By Irina Slav – Nov 16, 2023, 7:00 PM CST
- Wind and solar stocks are declining due to higher costs of raw materials and slow supply response.
- EV chargers and copper mining, critical for the energy transition, face demand uncertainties and reluctance in investment.
- Despite government subsidies, renewable energy sectors struggle with high costs and interest rates, indicating a slower and more expensive transition than anticipated.
Wind power stocks are tanking. So are solar power stocks. Germany’s government just agreed to underwrite a 15-billion-euro bailout for Siemens Energy after its wind power subsidiary booked massive losses.
The list could continue. The movers and shakers in the energy space are finding it increasingly hard to move and shake. It was easy to anticipate this development, yet, many choose to ignore the signs, and now the sector may suffer more before the growing pains ease.
One common theme in the wind, solar, and EV space is the theme of rising costs. This was perhaps the easiest development to anticipate in the progress of the energy transition. After all, everyone was forecasting a massive surge in the demand for various raw materials and technology to enable that transition.
There is one guaranteed thing that happens when demand for something rises: prices also rise before the supply response kicks in. This is a universal truth for all industries and there was no reason to expect that the transition industry would be an exception.
Indeed, demand for raw materials necessary for solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries rose, but supply was slow to catch up, which led to higher prices. For a while, many pretended this was not the case, possibly hoping the cost inflation would blow over before investors noticed it.
Denmark’s Orsted, which suffered some of the worst market cap losses in the transition space, just this June published an upbeat outlook for the year and the medium term, expecting strong capacity additions growth and a return on capital employed rate of an average 14% for the period 2023 to 2030.
Approved – Sully