Why The Transition To Clean Energy Is Happening A Lot Faster Than People Realize

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Tracy, have you seen Tesla's chart lately?

Tracy Alloway (0:21)

I have, actually. I think because you tweeted it. It's a pretty crazy chart.

Joe Weisenthal (0:28)

Do you know that at this moment that we're recording this, just this right precise moment, that if Tesla opens up today where it's trading in the pre-market, it could be a $100 billion company for the first time.

Tracy Alloway (0:42)

That's amazing considering just a few months ago, people were talking about Tesla actually going bankrupt. And of course, there are a lot of people out there who still think that the company might go bankrupt. Did you know that Tesla bonds are trading above par for the first time since they were issued?

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

I wasn't aware of that, but I'm not surprised that you were on top of the bond angle and following that and that I totally missed that. I like stocks. They're just simple. They go up and down, you know?

Tracy Alloway (1:12)

Well, together, we provide a holistic cross asset overview of Tesla, so it's done our job.

Joe Weisenthal (1:20)

So that's obviously big news in the world of electric vehicles. There was also another big thing in the world of sort of climate and energy and renewables this week.

Did you happen to catch it?

Tracy Alloway (1:33)

Would that be the launch of something called Green?

Joe Weisenthal (1:37)

Yeah, so exactly right. So our colleagues within Bloomberg News have launched a new green vertical. It's called Green. It's on Twitter at the handle, at Climate. And it's a major endeavor to cover climate in a whole new way, all kinds of unique, fresh data.

It should be a pretty interesting endeavor. Our colleague Aaron Rutkopf is launching that, and it looks pretty cool.

Tracy Alloway (2:03)

Yeah, there's been a lot of great coverage already. And I'm particularly interested to see us try to break down some of the numbers and stats behind a lot of the, I'm going to say, corporate PR guff behind environmentalism. I think that's important.

Joe Weisenthal (2:19)

Yeah, I think it's important to, exactly as you put it, break down the corporate PR guff. We also happen to be, this week, it's Davos Week, so it is certainly a very big week for corporate PR type stuff.

Tracy Alloway (2:32)

There's extra guff to go around.

Joe Weisenthal (2:33)

Yeah, it's a bull market and guff this week. So it's kind of the perfect week for us to do an episode talking about climate, renewable energy, electric vehicles, all of these things that are suddenly the sort of confluence of things happening right now.

Tracy Alloway (2:51)

Great. I'm into it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:54)

So here's one piece of good news before we get into the actual discussion, which is that although there is a lot of corporate PR guff, as you so eloquently put it, related to climate, there are real things happening and it's easy to be cynical and say, oh, politicians aren't doing anything and business leaders, it's all just lip service and greenwashing and press releases that sound good.

But there is some good happening in the world and there's actually a lot of progress being made on the transition to renewable fuels or renewable energy sources. And that is what we're going to be talking about today.

Tracy Alloway (3:30)

Great. And this is why I think it's so important, by the way, to identify the bad actors in this space, because then you can actually find the things that are happening, the companies that are changing their practices, the policies that actually work around this and funnel more capital to them. So this should be interesting.

Joe Weisenthal (3:49)

Yeah, absolutely. So without further ado, I want to bring in our guest for the week or for the episode. He's Gregor Macdonald. He is a journalist. He is an analyst. He is the editor of The Gregor Letter, which is a newsletter that everyone should subscribe to. It's about the world of energy, both the sort of conventional energy and the shift to renewables published in many places.

And he has been tracking, for as long as anyone I can remember, the evolution of the world's energy balances and the trends happening and what's driving the trends.

And we're going to be talking to him about what he sees. So Gregor Macdonald, thank you very much for joining us.

Gregor Macdonald (4:29)

Oh, thanks, Joe. It's great to be with you and Tracy today. Really look forward to our chat.