The climate investor who bet right on ExxonMobil on how to stay ahead of the market for the next decade
A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas.
Jessica Rinaldi | Reuters
Jennifer Grancio was among the leaders at Engine No. 1, the upstart investing firm focused on climate and energy transition, that bested ExxonMobil in a 2021 proxy contest upset few saw coming. What Engine No. 1 decided to do next was maybe as surprising: move away from the activist investor approach that worked so well in winning board seats at the oil and gas giant.
Now CEO, Grancio doesn’t want the firm to be defined by the Exxon headline, but rather by a long-term investing approach that is a blueprint for how companies should think about huge systems changes like energy transition, and how investors should access the value that will be created by the companies that get it, and scale transformed businesses.
“Investing is something you can do for the very short-term, but for the vast majority of asset owners … they are all looking for performance over time,” Grancio said at the CNBC ESG Impact virtual event on Thursday. “The market can get confused about investing only for ideology or the extremely short-term, but Engine No. 1 is going deep with companies, looking primarily at the business model and how it will need to change over time to create value for shareholders.”
The ExxonMobil campaign does hit on the big themes: having the right governance in place to see companies through big systems changes, making the right investments and avoiding the wrong ones. “We got into Exxon as an investor because we knew if it is smart and has the right management for energy transition and how the business is valued after energy transition, that will be great for shareholders,” she said. “We think of the ExxonMobil campaign as being about governance and long-term capitalism,” she said.
Grancio shared a few of her foundational ideas for investing in the future and staying ahead of the market at ESG Impact.
Lots of technology, but not tech stocks
“As investors, we like to talk about Google and Amazon, but where the returns will really be generated in the next decade, we look to agriculture, autos and energy,” Grancio said.
Engine No. 1 is doing a lot of work with autos, which it has been public about, including an investment in GM, on what she describes as a long term transition.
“People know about Tesla, but they forget about GM and Ford,” Grancio said.
“We will have this huge transition and it needs scale, and that’s millions and millions of cars and there is huge room for incumbents like GM and Ford to be part of creating and meeting all of this demand,” she said. This doesn’t mean Tesla won’t be a winner, she added, but GM and Ford also will be, Grancio said.
Don’t just be an index fund investor
Engine No. 1 has a passive index ETF — Grancio was among the senior leaders of the BlackRock iShares ETF business before joining Engine No. 1 — but she warns investors that in the same way they may focus on Tesla and forget about the rest of the auto sector, they will miss out on big investment opportunities if they stick with the index portfolio weightings.
“If you leave your money in a passive index fund, or you only buy the super-growth stocks, you will have a huge problem in your portfolio,” she said. “Investors are underweight the big transition ideas if they are in the indexes,” she added.
Grancio said holding the market in an index fund allows investors to use their shareholder voting power to drive outcomes, which it did by banding together with many large institutional shareholders to take on Exxon, but many of the biggest transition plays, from energy to transportation, are underweights for the majority of investors because of index fund use.
Another big example she cited is agriculture, and a company that she said is getting it right: Deere. “It makes tractors and tractors are dirty, but if we flip that and think about impact and the global food crisis and solving it, Deere’s moves into precision ag are better for climate and yield and financial performance of farmers,” she said. Deere is building a business to solve a huge systemic problem which also has an impact investing perspective, she said.
Still investing in big oil, and expecting energy transition to take a ‘little longer’
Grancio says that Engine No. 1’s work with Exxon is a sign that ESG investing works. “Look at the appreciation of different companies in energy and Exxon has more than doubled, significantly higher than peers, and it wasn’t just the price of oil,” she said.
She also cited Oxy (formerly Occidental Petroleum) which has been a leader in the energy transition space and has more than doubled in 2022 “because it is different from peers,” she said. “We believe these are fundamentally investment issues,” she added. Another important factor that made Oxy different from peers: a massive investment made by Warren Buffett in the company.
Engine No. 1 continues to be an active owner of energy companies, working on many of the same issues that it did at Exxon even if not through a proxy war: managing capital allocation, setting clear targets on emissions, and investing in green energy business.
But she says that the last year during which the price of oil spiked as a result of the war in Ukraine and critical energy shortages in Europe were exposed does mean that the energy transition “will probably be a little bit longer.”
“People use fossil fuels and we have not made this transition, and if we need fossil fuel assets we need them to be managed by the biggest companies in a way that is also looking at new technologies to maintain value after the transition, when we will be more in need of renewables and carbon capture,” she said.
