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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.  

Incumbents like GM will have a huge reduction of emissions and be a big winner, says Engine No. 1's Grancio

“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.” 

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Tesla’s retro-futuristic diner and Supercharger is here and it looks sick

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Tesla's retro-futuristic diner and Supercharger is here and it looks sick

Tesla’s retro-futuristic diner with Superchargers and giant movie screens is ready to open, and I have to admit, it looks pretty sick.

This project has been in the works for a long time.

In 2018, Elon Musk said that Tesla planned to open an “old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in Los Angeles.” It was yet another “Is he joking?” kind of Elon Musk idea, but he wasn’t kidding.

A few months later, Tesla applied for building permits for “a restaurant and Supercharger station” at a location in Santa Monica. However, the project stalled for a long time, apparently due to local regulations.

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Nevertheless, Tesla still moved forward with a Supercharger at the location, but it had to move the diner project to Hollywood. In 2022, Tesla filed the construction plans with the city, giving us the first look at what the automaker intends to build.

In 2023, the automaker broke ground on the site of the diner.

7 years after being originally announced, the project appears now ready to open:

Musk said that he ate at the diner last night and claimed that it is “one of the coolest spots in LA.” He didn’t say when it will open, but Tesla vehicles have been spotted at Supercharger and people appear to be testing the dinning experience inside.

A Tesla Optimus Robot can be seen inside the diner on a test rack. It looks like Tesla might use one for some tasks inside the diner.

Earlier this year, Tesla integrated the diner into its mobile app – hinting at some interaction through the app – possibly ordering from it.

Electrek’s Take

I think it looks pretty cool. I am a fan of the design and concept.

However, considering the state of the Tesla community, I don’t think I’d like the vibes. That said, it looks like Tesla isn’t prominently pushing its branding on the diner.

You can come and charge there, but it looks like Tesla is also aiming to get a wider clientele just for dining.

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Westinghouse plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in U.S., interim CEO tells Trump

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Westinghouse plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in U.S., interim CEO tells Trump

Plant Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Waynesboro, GA, August 15, 2024.

Van Applegate | CNBC

Westinghouse plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in the U.S. with construction to begin by 2030, interim CEO Dan Sumner told President Donald Trump at a roundtable in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

Westinghouse’s big AP1000 reactor generates enough electricity to power more than 750,000 homes, according to the company. Building 10 of these reactors would drive $75 billion of economic value across the U.S. and $6 billion in Pennsylvania, Sumner said.

The Westinghouse executive laid out the plan to Trump during a conference on energy and artificial intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University. Technology, energy and financial executives announced more than $90 billion of investment in data centers and power infrastructure at the conference, according to the office of Sen. Dave McCormick, who organized the event.

Trump issued four executive orders in May that aim to quadruple nuclear power in the U.S. by 2050. The president called for the U.S. to have 10 nuclear plants under construction by 2050. He ordered a “wholesale revision” of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rules and guidelines.

The U.S. has built only two new nuclear reactors over the past 30 years, both of which were Westinghouse AP1000s at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. The project notoriously came in $18 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule, contributing to the bankruptcy of Westinghouse.

The industry stalwart emerged from bankruptcy in 2018 and us now owned by Canadian uranium miner Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management.

Westinghouse announced a partnership with Google on Tuesday to use AI tools to make the construction of AP1000s an “efficient, repeatable process,” according to the company.

Catch up on the latest energy news from CNBC Pro:

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Hyundai’s electric minivan sheds its camo: Check out the new Staria EV

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Hyundai's electric minivan sheds its camo: Check out the new Staria EV

Hyundai’s electric minivan is finally out in the open. The Staria EV was caught without camo near Hyundai’s R&D center in Korea, giving us a closer look at the electric minivan undisguised.

Hyundai’s electric minivan drops camo ahead of debut

The Staria arrived in 2021 as the successor to the Starex, Hyundai’s multi-purpose vehicle (MPV). Although the Staria has received several updates throughout the years, 2026 will be its biggest by far.

Hyundai will launch the Staria EV, its first electric minivan. Like the current model, the 2026 Staria will be available in several different configurations, including cargo, passenger, and even a camper version.

We’ve seen the Staria EV out in public a few times already. Last month, we got a glimpse of it while driving on public roads in Korea.

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Despite the camouflage, new EV-like design elements were visible, including updated LED headlights and a full-length light bar. Although it’s still unclear, the electric version appears to be roughly the same size as the current Staria from the side, but slightly wider from the front.

New images posted on the South Korean forum Clien reveal a test car, expected to be Hyundai’s Staria electric minivan, without camo.

Like most Hyundai test cars, the prototype has a black front and a grey body. It still features a similar look to other prototypes we’ve seen, but you can clearly see the new facelift.

Earlier this year, a Staria EV was spotted in a parking lot in Korea, featuring a similar look. The electric version is nearly identical to the Staria Lounge, but with an added charge port and closed-off grille.

The Hyundai Staria EV is expected to make its global debut later this year. Technical details have yet to be revealed, but it’s expected to feature either a 76 kWh or 84 kWh battery, providing a range of around 350 km (217 miles) to 400 km (249 miles).

Hyundai's-first-electric-minivan
Hyundai Staria Lounge (Source: Hyundai)

Hyundai’s electric SUV arrives after Kia introduced its first electric van, the PV5, which launched in Europe and Korea earlier this year.

In Europe, the Kia Passenger PV5 model is available with two battery pack options: 51.5 kWh and 71.2 kWh, providing WLTP ranges of 179 miles and 249 miles, respectively. The Cargo version has a WLTP range of 181 miles or 247 miles.

Source: TheKoreanCarBlog, Clien

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