Ferg's Finds

This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.

Article(s)

While I used to have the luxury of re-reading books I found beneficial, travelling with a baby has reduced it to re-reading some of my favourite summaries of the books:

Lessons from Annie Duke (Author of “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts”)

Lessons from Howard Marks’ New Book: “Mastering the Market Cycle – Getting the Odds on Your Side”

Podcast/Video

Also finding quality podcasts ready for flights: The Insight: Conversations – Special Episode with Annie Duke and Howard Marks

Quote(s)

“Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon.” 

-Peter Lynch

Tweet

This has been my experience in the markets; stomaching volatility is par of the course to get ahead.

Charts

Not what those of us long thermal coal and nat gas were hoping for…

Something I'm Pondering

I'm pondering when pointing to capacity starts to get called out. Similar to the bullshit of comparing baseload power sources to intermittent via LCOE, I've seen an increase in articles spinning capacity (when generation tells a very different story).

Why does this matter?

Let me take a section from John Kemp's free energy email, which you should all be signed up to.

Focus on solar capacity vs generation which I’ve bolded below.

Thermal power plants (mostly fuelled by coal) accounted for 2,853 gigawatts (GW) of generation capacity or 48% of the total at the end of November 2023, according to the China Electricity Council.
 
Remaining capacity came from zero-emission sources, including solar (558 GW, 20%), hydro (421 GW, 15%), wind (413 GW, 15%) and nuclear (57 GW, 2%).
 
But thermal power plants still accounted for a far higher share of actual generation (70% in 2023), compared with lower shares from hydro (13%), wind (9%), nuclear (5%) and solar (3%).

Solar’s generation is 15% of its capacity…

Another great way to look at this, which John provides, is this table, which breaks down generation. Media articles breathlessly report on solar growth of 28% YOY, which I'm sure gets far more clicks than reporting it has gone from 2% to 3% of China's total electricity generation over the past four years.

You then have to consider the growth in electricity demand China has to keep up with (they add more than their total solar generation in a slow year, triple it in 2021).

Hope you’re all having a great week.

Cheers,

Ferg 

P.S. If you’re interested in my story and why I started this Substack, you can read the story here.