Nick Pope
Contributor
Investors are fading on green energy investment funds due to worries about the sector’s ability to grow and the possible return of former President Donald Trump to the White House, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing analysis conducted by a firm called LSEG Lipper.
Funds that invest specifically in green energy companies and products around the world saw investment outflows totaling $4.8 billion during the first quarter of 2024, the largest amount in a single quarter on record, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, the S&P Global Clean Energy Index has tanked by about 10 percentage points this year while the S&P 500 Energy Index — a fund that features many oil and gas companies — is up by more than 16% this year so far.
“This is what Consumers’ Research has been warning about from the very beginning. The idea that the rush into [Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG)] and green investing would be good for investors and shareholders was always a lie,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Now, with higher interest rates and a completely different energy paradigm, the folly of these boondoggles is becoming apparent.” (RELATED: Citigroup Reports Huge Share Of Its Clients Are Not Ready To Reach Key Climate Targets)
Many large financial institutions in the U.S. have embraced ESG investing in recent years, characterizing it as a practice that allows for investors to profit while also helping to effectuate positive societal changes. Opponents like Hild have countered that the strategy violates the fiduciary duty that institutions have to their investors by injecting politicized considerations into financial decision-making that ought to be entirely apolitical.
Now, some of the leading asset managers in the world, such as BlackRock and State Street, are under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee for their ESG practices, while State Street and JP Morgan’s asset management arm have withdrawn from Climate Action 100+, a coalition that pushes companies to slash emissions and adopt other corporate climate policies.
Globally, some of the green funds that saw the biggest capital outflows in the first quarter of 2024 include Handelsbanken Hallbar Energi, a Swedish fund that lost $458 million of investment, and the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, which lost $335 million, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, the Ninety One Global Environment Fund lost $226 million of investment in the first quarter.
The apparent downturn in investor confidence and interest in green energy funds appears to be happening despite the Biden administration’s push to advance its massive climate agenda and similarly costly initiatives undertaken by European states like Germany. Governments like those of the U.S. and Germany have spent vast sums of money to subsidize technologies like wind and solar power generation, but green energy has yet to displace fossil fuels as the lifeblood of the world’s developed economies.
If investor interest in green energy funds and products continues to dissipate, it is unlikely that international climate goals established or reaffirmed at 2023’s United Nations climate summit in Dubai will be met, according to Reuters.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
I made my exit stage right 35 years ago, never looked back. As part of my career I met and then turned and walked away from some of the so called “Elite” in Europe. Those sitting in the boxes that John Lennon of the Beatles asked to please rattle their jewelry to show their appreciation. Crooks and thieves, every single one of them.
Real money bases its decisions on data.
There is NO data proving human CO2 causes meaningful global warming.
In fact, there is ANTI-data:
CO2 UP GREATLY. WARMING NOT.
Game over.
They won’t give up. It’s about ushering in a new world order. Nothing to do with co2 or climate, just a base lust for power.
More good news. These knuckledraggers deserve severe punishment.
Now the sky is really falling! Yes, Fear of Trump is in there to be sure, but this puppy was a loser from the git-go. There we were, 3% against 97%! They never had a chance! These kind of odds were about the same as in the Soviet Union. It’s the quality of the combatants, not the numbers.
‘If investor interest in green energy funds and products continues to dissipate, it is unlikely that international climate goals established or reaffirmed at 2023’s United Nations climate summit in Dubai will be met, according to Reuters.’
Here’s some news for Reuters – these goals won’t be met with or without investor interest.
It is still so cold that almost everybody outside of the tropics has to live in heated houses.
Even the media can’t force a losing economic model to provide enough returns for investors.
That statement is simultaneously a gross understatement and gross overstatement.
Wind and solar will categorically never become ‘the lifeblood’ of any economy, wind and solar are right now haemorrhaging developed economies.
Wind and solar are parasitic to reliable grid systems and the economy.
We have already seen how much they have sucked out of the German and UK economies,
…. with parts of the USA struggling from this parasitic mess as well.
Australia is also on the cusp of another coal-fired station closure, which would likely cause major issues with supply.
What sucked out europe was russian gas. Renewables saved europe from a lot of struggle
What sucked out Europe was believing in the stupidity of CO2 caused climate change.
Not according to multitudes of new reports.
If Germany had stayed with the energy supply systems they had 25 years ago, they would have no problems whatsoever.
They would still be an industrial powerhouse.
It is their abject far-leftist STUPIDITY in bowing to the anti-nuclear, anti-CO2 idiocy that has them in their current parlous situation.
Renewables did not save anything…. THEY CAUSED IT !!
German industry collapsing
Rise And Fall Of The German Economy… Energy Debacle Leading To Economic Meltdown (notrickszone.com)
Too bad the use of renewables hasn’t saved anything in terms of fossil fuel reductions.
