In positioning investments ahead of the coming energy revolution it’s far easier to bet against the losers than it is to pick winners. Only one of the many potential breakthrough technologies needs to work out to undercut fossil fuels (coal first, others later). LENR is merely the most plausible near-term one.
In this context there have been two interesting bits of news recently:
First, there’s this story about the Stanford university endowment that’s now divesting its $18bn fund from anything coal related. I’d like to add that on top of climate change coal is also responsible for billions of life years lost in China. University endowments have often seen trends early and have generated better returns than most investors, including the professionals.
Second, global index provider FTSE has announced a new series of fossil fuel free indices that allows investors to track markets without exposure to this group of companies. The literature is explicit about the potential for assets to become stranded, based on political action around climate change.
A good paper on stranded fossil fuels can be found here, showing $674bn annual investment on finding new reserves.While climate change is a worthy reason readers on this site will probably just cite poor economics that make fossil fuels too expensive to extract if LENR reactors can provide all the required energy at a fraction of the cost. Just imagine what even a fraction of that fossil fuel investment could do for commercialization of LENR or other non-fossil fuel technologies.It appears that an increasing number of people are starting to prepare for a post fossil fuel future even if many of them may be unaware of the LENR short cut.
It appears that an increasing number of people are starting to prepare for a post fossil fuel future even if most of them may be unaware of the LENR short cut.
