Tag Archives: Goldman Sachs

Many same investors in Sabal Trail and Dakota Access Pipeline

DAPL and Sabal Trail are more intertwined than we thought. But first, who are the institutional investors in the three Sabal Trail partners? Three Banks NASDAQ makes this easy to discover, and the answer is in the first table below: among banks State Street and Bank of America stand out.

Let’s not forget Williams Company, of the Transco Hillabee Expansion Project from which Sabal Trail wants to get its fracked methane; see the second table, which State Street clearly wins, and there’s Goldman Sachs.

We learned this week that Enbridge of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota: that Enbridge is buying Spectra Energy of Sabal Trail.

But there’s more! Last year Williams was bought by Energy Transfer Equity, which is the main backer of DAPL.

Update 2016-09-26: Actually, Energy Transfer backed out of buying Williams Co..

See the third table, which shows banks bought into at least five of the partner entities: Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

Opponents of Sabal Trail are not just fighting the same industry as DAPL: they’re fighting many of the same companies and the same investors.

Investors in Sabal Trail partners (Spectra Energy, NextEra Energy, Duke Energy)

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Wind and Solar are winning by 2 to 1 over gas and coal

Guess what’s really inevitable, pipeline companies? Solar and wind power.

Utility scare tactics that no coal means pipelines are so much hot air. Scare tactics that no pipelines would mean LNG trains are burnt up by solar power. Stop pipelnes or fracking and stop the other and LNG export along with it. And we’re winning!

Tom Randall, Bloomberg, 6 April 2016, Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels: Record clean energy investment outpaces gas and coal 2 to 1. Continue reading →

Sun and wind are winning over fracked methane shale gas –Goldman Sachs

Solar PV, onshore wind, electric vehicles, and LED lighting will win for all of us and profit in the next five years, says Goldman Sachs, which just put $150 billion of its own money where its mouth is. How about you, world leaders gathered in Paris?

Chris Martin, BloombergBusiness, 30 November 2015, Wind, Solar Power to Supply More Energy Than Shale, Goldman Says,

New wind turbines and solar panels worldwide will provide more energy over the next five years than U.S. shale-oil production has over the past five, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Four Front Runners

The leading renewable-energy technologies will add the equivalent of 6.2 million barrels of oil a day to the global energy mix, exceeding the 5.7 million barrels a day pumped from U.S. shale oil wells since 2010, analysts including Brian Lee and Jaakko Kooroshy said in a research report Monday….

“Wind and solar are on track to exceed 100 gigawatts in new installations for the first time,” Continue reading →

Southern Company missed earnings on Kemper Coal but Plant Vogtle is dominant

The dominant financial consideration is “what’s going to happen with Georgia”, meaning with nuclear Plant Vogtle, said SO CEO Tom Fanning, referring to the GA PSC CWIP monitoring hearings currently in progress. Meanwhile, that $160 million estimate 2 July 2013 of more Kemper Coal cost overruns by 30 July turned into $278 million after taxes (AP). This is on top of $333 million after taxes in May. SO earnings fell 52% (WSJ), missing projections, and SO stock dropped 2% yesterday.

Remember GA PSC Tim Echols already suggested a Plant Vogtle cost overrun cap similar to the one Mississippi PSC applied to Kemper Coal that caused SO to have to eat all those costs. If that happens, SO’s got financial problems.

Has SO seen the solar light yet, as in reliable, dependable, and deployable on time and on budget? Nope. Solar was tacked onto the end of Tom Fanning’s summary of interesting stuff in the 31 July 2013 earnings call: Continue reading →

Privatize TVA? Southern Company would like that

The hydropower assets of the Tennessee Valley Authority would give Southern Company a way to avoid doing distributed solar for a while. Will SO CEO Tom Fanning and Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers bit the bullet and go straight for distributed solar instead of helping Duke privatize TVA for a short-term stopgap that would set both of them farther behind the disruptive solar curve?

SolarCity and Southern Company stock
Blue line: SCTY; red line: SO, chart by Google Finance.
May 16th: Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in SCTY.
May 22nd: SO stockholder meeting.
May 24th: S&P downgrades SO.

Wes Patoka wrote for Motley Fool 24 May 2013, Who Benefits the Most if the TVA Is Privatized,

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SolarCity disrupting utilities in Massachusetts; how about Georgia?

Why is great big Southern Company afraid of tiny SolarCity? Look at these 2.6KW of solar panels on a house in Bedford, Massachusetts. Think about much more sun in Georgia, financed by Google and Goldman Sachs, turning into votes for solar power. Big coal and nuclear boondoggles already don’t look so attractive anymore to investors.

By Giles Parkinson wrote for Reneweconomy on 9 October 2012, SolarCity’s big challenge: Prove that energy bills can fall,

A 2.6kW SolarCity installation in Bedford, Massachusetts SolarCity sees the traditional utilities as their biggest competition. “We compete with them on price, predictability of price and the ease by which customers can switch to electricity generated by solar systems,” it says.

“We have disrupted the industry status quo by providing renewable energy directly to customers for less than they are currently paying for utility-generated energy. Unlike utilities, we sell energy with a predictable cost structure that does not rely on limited fossil fuels and is insulated from rising retail electricity prices. As retail prices for electricity increase and distributed solar energy costs decline, our market opportunity will grow exponentially.”

Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Anthony Kim said the SolarCity filing could be a “game-changing moment for the solar industry” because it shows “how plummeting component costs benefit a company operating on the downstream side of the solar business.”

That article was posted before SolarCity’s stock went public, and before Goldman Sachs invested half a billion dollars in SolarCity. Six months later, we know Southern Company and Georgia Power are paying attention, because both SO CEO Tom Fanning and Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers said so at the Southern Company stockholder meeting.

-jsq

110 MW solar financing: SolarCity and Goldman Sachs

When Goldman Sachs gets in, you know there’s money in solar. They’re certainly not investing half a billion dollars for your health. Of course, if you’re in Georgia, you won’t be getting any of this 110 MW of SolarCity solar on your roof, because of that antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act that Georgia Power and Southern Company keep propping up. Maybe we should do something about that. -jsq

PR today, SolarCity and Goldman Sachs Create Largest U.S. Rooftop Solar Lease Financing Platform: Collaboration Expected to Fund more than $500 Million in Solar Projects, 110 Megawatts of Solar Capacity

SAN MATEO, Calif., and NEW YORK, May 16, 2013—SolarCity (Nasdaq: SCTY), a leading provider of clean energy, today announced a lease financing agreement with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to fund more than $500 million in solar power projects; an estimated 110 megawatts in generation capacity for homeowners and businesses.

The financing makes it possible for homeowners, businesses, government and other non-profit organizations to install solar panels with no upfront cost and pay less for clean electricity than they currently pay for utility bills. The agreement was initiated in 2012 and expanded per

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