Who Wants to Be a Billionaire? | Huffington Post
Get out your magnifying glass to see the tiny percentage of charitable donations allocated each year to the environment. That’s right: 3%, including animal welfare, parks, zoos, and gardens. But a growing number of very very rich people are disrupting usual philanthropic patterns to tackle climate change—strategically and specifically.
Hunt plays the long game on his glaringly obvious emissions trading scheme | Lenore Taylor
CalPERS' Climate Risk Reporting Proposal Overwhelmingly Passes at Glencore Plc | CalPERS
May 19, 2016 Contact: Joe DeAnda, Information Officer, newsroom@calpers.ca.gov
The California Public Employees' Retirement System's (CalPERS) climate risk reporting shareowner resolution, Resolution #16, overwhelmingly passed at the annual shareowner meeting of Glencore Plc. The resolution, which was supported by company management, requires the global commodity trading and mining company to report on environmental risks and opportunities associated with climate change.
You Just Lived Through the Hottest April on Record. And March. And February. And January. And December. And ... | Slate Magazine
Engie mulls closing Australia's Hazelwood coal-fired power plant | Reuters
La Trobe becomes Australia's first university to commit to fossil-fuel divestment | The Guardian
China Curbs Plans for More Coal-Fired Power Plants | The New York Times
Carbon complacency in portfolios not an option | Investment Magazine
Exxon Carbon Asset Risk 2016 | Ceres
Exxon shareholders have submitted a resolution at the 2016 AGM : Shareholders request that by 2017 ExxonMobil publish an annual assessment of long term portfolio impacts of public climate change policies, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information. The assessment can be incorporated into existing reporting and should analyze the impacts on ExxonMobil’s oil and gas reserves and resources under a scenario in which reduction in demand results from carbon restrictions and related rules or commitments adopted by governments consistent with the globally agreed upon 2 degree target. The reporting should assess the resilience of the company’s full portfolio of reserves and resources through 2040 and beyond and address the financial risks associated with such a scenario.
Sub-critical Australia - Risks From Market Imbalance in the Australian National Electricity Market | IEEFA
Climate reality check - After Paris, counting the cost | David Spratt
See Earth’s Temperature Spiral Toward 2°C | Climate Central
Sunlight on the fog of carbon risk | AFR
World's carbon dioxide concentration teetering on the point of no return | The Guardian
Is this the end of the centralised energy network? | Renew Economy
Oil discoveries slump to 60 year low | AFR
The other budget | The Monthly, Michael Lucy
Steven Chu: Mexico's Energy Auction Reveals True Price Of U.S. Renewables
Peabody Energy 1Q2016 Results - losing US$80m per month | IEEFA, Tim Buckley, Director of Energy Finance Studies
Peabody Energy reported its 1Q2016 results today (Peabody Energy SEC filings). The company lost US$228m for the three months to March 2016 (before a notional tax credit), a more than doubling of the pretax loss relative to 1Q2015. How management could defer Chapter 11 as long as they did seems bizarre given the company has been losing $80m pretax every month and where net debt rose by US$462m in just the last three months. We review this result given it shows that the momentum in the coal mining sector is still deteriorating, rapidly.
Peabody Energy’s 1Q2016 results highlight the magnitude of the problems facing the US domestic and export coal industries.
Revenues dropped 33% year on year (yoy) to US$1.02bn, consistent with the US Energy Information Administration reports that total US coal consumption is down 33% yoy year-to-date (link to EIA report).
Net interest expense rose 22% yoy to US$125m for the 1Q2016.
But even if the entire US$6.5bn of net debt was written off by the global banking sector, Peabody would still be losing money. At the EBIT level, Peabody lost US$103m in 1Q2016. As such, the report from McKinsey & Co suggesting massive ongoing financial distress for the US coal mining sector looks a fair assessment, as is their conclusion that 75% of the total US$100bn of sector liabilities in place at the end of 2014 could be lost by the end of this decade (link to IEEFA report).
Peabody’s net debt rose by US$462m in just the last three months to US$6.44bn, not discounting another US$2.15bn of unfunded post retirement benefits et al.
IEEFA would question how the Australian business of Peabody Energy can remain in a ‘business as usual’ position. The Australian holding company has yet to lodge its 2015 annual results, even though business as usual (as we understand it) requires lodgement of these accounts with ASIC by end April 2016. Given the 2014 accounts said the company only remained solvent due to ongoing financial support, but with the ultimate parent in Chapter 11, there must be some serious legal or accounting gymnastics involving opaque offshore structures that is allowing the Australian unit to have to-date avoided administration. Given the financial leverage and number of Australian jobs involved, maybe this is something our Energy Minister could investigate rather than taking management’s word for it?