they are simply ignoring these inconvenient truths? For example, we hear endlessly about the rise in frequency and intensity of extreme weather. This narrative is highly effective at scaring people and driving political action. It is also false. The reality is detailed in countless publications and summarized in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Deaths from extreme weather have plunged over the last century, reaching new all-time lows last year, an outcome to be celebrated. This is not because extreme weather has declined. In fact, extreme weather shows no meaningful trend at all. Deaths from extreme weather events have declined because highly energized, wealthier societies are much better prepared to survive nature’s wrath. You are not supposed to say out loud that there is no climate crisis or that the energy transition is proceeding at a glacial pace. These are unfashionable and, to many, offensive facts. But let’s be honest. Energy transition ambitions must recognize reality. Otherwise, poor investment decisions and regulatory frameworks will lead to surging global-energy and food prices. This is exactly what is happening. We are here today in large part because energy transition efforts that previously encompassed solely aggressive support of alternative energy policies, economics be damned, have recently supplemented this strategy with growing efforts to obstruct fossil fuel development. Fossil fuels make the modern world possible. The real crisis today is an energy crisis. It began to reveal itself last fall with a severe shortage in globally traded Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). The LNG crisis has not abated, and it gives Russia’s Vladimir Putin tremendous leverage over Europe. Without Russian gas, the lights in Europe go out. Amid war, public outrage, and intense sanctions, Russian gas flows to Europe remain unchanged. Russian oil exports have continued with minimal interruption. The world can talk tough about sanctioning Russian energy exports, but those exports are vitally needed; hence they continue. Energy security equals national security. The world energy system, critical to human well-being, requires meaningful spare capacity to handle inevitable bumps in the road. In the electricity sector, which represents only 20% of global energy but 40% in wealthy countries, this is called reserve capacity. In the oil market, spare production capacity today is shrinking and concentrated in OPEC nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Also, there is a massive global storage network in surface tanks and underground caverns. In natural gas markets, there are extensive underground storage reservoirs and typically spare export capacity through pipelines and large industrial LNG export and import facilities. The last several years have seen this spare capacity whittled away due partly to lower commodity prices and poor corporate returns shrinking the appetite to invest. Excess capacity has also shrunk due to regulatory blockage of critical energy infrastructure like pipelines and export terminals. Roadblocks for well permitting and leasing on federal lands, together with a mass public miseducation campaign on energy and climate alarmism, are also stymying hydrocarbon development. Investment capital is further constrained by a corporate Environment, Social and Governance movement, and divestment campaigns. These factors are shrinking hydrocarbon investment below what it otherwise would be in response to price signals and outlook for supply and demand. The net result is a constrained supply of oil, natural gas, and coal, which means higher prices and greater risk of market dislocations like the one unfolding today. High energy and food price inflation is the cruelest form of tax on the poor. After a few specific examples, I’ll return to what we should do now to reverse these damaging and deeply inequitable trends. Why does the world today suffer from a severe shortage of LNG? Demand for natural gas has been growing strongly for decades. It provides a much cleaner substitute for coal in electricity production, home heating, and a myriad industrial and petrochemical uses. Rising displacement of coal by natural gas has been the largest source of greenhouse gas emission reductions. Unfortunately, the aforementioned factors have prevented supply from keeping pace with rising demand. Energy shortages drive rapid prices rises and have cascading impacts on everything else. Energy is foundational to everything humans do. Everything. Perhaps the most critical use of natural gas is nitrogen fertilizer production. Roughly a century ago, two German chemists, both subsequently awarded Nobel Prizes, developed a process to produce nitrogen fertilizer on an industrial scale. Before the Haber-Bosch process innovation, nitrogen content in soil was a major constraint on crop productivity. Existing nitrogen sources from bird guano, manure, and rotating cultivation of pea crops were limited. Today, elimination of natural gas-synthesized nitrogen fertilizer would cut global food production in half. The LNG crisis translates into a worldwide food crisis as skyrocketing fertilizer prices are cascading into much higher food prices. Wheat prices are at a record high and will likely head higher as spring plantings suffer from under fertilization. Global LNG markets are tight because rising demand has outrun the growth in LNG export capacity in the United States, now the largest LNG exporter. We have an abundance of natural gas in the United States. Unfortunately, we have a shortage of pipelines to transport this gas and LNG export