That’s why she continues to see big energy companies as an investment opportunity. “They know how to do these things at scale. We need to deliver energy to the world today, but as we get to the other side of the energy transition, how they deal with these issues will be required for them to still have a great business,” she said. “We think there is a lot of room to work constructively with companies on these issues.”
US reshoring of manufacturing should be a new focus
While it does not fit neatly into an ESG box like climate, Grancio said one of the biggest investment opportunities in the future that she is chasing will be American companies in manufacturing, transportation and logistics tied to a huge resurgence in domestic production and manufacturing.
“Investors are not holding railroads, not assuming cars or chips will be made in the U.S.,” she said.
On Thursday, President Biden touted a plan by IBM to invest $20 billion in New York-based chip manufacturing, two days after Micron Technology announced up to $100 billion in semi manufacturing investments in the state.
Without providing details, she said Engine No. 1 will be creating an investment in the future around the opportunity to invest in the U.S. supply chain. “We’ll be doing something,” she said.
The U.S. domestic manufacturing revival is, in a sense, form of “systems change,” as globalization of prior decades is disrupted. And that fits Engine No. 1’s overall discipline. “We really think you have to understand systems and companies at a deep level to make good choices. Investing should never be ideological. It should be about understanding these companies and how industries are changing,” she said. And at a time of serious political blowback against ESG investing focused primarily on energy companies and climate change, she added, “Hopefully, we don’t let theater get in the way on this.”
A judge has officially approved a settlement in a case brought by Tesla shareholders against board members who will now have to return stock, cash, and give up on stock options worth a total of nearly $1 billion.
Let me start this article with a quote from Tesla CEO Elon Musk:
Tesla will never settle a case where we’re in the right, and never contest a case where we’re in the wrong.
Today, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick approved a settlement agreement between Tesla and all its board members from 2017 to 2020 and the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit on behalf of Tesla shareholders over what the shareholders believed to be excessive compensation.
The agreement was first reported in July 2023, but it is only now being officially approved and we learn a few more details.
Shareholders believed that members of Tesla’s board were compensating themselves excessively with hundreds of millions of dollars between 2017 and 2020 when the average compensation of a board member of a S&P500 company is just north of $300,000.
Under the settlement, the board members agree to return to Tesla $277 million in cash, $459 million in stock options and to forgo $184 million worth of stock options awarded for 2021-2023.
That adds up to nearly $1 billion.
The board members include Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother, Brad Buss, Ira Ehrenpreis, Antonio Gracias, Stephen Jurvetson, all close friends of Elon Musk and people who have financial dealings with Musk outside of Tesla, Linda Johnson Rice, Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, Hiromichi Mizuno and Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle Corp and also a close friend of Musk.
As part of the settlement, Tesla or the board does not admit to any wrongdoing.
Musk didn’t take compensation as part of the board, but he is embroiled in a similar case over his own $55 billion CEO compensation package, which was rescinded by the same judge after she found that it wasn’t negotiated or presented to shareholders in good faith.
The board members who received this “excessive compensation” also happened to be the one who “negotiated” Musk’s CEO compensation package.
The case is heading to the Delaware Supreme Court, as reported earlier today.
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Environment
Nissan’s Ariya electric SUV takes on the extreme weather in its new test chamber [Video]
![Nissan's Ariya electric SUV takes on the extreme weather in its new test chamber [Video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/07/Nissan-first-Tesla-NACS-Japan.jpeg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Despite how cold it may feel outside, Nissan’s electric SUV has likely been through colder. Nissan is proving its Ariya SUV can handle the extreme weather at its unique new test chamber at its tech center near Detroit. With temperatures ranging from -40 to 176 °F, the Ariya is being pushed to see what it’s made of.
Nissan launched the Ariya, its first electric SUV, in the US in late 2022. Over 13,400 Ariya models were sold in the US in its first sales year, with another nearly 20,000 handed over in 2024.
A few weeks ago, Nissan introduced the 2025 Ariya, starting at just $39,770. It has two battery options, 66 or 91 kWh, good for 216 and 289 miles range. That’s for the FWD models.
You can opt for Nissan’s e-4ORCE AWD dual-motor system for “thrilling acceleration” with up to 389 hp and 442 lb-ft of torque. However, with the added power, you sacrifice some range. The AWD Ariya gets up to 272 miles range.
With many parts of the country seeing frigid temperatures, Nissan says its “Ariya is very well equipped” to combat freezing weather.
The electric SUV was already the first vehicle (EV or gas-powered) to drive from the North to the South Pole in 2023. Now, it’s being put through the paces at Nissan’s tech center outside of Detroit.