“Renewables saved Europe…” ?????
No, power houses burning brown coal did.
The self-delusion of your post is off the scale.
The delusion of its post is typical.
Does anything think it is Griff?
“Green” investment funds have an appalling investment record dating back decades. The problem for green investments is that they invariably depend on taxpayer subsidies to be viable. Once the subsidies are withdrawn or expire, the underlying investments become worthless.
Warren Buffett admitted that several years ago. Renewable Energy was always a means for the elites to extract wealth from the masses through taxpayer-funded subsidies. This scam can’t die soon enough.
The COP pivot to nuclear sounded the start of the end for grid scale wind and solar. Very little of it can stand alone without some form of mandated theft from consumers.
California’s net metering mess eventually had to be rectified. That has stalled the Californian charge to intermittent generation.
Without substantial storage, penetration of intermittent power hits a wall around 30%. California is there now or a bit higher through its interconnection with other States.
110 states pledge to triple renewables.
22 to triple nuclear.
It’s the start of the end for nuclear.
https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/nuclear-expert-mycle-schneider-on-the-cop28-pledge-to-triple-nuclear-energy-production-trumpism-enters-energy-policy/
Also storage is here and gets build fast.
Delusional.
Chuckle. Looks like someone is easily distracted by imaginary numbers. Pledges are like sphincters–everybody has one. Like New Year’s Resolutions, they are discarded as soon as reality reasserts itself. Likewise amusing is how Trump is used in place of real argument.
Chuckle. Looks like someone is easily distracted by imaginary numbers. Pledges are like sphincters–everybody has one. Like New Year’s Resolutions, they are discarded as soon as reality reasserts itself. Likewise amusing is how Trump is used in place of real argument.
I can see the sinking of the Titanic could have been avoided if only the passengers had had the right world view, ideology and feelings about it!
‘Trigger warnings’ on reality, ‘Political Correctness’ and retreating to ‘Safe Places with Play Dough’ turn out to have been very dangerous practices. I thought the The Climate Capades (The Greatest Snow-Job on Earth) would end with a letting go by the smartest practitioners first, followed by ordinary folk. But, no! There is a crazy glue loyalty thingy in play among the ideologues. The wise masses are letting go because they don’t want to pay for it.
“For now there is no accepted solution for how a low carbon electricity system will address longer periods of low wind speeds and solar irradiation, often coupled with high demand during cold winter spells. Addressing these long term energy deficits would require technologies capable of storing a substantial amount of energy at considerably low cost”
“With the shift to renewables comes an end to the highly controllable and dispatchable power generation of the past. Where electricity supply was previously decided by plant managers and dispatch centres, it will increasingly be influenced by weather conditions”
“Introducing large amounts of variable renewables on to a power system will have an impact on grid inertia making it more difficult to manage the frequency stability of the system.”
Wind Europe/ Hitachi Energy ‘Maximising the power of wind through grid flexibility’ (2024)
“Storage gets build fast.” Built…
That is an opinion piece based on interpretation of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023 (WNISR).
As for storage, the linked article does not mention storage other than saying that storage has to come first, before renewables.
“that storage has to come first, before renewables.”
If you have coal, gas, nuclear and hydro (where available)…
… no need to build any storage… so no junk wind and solar.. win, win. !!
Politicians make promises that can’t be kept, and to you that’s proof that they will be kept.
There is no storage, it’s not being built, fast or otherwise.
How have you been Griff?
Texas leads the country in combined wind and solar renewable energy!https://www.kxan.com/weather-traffic-qas/texas-leads-the-country-in-combined-wind-solar-renewable-energy/
Is that the same State in which dozens of people froze to death in the dark a couple of Winters ago?
Investors are primarily interested in returns that will help finance their futures, and when those investments show signs of failing to deliver because they’ve been propping up socially fashionable ventures rather than reliable ones, people want out. So when investors hear that EVs sales are slumping because of high prices, questionable reliability and poor resale value; and when there are more indications that wind and solar can’t deliver consistent energy flows, why would they want to put their money into funds whose values are likely to decline. All of this is a good thing because maybe governments will finally smarten up and quit propping up these risky ventures, though I wouldn’t bet on it as long as there are tax dollars for them to play around with.
Participant, studio behind ‘Food, Inc.’ and ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ shuts down
Memo released Tuesday informed Participant’s staff of 100 that the 20-year-old studio is winding down operations Participant, the activist film and television studio that has financed Oscar winners like “Spotlight” and socially conscious documentaries like “Food, Inc,” and “Waiting For Superman” is closing its doors after 20 years. Billionaire Jeff Skoll told his staff of 100 in a memo shared with The Associated Press Tuesday that they were winding down company operations.