BlockRock: There will be no energy transition without technological advances. And now?
There will be no energy transition unless we find new technologies that reduce the cost of renewable energy, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told Bloomberg's Dani Burger at the Global Diague forum in Berlin on Friday.
“We will not have a transition if we do not find technologies to reduce the competitive cost of renewable energy. We can not do it". Fink said, adding that BlackRock conducted a survey that found 57% of its global investors plan to put more money into decarbonization technologies.
“We have seen what has happened with high energy prices in just two years in Germany and Europe. You can't have a transition. Fink argues that when energy prices rise, emerging countries use more coal, because “life is more important than the future.”
This is a big change for BlackRock and Fink who, until yesterday, were the great supporters of ESG, of the fight against carbon, when today they decided that even the term ESG should no longer be used.
“We need to reimagine finance,” Fink said, so that finance can find ways to bring billions and even trillions to emerging nations to help them decarbonize.
To the point that energy insecurity may be impossible for emerging countries to manage, other financial firms appear to agree. At the end of 2022, during the European energy crisis, Europe's energy security problems have almost led to energy poverty in emerging countries, said Credit Suisse energy analyst Saul Kavonic. While European and other countries may be able to pay a premium for energy, emerging countries cannot, and some already choose blackouts on a fairly regular basis because they cannot afford even current energy prices. And if they can afford any form of energy, it will be the lowest-cost one, such as coal, despite any green ambitions they may have.
Larry Fink controls $10 trillion in financial assets for BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. BlackRock was ridiculed by some late last year for inviting companies to invest through an environmental, social and governance lens, but ultimately these investments often proved to be of poor quality and low returns.
The repercussions of these words are very serious: all this money invested so far in the transition, from wind power to electric cars, risks being thrown away because it is spent on a technology that is too immature to be truly sustainable. Tens of billions have therefore been spent whose return risks being zero, or negative. From a financial point of view this will be an epochal disaster and Fink is well aware of this, but he also has a large share of responsibility –
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The BlockRock article: There will be no energy transition without technological advances. And now? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/blockrock-non-ci-sara-transizione-energetica-senza-avanzamenti-tecnologici-ed-ora/ on Sat, 30 Sep 2023 08:00:07 +0000.