terminals, preventing us from relieving the energy crisis in Europe and around the world. These pipeline and export terminal shortages are due in large part to regulatory blockage. The result is that natural gas prices in the United States and Canada are five to 10 times lower than in Asia and Europe. This deeply disadvantages consumers and factories (like fertilizer factories) in Europe and Asia that rely on LNG imports to fulfill their needs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not cause today’s energy crisis. Quite the reverse. Today’s energy crisis is likely an important factor in why Russia chose to invade Ukraine. Europe’s energy situation is tenuous and highly dependent on Russian imports. Russia is the second-largest oil and natural gas producer after the United States. Russia is the largest exporter of natural gas, supplying over 40% of Europe’s total demand. Additionally, Russia is the largest source of imported oil and coal to Europe. Europe put itself in this unenviable position by pursuing unrealistic, politically-driven policies attempting to rapidly transition its energy sources to combat climate change. Europe’s energy pivot has been a massive failure on all fronts: higher energy costs, grave energy insecurity, and negligible climate impacts. Germany is the poster child of this failure. In 2000, Germany set out to decarbonize its energy system, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this effort over the last 20 years. Germany only marginally reduced its dependence on hydrocarbons from 84% in 2000 to 78% today. The United States matched this 6% decline in hydrocarbon market share from 86% in 2000 to 80% today. Unlike in the U.S., Germany more than doubled its electricity prices — before the recent massive additional price increases — by creating a second electric grid. This second grid is comprised of massive wind and solar electric generating sources that only deliver 20% of nameplate capacity on average, and often less than 5% for days at a time. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Hence, Germany could only shrink legacy coal, gas and nuclear capacity by 15%. It now must pay to maintain both grids. The legacy grid must always be flexing up and down in a wildly inefficient manner to keep the lights on, hospitals functioning, homes heated, and factories powered. Outside the electricity sector, Germany’s energy system is largely unchanged. It has long had high taxes on gasoline and diesel for transportation, and lower energy taxes on industry. Germany subsidizes industrial energy prices attempting to avoid the near-complete de-industrialization that the UK has suffered due to expensive energy policies across the board. Over the last 20 years, the United States has seen two shale revolutions, first in natural gas and then in oil. The net result has been the U.S. producing greater energy than consumed in 2019 and 2020 for the first time since the 1950s. The U.S. went from the largest importer of natural gas to the second-largest exporter in less than 15 years, all with private capital and innovation. The shale revolution lowered domestic and global energy prices due to surging growth in U.S. production. Surging U.S. propane exports are reducing the cost and raising the availability of clean cooking and heating fuels for those in dire energy poverty still burning wood, dung, and agricultural waste to cook their daily meals. U.S. Greenhouse gas emissions also plunged to the lowest level on a per capita basis since 1960. Imagine the world’s energy situation today with the American shale revolution. We are starting to hamstring and squander the enormous benefits of the shale revolution. The same misinformed anti-hydrocarbon crusade that impoverished Europe and made it heavily dependent on Russia is now sweeping the US. California and New England had adopted European-style energy policies driving up electricity prices, reducing grid reliability, and driving manufacturing and other energy-intensive, blue-collar jobs out of their states. Colorado is not far behind. California, a state with a plenitude of blessings, managed to create the highest adjusted poverty rate in the nation with an expensive, unstable power grid increasingly reliant on coal-powered electricity imports from Nevada and Utah. New England’s proximity to Pennsylvania’s clean low-cost natural gas resources was a stroke of luck. But it refused to expand the natural gas pipelines running from Pennsylvania, leaving it chronically short of natural gas, its largest source of electricity and cleanest option for home heating. Instead, it remains heavily reliant on fuel oil for home heating and occasionally imports LNG from Russia to keep the lights on. Last winter New England burned copious amounts of fuel oil to produce electricity which went out of fashion in the 1970s elsewhere in the US. Texas has not been immune from energy illiteracy and collateral damage. Texas’ poorly designed electric grid, structured to encourage investment in renewables, led to hundreds dying in the 2021 Uri cold spell. No one would pay the same price for an Uber that showed up whenever convenient for the driver and dropped you off wherever they desired. But that is what Texas does with electricity: paying the same price for reliable electricity that balances the grid as they do for unreliable, unpredictable electricity. No wonder the reliability of the Texas grid has declined and is headed for more trouble. The common thread in these cases is unrealistic beliefs in how rapidly new energy systems can replace demand for hydrocarbons, currently at all-time highs. Political