Finding opportunity in climate change
Bring up climate change, or alternative energy, or even energy independence and people will say the conversation is political, maybe even too political for them. And it is.
The conversation has been commandeered by proselytizers who take on the topic with the fervent energy of a televangelist or worse, a prohibitionist. You consume too much. You have too much. There is more you should do. Why aren’t you doing more? Don’t you know this is the biggest existential crisis of our time? The world is on fire! Look at what I can do! Why can’t you? Alternatively, there are those who say climate change is a hoax and that we should not have to do anything to help preserve the planet for future generations or even this one. Certainly one could see this type of reaction after the manic push by many who find climate activism their hobby or raison d’être. But it’s really too bad, because there is an opportunity here.
And opportunity is not talked about enough when it comes to the environment. I have said in the past that even if you think climate change is a hoax, what could be so bad about moving toward a green future with renewable energy produced locally instead of far away places that don’t have our best interests in mind? What is the worst that could happen? Clean air and water? An improved natural environment? Seems pretty good to me.
But we get stuck with eco-preaching about the existential crisis, the ice caps, the polar bears, the storms, the fires. Then the discussion can turn to how climate change would happen naturally, we are still in the late stages of an ice age after all, and how storms and fires have always happened, then the argument becomes about to what degree the storms and fires have gotten worse, and how do we know, and then we shout about scientists and dogma and misinformation and Instagram and TikTok, and now everyone hates one another and we haven’t done a damn thing except agree that paper straws suck, and not in a good way.
Sometimes it’s hard to intellectualize icebergs when someone says we should not drive or not do something else, when they do things that could be conceived as bad for the planet too, and it becomes a competition about who and what is worse. Which will get us nowhere.
So let’s think about this. Drilling, refining and delivering oil is a costly venture. But so are all the alternatives right now. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be a change to a better tomorrow. And the more we think about the opportunities presented by a green economy, the better. Can we lower power bills? Create new jobs? Make some money?
I’ve never understood the lack of interest in seeing ways to make money with alternative energy. Obviously, community aggregators like Peninsula Clean Energy are making money for some folks, so good on them. But it obviously is costly to move away from gas to electric, otherwise it wouldn’t be offering rebates and pushing cities for reach codes.
There are other ways to capitalize on the green economy. Oil is king and has been for a while, but there will be a time when it will not make financial sense to produce it and run our economy on it. This is where the opportunity lies.
GE Vernova was spun off from General Electric’s energy businesses in 2024. It focuses largely on steam, nuclear, hydro and wind power but also some gas power. It is focusing on decarbonization. In the past year, it has risen from $160 a share to $549, an increase in 229%. That was an opportunity. While the prevailing sentiment is that green businesses are in the doldrums because of our current federal policies, that won’t last forever. We will get a new president and there is simply too much opportunity for this type of business. GE Vernova’s rise over the past year proves two things, it is good to shake off the weight of a legacy company that didn’t keep up with the times and it is good to focus on a variety of ways to provide energy to track with our growing economy. Tech companies aren’t going to build artificial intelligence on natural gas, they will need new forms of energy — both clean and plentiful. When that clean energy becomes cost efficient, it will lead to ways to scale and individualize. We will all benefit. So now is the time to start thinking about ways to invest in that new economy. We have talked about AI ad nauseam, now let’s start talking about ways our society can benefit from it — and one big one is the opportunity in the clean energy technology that will power it.