It’s currently around 23 °F in Detroit, with a low of 11 °F, but Nissan says it’s even colder in its unique new test chamber. The chamber is located at the Nissan Technical Center North America campus, just outside Detroit.
Nissan Ariya handles cold weather tests in new chamber
“Our chambers are capable of temperatures ranging from -40 degrees Fahrenheit to 176 degrees Fahrenheit,” Jeff Tessmer, senior manager of Zero Emission Vehicles at Nissan’s tech center, explained.
Nissan tests the Ariya in a test chamber with “far more extreme” temperatures than the typical driver will see. Tessmer said, “We want to test the worst-case scenario so that our customers will still get the same performance in a wide variety of weather conditions.”
One of the biggest goals is to prove the electric SUV’s battery can maintain charge levels even in extreme weather.
Nissan puts it through “cold soak” tests to ensure performance. During a 24-hour cold soak, the Ariya was parked in -4 °F weather with a 17% battery charge. It also wasn’t plugged in or using its battery heater. After the team returned the next day, the electric SUV still had a 17% charge and started up immediately.
The Ariya is equipped with a battery heater that drivers can turn on ahead of time to ensure optimal performance. On hot days, it includes a liquid-cooled system to regulate battery temperatures.
Drivers can also use the MYNISSAN app to pre-warm the cabin, check the interior temperature, and schedule charging times. Ansu Jammeh, an engineer on Nissan’s Zero Emissions Engineering team, said the best time to use the heating feature is “when the vehicle is plugged in so that it uses power from the grid instead of the vehicle.”
| 2025 Nissan Ariya trim | Battery (kWh) |
Starting Prices* (MSRP) | Range (miles) |
| Engage FWD | 66 | $39,770 | 216 |
| Engage e-4ORCE | 66 | $43,770 | 205 |
| Evolve + FWD | 91 | $44,370 | 289 |
| Engage + e-4ORCE | 91 | $45,370 | 272 |
| Evolve + e-4ORCE | 91 | $48,370 | 272 |
| Platinum + e-4ORCE | 91 | $54,370 | 267 |
Nissan added a new wireless charging pad across all 2025 Ariya models. The inside features Nissan’s Advanced Drive-Assist setup with dual 12.3″ infotainment and driver display screens formed in a “wave-like” shape.
Other standard features of the 2025 model include wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, a Head-up display, and a Virtual Personal Assistant. It also includes Nissan’s ProPilot Assist for assisted driving.
Are you ready to check out Nissan’s electric SUV for yourself? We can help you get started. You can use our link to find Nissan Ariya models at the best price in your area today.
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Florida’s Rice Creek Solar Energy Center is now online, delivering nearly 75 megawatts (MW) of clean electricity to 12 cities across the state. The solar farm is part of the Florida Municipal Solar Project, one of the largest municipal solar initiatives in the US.
Located in Putnam County, near Palatka, the Rice Creek site is covered with 213,000 solar panels that generate enough power for around 14,000 homes. This marks the third solar site in the Florida Municipal Solar Project, with more on the way.
Twelve utilities are tapping into the clean energy from Rice Creek, including Beaches Energy Services (Jacksonville Beach), Fort Pierce Utilities Authority, Homestead, Keys Energy Services in Key West, Kissimmee Utility Authority, Lake Worth Beach, Mount Dora, New Smyrna Beach Utilities, Newberry, Ocala, Town of Havana, and Winter Park. This is the first solar power project for Havana, New Smyrna Beach, and Newberry.
Jacob Williams, the general manager of the Florida Municipal Power Agency, explained, “By working together, our members and their communities benefit from additional solar-powered energy that’s both cost-effective and carbon-free.”
The FMPA, based in Orlando, coordinates the project, while the 12 municipal utilities – who are also FMPA’s member-owners – purchase the power. Miami-based Origis Energy is the builder, owner, and operator of Rice Creek. According to Origis Energy’s Josh Teigiser, “We are honored to support this FMPA work. Long-term agreements for solar generation, including for Rice Creek Solar, provide a stable rate base contributing to lower and more predictable customers’ bills.”
Construction is already underway on a fourth Florida solar farm, Whistling Duck Solar, in Levy County. The Florida Municipal Solar Project is expected to grow to seven sites in the next few years and will generate a total of around 525 MW of clean energy.
Read more: Ohio’s largest solar farm just came online
To limit power outages and make your home more resilient, consider going solar with a battery storage system. In order to find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and you share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*
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