intervention and miscalculation have led to overinvestment in unreliable energy sources and, far worse, underinvestment in reliable energy sources and infrastructure. The full costs of this colossal mal-investment have been somewhat hidden from view as spare capacity in the global energy network has mostly kept the train on the tracks. Now that excess capacity has shrunk to a critically low level, more impacts are hitting home. Like the disease, the cure takes years to run its course. But that longer time frame is no excuse not to act now in a thoughtful fashion to begin rectifying historical blunders. Steel, cement, plastics and fertilizer are the four building blocks of the modern world and all are highly reliant on hydrocarbons. Most critically this means removing the growing myriad obstacles to hydrocarbon development, justified in the name of fighting climate change. This is nonsense. Overly cumbersome hurdles to hydrocarbon development in the U.S. do nothing to change oil and gas demand. They simply displace U.S. production overseas where production practices are less stringent and less ethical. Resulting in increased greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, reduced economic opportunities for Americans, and increased geopolitical leverage of Russia and OPEC — see the invasion of Ukraine. Climate change is a long-term problem best addressed with technologies cost-effective today like natural gas, energy efficiency, and nuclear. The solution requires combining today’s commercial low-carbon energy sources with research and technology development in carbon sequestration, next-generation geothermal, and economical energy storage to make solar and wind more viable. Today the price mechanism must destroy energy demand to bring it in line with short-term supply. This reduces the quality of living, especially for low-income families. The price mechanism will also incentivize new supply to the extent possible in the face of growing regulatory hurdles, infrastructure shortages, and capital starvation. A revaluation of all three of these factors is urgently needed. Is the overarching goal “energy transition” at all costs? Or is it humane policies that better human lives and expand opportunities for all? We need to replace the former mindset with the latter. Chris Wright is chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based hydraulic fracturing company.
The Minnesota Vikings took on their NFC North rivals, the Green Bay Packers, on Sunday in a pivotal matchup for playoff seeding. While the Vikings came into the Week 17 game holding a Wild Card spot, they were still in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed, tied at 13-2 with the Detroit Lions. The Packers struck first with a 22-yard field goal from Brandon McManus, but the Vikings responded in the second quarter. They rattled off 20 unanswered points, and for a while, it looked like they had the game wrapped up. Green Bay made a late push, but a nine-yard touchdown catch by Cam Akers ultimately proved too much for Green Bay to overcome, as they won 27-25. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Thanks for the feedback.The Centre for Ageing Better said data analysed on its behalf suggested more than a fifth of people in this age group are living in a poor-quality home that could be making their existing health condition worse. It said people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, those living in London and those who have a serious health condition or disability are more likely to be affected. Data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing covering 2022/23 was analysed by the National Centre for Social Research on behalf of the charity. It found an estimated 4.5 million people aged 50 or older in England with a health condition aggravated by the cold are living in a home with one or more serious problems. Some 2.8 million were aged between 50 and 70, while 1.7 million were aged 70 and older. Health conditions included respiratory diseases, congestive heart failure, heart disease and lung conditions, including asthma. Housing problems identified in the research included damp, water leaks, bad condensation, electrical or plumbing problems, rot and decay. While some 2.2 million people over 50 with health and housing problems owned their home outright, the biggest proportion of people (51%) with such issues lived in rented accommodation. The charity said older renters with a health condition were up to three times more likely to have five or more issues with their home than someone in the same age group who owns their home. Those with a health condition that can be affected by poor housing who had a significant issue in their homes were most likely to live in London (52%) followed by the North East (35%) and the North West (35%), the West Midlands and the East of England (both on 28%), and the South West (27%). Almost half (46%) of people aged 50 and above from black and minority ethnic backgrounds with one of the health conditions had at least one problem with their home, which the charity said amounted to almost 500,000 people. Among white people in this age group it was just under one in three (32%). The research also suggested people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds living with a health condition were also more than twice as likely to have five or more issues with their housing compared with their white counterparts – 15% compared with 6%. Dr Carole Easton, the charity’s chief executive, said not only does the research show the difficulties faced by those living in poor housing, but it is also “very bad news” for