Renewables / Energy Transition Primer

Can anyone recommend materials to get up to speed on renewables / energy transition? May be interviewing with a few infra funds soon that are increasing allocation to this subsector (presumably would be working on these deals). Don't know where to start. Open to books / podcasts / etc as well. Thanks!

23 Comments
 

I can’t say much about materials for the details since there isn’t much to the topic, this heavily revolves around ESG. From what I have seen, big energy companies are going to buy companies that are operating at a loss and are closing their fossil fuels and are at the verge of transformation instead, Brookfield is buying one for those reasons I think. If you want details, I’d suggest reading letter to shareholders of these companies, I can’t quite remember which report it was, but Brookfield’s CEO went on for about 2-3 pages about ESG/Renewables and the entire transition and why he loves it, and if they are doing this, we can expect others to follow along pretty quickly.

 

I can’t say much about materials for the details since there isn’t much to the topic, this heavily revolves around ESG. From what I have seen, big energy companies are going to buy companies that are operating at a loss and are closing their fossil fuels and are at the verge of transformation instead, Brookfield is buying one for those reasons I think. If you want details, I’d suggest reading letter to shareholders of these companies, I can’t quite remember which report it was, but Brookfield’s CEO went on for about 2-3 pages about ESG/Renewables and the entire transition and why he loves it, and if they are doing this, we can expect others to follow along pretty quickly.

 
Most Helpful

The space is too fragmented and fast-evolving to expect a primer and you aren't going to get much info about modeling if that's what you were alluding to. You are going to have to some digging from a variety of places to get up to speed.

Here's a couple:

Enverus.com -> Go to their knowledge hub section and look for the Power & Renewables section. Watch IRA, Energy Transition Research, 2023 P & R Outlook webinar (first 24 mins)

seia.org -> Solar Market Insight Report (Executive Summary)

https://mercomcapital.com/clean-energy-reports/ $$$https://zpryme.com/utility-response/u-s-battery-project-and-capacity-tr… -> Battery storage business landscape

https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-06/MSP_Report_2022June_Final_508_v3.pdf Battery Storage Valuation (pg 7-15 pdf & 28-29 probably most useful for understanding storage)

https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/decoding-the-hydrogen-rainbow/https://vimeo.com/765078489 "Perspectives on The New Green Hydrogen Landscape"

https://cleanpower.org/resources/types/reports/

Stuff that happened in 2022 & just to show you some of the moving parts:

Big players spot RNG opportunity: BP acquires Archea, NextEra purchases RNG assets from Energy Power Partners, Warburg Pincus backs RNG business Virdi Energy

IOUs retreat from renewables: Conedison sells clean energy business to RWE, Duke conducts strategic review & will sell renewables business this year

PE bets on renewable developers: Brookfield acquires Scout Clean Energy, Carlyle/Aspen Power Investment, KKR/Arevia Power Investment, Apollo/Doral Renewables Investment, (other investment platforms like Ares & TPG also did stuff here too)

IRA obviously and very likely why the places you are talking to are looking to increase allocations in renewables. (understand PTC, ITC, 45Q, bonus, transferability of credits) 

Links I provided talk about what happened in solar (stuff happened with solar wrt trade), storage, carbon capture, etc. Can't speak too much about hydro, progress seems very preliminary there and only thing I hear about is the Hydrogen Hub program. 

 

I work in this space and this list is great. Some obvious ones that are missing to me:

  • BNEF report - believe this is free and gives a great overall sense on pace of the energy transition
  • Corality for infrastructure modeling - they do workshops (renewables)
  • Thunder Said Energy (paid consultancy, but not too expensive - think only $500/mo and if you are working in an energy group should be an easy well)
 

The other commenter already provided you with lots of links and I’m on mobile and definitely too lazy to add anything to that list for now but I’m happy to answer any more concrete questions should you have them, I’m in equity research covering renewables and cleantech and covered the sector previously in corporate banking as well

 

Here are some resources: 

Project Development in the Solar Industry by Albie Fong (2012)

- It's a bit dated in some sections but in others helpful for understanding how a project goes from start to finish. If the fund you're looking at is acquiring developers or doing greenfield projects, definitely worth a read. 

NREL 2022 Offshore Wind Report (free off google)

- Infrastructure fund are moving into this space both on the East cost and West Coast (notably Blackstone through Invenergy)

Biden Supply Chain Reports https://www.energy.gov/policy/securing-americas-clean-energy-supply-cha…

- Administration published these reports detailing supply chains for critical industries (Solar, Wind, Energy Storage, Semiconductors etc.), it's good stuff to know as that is one of the major constraints on solar projects and the reshoring trend is influencing investments in domestic manufacturing (Brookfield-Intel and FirstSolar)

IRA 

- You could probably just google this to see what changed in terms of the credits / how it's easier to use them / what the new technologies are that are eligible 

Podcasts

- Look into The Energy Gang, there's a episode where they had a Lazard P&U banker and talked about the IRA. Typically there's a million of these types of energy transition podcasts so just pick whatever has the most views / voice isn't annoying and should be covered on current events. 

Modeling

- Look into GridLines Project Finance course if I recall correctly it's a renewables asset. 

Which funds are you looking at? 

 

any updates on a primer? I see that TD Cowen has a 400 page primer but i don't have access. does anyone?

 

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