both the economy and the NHS. She said: “Our latest research shows that our poor-quality housing crisis is putting people with health conditions in their 50s, 60s and beyond, in harm’s way. “This is obviously terrible for those individuals who live in homes that carry a very real risk of making them sick, particularly when winter comes around. “But it is also very bad news for the country. Older workers living in homes that are making their health conditions worse are going to be less likely to be able to work and help grow the economy. “Older people whose serious health conditions are made worse by their homes will require treatment, putting additional winter pressures on our health system. “All could be averted if we tackled poor-quality housing with the urgency and priority it demands.” Holly Holder, deputy director for homes at the charity, said the Government must “fix this hidden housing crisis by delivering a national strategy to tackle poor quality housing across all tenures and committing to halving the number of non-decent homes over the next decade”. She added: “No-one should have to live in a home that damages their health, yet it is the norm for far too many people in England today. “By failing to address poor-quality homes we are limiting the lives of some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people. “Our new analysis shows that the combination of health and house problems are most likely to impact groups of people who are already disadvantaged by multiple health and wealth inequalities.” A Government spokesperson said: “Despite the challenging inheritance faced by this Government, through our Plan for Change we’re taking action to improve housing conditions across all tenures and ensure homes are decent, safe and warm – especially for the most vulnerable. “We’re consulting on reforms to the Decent Homes Standard next year to improve the quality of social and privately rented housing, and introducing Awaab’s Law to both sectors to tackle damp, dangerous and cold conditions for all renters in England. “Our warm homes plan will also help people find ways to save money on energy bills and deliver cleaner heating, with up to 300,000 households to benefit from upgrades next year.”
AP News Summary at 7:26 p.m. EST
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling alliance won an election in Maharashtra by a wide margin, signaling policy continuity in a state which houses most of India’s billionaires and is home to some of the country’s biggest investments. The Mahayuti coalition, led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, is ahead with 228 seats of the 288-member legislative assembly, according to the Election Commission of India. The Indian National Congress-led alliance has the advantage in just 47 seats, halting a momentum they built during national elections. The margins are wide enough for the elections to be called even as the final stages of counting are in progress. “Development wins! Good governance wins! United we will soar even higher!” Modi said in a post on X on Saturday. A separate Congress alliance in Jharkhand is leading in 50 seats of the 81-member legislative assembly, according to the Election Commission. Modi has conceded in the state. Exit polls released Wednesday predicted a tight contest in both states, with a slight edge forecast for the BJP alliance in Maharashtra. Mahayuti is now expected to win by a landslide with the main opposition and other smaller regional parties barely scraping by. BJP candidates are in the lead in 90 seats and have had a win declared for 42 more. “This is the voice of the people, it is the government of the people and it is a government for the best of the people,” Chief Minister Eknath Shinde told reporters Saturday afternoon. A victory in Maharashtra, which houses the financial capital of Mumbai, is expected to give a boost to stock markets which had already made gains on Friday in anticipation of the results. It suggests Modi remains popular, even though his party lost an outright majority in national polls. In those elections, more than 20 different parties worked together, shedding ideological differences and pooling resources to take on Modi’s electoral prowess. Since the results in June, four state polls were conducted with the BJP picking up two significant ones. “The BJP has a reasonably fixed vote share which it will get,” said Neelanjan Sircar, an associate professor at Ahmedabad University. Also, “we are seeing local seat level factions taking on an importance.” Maharashtra contributes over 10% of India’s gross domestic product, with Mumbai home to companies such as Reliance Industries Ltd. and Tata Group, the country’s two main stock markets, and the Hindi film industry. The state’s economic reputation, however, is at risk of being tarnished by growing farmer distress and high unemployment. Modi and his party have introduced a series of social welfare programs, including cash handouts to women and have promised further subsidies. The state is also one of the biggest recipients of foreign investment and BJP’s win will calm investors and allow ambitious development projects already in the works to continue. Billionaire Gautam Adani aims to revamp one of Asia’s biggest slums, but his $3 billion plan to convert 620 acres (251 hectares) of Dharavi into a glitzy urban hub had become a political hot potato. The opposition has repeatedly vowed to cancel the project during campaigning. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who won both parliamentary seats he contested in June, chose to vacate his seat in Wayanad, Kerala. His sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is running in the by-election there in her first political match for the Congress party, winning the seat with a margin of more than 410,000 votes. ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Who Is Petar Sliskovic? The mystery man seen walking hand-in-hand with Neha Sharma
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The five-part series will debut globally on December 10, following elite global players on and off the field as they compete in the US Open Polo Championship in Wellington, Florida. A trailer for the series titled Polo, executive produced by Harry and Meghan, was released on Thursday, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the “fast-paced and glamorous world of polo”. In a statement, Harry said: “This series offers audiences an unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look into the passion and determination driving some of the world’s elite polo players, revealing the grit behind the glamour. “We’re proud to showcase the true depth and spirit of the sport — and the intensity of its high-stakes moments.” It has been produced by the Sussexes’ Archewell Productions, having previously released three documentaries with Netflix as part of a multimillion-pound deal with the streaming giant. Heart Of Invictus, which aired last August, followed a group of service members on their road to the Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style sporting competition set up by Harry in 2014 for injured and sick military personnel and veterans. Netflix also released the documentary series Live To Lead and the controversial six-part Harry & Meghan documentary in December 2022. Harry and Meghan moved to the US in 2020 after stepping down from royal duties.HATTIESBURG, Miss. (AP) — Denijay Harris' 24 points helped Southern Miss defeat Milwaukee 66-65 on Saturday. Harris hit a 3-pointer and Neftali Alvarez made a layup with 2 seconds left as the Golden Eagles (3-4) rallied from a 65-61 deficit in the final minute. Jett Montgomery scored 13 points while shooting 5 for 8, including 3 for 6 from beyond the arc. Cobie Montgomery finished 3 of 6 from 3-point range to finish with 10 points. Themus Fulks led the way for the Panthers (5-4) with 17 points. Milwaukee also got 13 points and seven rebounds from Kentrell Pullian. AJ McKee also had 10 points and eight rebounds. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .
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Celebrate the Season with Snoopy Decorations at Lowe'sAP Trending SummaryBrief at 7:05 p.m. EST
Morgan Stanley Issues Pessimistic Forecast for DTE Energy (NYSE:DTE) Stock PriceSmokers who quit for a week could save a day of their life, experts sayThe Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s Businessmen Panel (BMP) on Sunday urged the government to ensure smooth gas supply to the local as well as the export industry so that local production and the exports could not be suffered, which have just started to show a positive trend after a long time. Expressing serious concerns over the threats of gas supply termination and notices of additional security payment by the SNGPL the FPCCI former president and BMP Chairman Mian Anjum Nisar argued that at a time when the exports data have showed some growth the government agencies, instead of taking business-friendly measures, are creating hurdles for the industry. He quoted the latest exports data and said the exports of readymade garments rose 23.17pc by value in the first quarter and 16.16pc by quantity, while knitwear rose 14.13pc by value and 2.17pc by quantity while bedwear posted a growth of 13.31pc in value and a growth of 14.55pc in quantity, which is an encouraging sign. The government should extend its full support to continue this positive trend of exports growth through uninterrupted gas supply to the captive power plants at afforadable and competitive rates. Mian Anjum Nisar called for swift implementation of a system based on modern technology for the selection and transmission of low-cost electricity. He wanted to complete all measures for the reform of the power sector within the specified timeline. He warned that the continued escalation of energy prices could result in the closure of industries, amplifying unemployment rates and diminishing Pakistan’s export capabilities. He emphasized the need for the government to explore and provide affordable energy alternatives for the industry, stressed that such measures are crucial for ensuring the competitiveness of Pakistani products in the global market. As the industrial sector grapples with the ramifications of the gas price hike, the BMP leader’s stance advocates for the preservation of industrial stability and the prevention of potential economic setbacks for Pakistan. He said that the repeated increase in the gas and electricity prices to an unbearable level by the government has left the trade and industry uncompetitive, blaming it for trapping the country in the IMF plans. Strongly opposing gas price surge, he said that the gas tariff hike has threatened the industrial sector, besides increasing unemployment, saying that the every government had poor economic policies that unleashed the free fall of rupee against the dollar, ensuing in input cost escalation to pull down the manufacturing growth. He demanded the government to take back the decision of hike in gas tariff in the larger interest of national economy and to save the industries from collapse. He warned that if the decision is not withdrawn the industries will close down, resulting in decline in exports and mass unemployment.
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(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump’s return to the White House is forcing one of Wall Street’s more jargon-filled corners to rethink its talking points. Investment managers targeting climate change — a concept Trump has referred to as both a “scam” and a “hoax” — say it’s time to start speaking in terms that don’t alienate the millions of Americans who voted for the president-elect. “We need to change the language we’re using when we talk about climate and the energy transition,” said Joe Sumberg, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director who now runs real estate investments at billionaire Tom Steyer’s Galvanize Climate Solutions. The goal should be to “make sure that we don’t sound like a bunch of coastal elites coming into middle America telling people that they need to install carbon capture at their properties and compost toilets on industrial properties,” he said in an interview. It’s one of a number of takeaways from the Nov. 5 election that investors targeting a whole range of ESG (environmental, social and governance) strategies are now busy analyzing. The consensus view forming among green asset managers is that many of the policies themselves are popular, based on their uptake in many Republican states. But the way that ESG professionals tout what they do is polarizing. The election “is a wake-up call for people who label what they do as ESG or even, frankly, sustainable investing,” said Ian Simm, the chief executive of Impax Asset Management, which oversees about $50 billion dedicated to investing in the clean-energy transition. “These are relatively new terms and they don’t always sit well with a traditional or mainstream view of fiduciary duty,” Simm said in an interview. “People who are using these ESG and similar phrases to reflect a values-driven or even ethical view of investment are now increasingly and probably unavoidably forced to declare their hands.” Since Trump’s election victory, investors have dumped stocks associated with high-profile ESG themes such as wind and solar. And analysts have even advised ESG professionals to keep their lawyers close, given the new political environment. The president-elect has made clear he plans to ratchet up fossil-fuel production, wind back environmental protections and embrace deregulation. That follows more than two years of ESG bans and legal threats in mostly Republican states. How the ESG investment industry communicates its agenda in a GOP-dominated America will be crucial in shaping its survival. So far, there has been “a lot of confusion and frankly a lot of laziness around definitions and the framing of these issues,” Simm said. “ESG as a phrase or label has been with us for far too long and needs to be replaced with clearer language.” As the political environment grows increasingly hostile toward all things labeled ESG, those whose business depends on it are being told to quickly adapt. The day after the US election, analysts at Jefferies predicted ESG professionals will stop touting their efforts in terms that once defined their work. Aniket Shah, the lead analyst of the Nov. 6 Jefferies note, said the ongoing backlash should result in a more “focused and pragmatic” approach to handling and talking about ESG. Even before Trump’s election victory, efforts by GOP-led states to sue climate-finance alliances were forcing a rethink in the ESG industry. Maslansky + Partners, a New York-based consultancy that focuses on language use, warned last year that the words ESG professionals use risk “alienating half the population.” And BDO, an international network of accounting and tax consultancies, said in September that ESG programs need to stop using “technical terms that can be hard to grasp” and instead start to “communicate in the language of the business” they serve. Ultimately, the business case should speak for itself, Sumberg said. “We’re not ignorant to the fact that if a different administration was in office, they probably would be more supportive,” he said. “But at the core of it, this is already profitable.” Sumberg just oversaw a third green real estate deal this year for Steyer, with the purchase of an industrial property in New Jersey. The goals, as with the other properties Galvanize has bought, are lower energy costs and emissions, as well as higher property values. He cautions against assuming that a Trump presidency will coincide with a major retreat from green investing. “The last time Trump was in power, the tax credits were extended for wind and solar,” he said. And Trump’s first presidency also coincided with a significant increase in energy-transition investments, he said. “The reason wasn’t because the administration at that time was adding subsidies to that sector,” Sumberg said. “The reason was because it’s profitable.”
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