Monthly Archives: April 2021

There's a total of $100 million up for grabs from Tesla CEO Elon Musk for anyone who can combat global warming by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Musk and his XPrize Carbon Removal contestare looking for workable solutions for reducing the planet's CO2 emissions at scale in a "durable and sustainable way." The contest started on Earth Day and will last four years, ending on Earth Day 2025, or April 22, 2025. Everyone from high school students to startups, as well as universities, companies, individuals or community-based organizations, are welcome to apply.

"We're looking for pragmatic solutions," Musk said during a live talk on Periscope this week. "It doesn't need to be perfect, but it's gotta be something that fundamentally if we scaled it up, would it work? That's it."

The $100 million will be distributed among several contestants. More specifically:

Those who submit entries must have a fully operational system for removing CO2 at a minimum rate of a kilotonne per year, according to contest rules. The system must also prove able to maintain captured carbon for 100 years and present a pathway to scale at gigatonne levels of CO2 removal per year, the rules state.

Musk said he hopes the winning teams will help solve climate change, an issue that contest organizers are calling "the biggest threat facing humanity."

The rate of global CO2 emissions has continued to climb despite climate scientists' warnings for decades that higher carbon emissions from increased use of fossil fuels is a mass contributor to global warming. Globally, a total of roughly 27 billion tons of carbon was released in 2000, a figure that grew to 40 billion tons in 2019,accordingto the Global Carbon Project. Emissions fell 7% to 37 billion tons in 2020 as people remained indoors during the coronavirus pandemic, the project said.

"My concern with the CO2 is not where we are today, but really if carbon generation keeps accelerating," Musk said on the Periscope talk. "If we keep going and we're complacent, then there's some risk of non-linear climate change."

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Climate scientists say capturing carbon, either before it enters the atmosphere or retrieving it once it does, is an impactful way to reverse the effects of climate change. Using recycled carbon has two benefits, they said: It removes the need to extract oil or gas from the ground, and it effectively captures pollutants that would otherwise seep into the air and contribute to global warming.

Capturing carbon before it ascends into the air can be done in various ways. Swiss startup Climeworks, for example,is extracting the carbondirectly from the air.

Aside from Musk, rising carbon emissions has also caught the attention of some of the world's richest people, including Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, who haveinvested in a Canadian startup that captures and stores carbon inside concrete.

While some companies are working to capture carbon emissions, Gates said everyone on the planet can and should play a role in lowering emissions.

"I switched to an electric car," Gates told 60 Minutes' Anderson Cooper. "I use solar panels. I'm paying a company that actually, at a very high price can pull a bit of carbon out of the air and stick it underground. So I'm offsetting my personal emissions."

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Elon Musk will give away $100 million in XPrize Carbon ...

SpaceX was born on the Long Island Expressway.

The year was 2000, and Elon Musk had just been forced out of his position as CEO of PayPal. As he cruised down the highway with friend and fellow entrepreneur Adeo Ressi, the question came up:

What was Musk going to do next?

"I told Adeo I had always been interested in space, but I didn't think that was something a private individual could do anything about," Musk relates to Eric Berger, author of the new book Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX. Still thinking about the conversation later that day, Musk checked out NASA's website, looking for plans for humans going to Mars.

So, after taking some time to study the subject a bit more in-depth, Musk came up with his own.

What follows in Liftoff is a crazy (and fascinating) journey of how Musk built a company meant to try and solve some very complex problems.

And while most aspiring entrepreneurs aren't trying to tackle the challenge of interstellar travel, they can still learn quite a bit from Berger's behind-the-scenes look at the early days of SpaceX, one that Musk himself has endorsed.

Here are a few key lessons, just from the first chapter.

Don't start with a product. Start with a problem.

SpaceX didn't start off building its own rockets. In fact, in the early days, Musk and his advisers traveled to Russia (twice) to try and buy a refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile.

The problem, writes Berger, was the Russians had no respect for Musk. In their eyes, Musk had no idea what he was getting himself into. So, they offered him their rockets at a ridiculous markup.

"I wondered what it would take to build our own rocket," said Musk.

A few years later, Musk and SpaceX had done just that.

Do your research, first.

Musk needed to prove he was serious. An avid student, Musk already had Ivy league degrees in economics and physics. He applied that student's mentality to his new area of focus.

"[Musk] had been reading everything he could get his hands on about rockets, from old Soviet technical manuals to John Drury Clark's iconic book on propellants, Ignition!," writes Berger. Further, Musk knew full well that other entrepreneurs had dabbled in rocket science, and failed. So he studied what they had done, learning from their mistakes so as to avoid repeating them.

Now, Musk was ready to start meeting with rocket scientists, of which there were several. All the while, he continued that "learn-it-all" mindset, asking good questions and listening intently for the answers.

Embrace challenges.

Musk's original plan was to inspire the public, leading to more funding for NASA. But the more Musk learned, the more he realized that that NASA had its own problems beyond funding.

"I began to understand why things were so expensive," said Musk. "I looked at the horses that NASA had in the stable. And with horses like Boeing and Lockheed, you're screwed. Those horses are lame. I knew Mars Oasis would not be enough."

So, Musk began to think bigger.

If Musk could bring down the cost of space travel, there would be more opportunities. And if SpaceX could cut through the red tape that plagued NASA, it could help pave the way to pursue those opportunities.

Not everyone was as enthusiastic.

Berger relates how the following Spring Musk called a meeting of about fifteen or twenty prominent aerospace engineers. The engineers had been encouraged to attend by Mike Griffin, a leader in the field who would later become the Administrator of NASA.

"[Musk] walks in and basically announced that he wants to start his own rocket company," relates Chris Thompson, an aerospace engineer who was advising Musk. "And I do remember a lot of chuckling, some laughter, people saying thing like, 'Save your money kid, and go sit on the beach.'"

But Musk wouldn't give up easy.

"Musk searched among the doubters to find the few believers," writes Berger. "Musk wanted people who embraced a challenge rather than shrank from it, optimists rather than pessimists."

It didn't take long, and Musk found those optimists.

He offered five people the opportunity to join SpaceX's founding team; two accepted: Chris Thompson and a rising star in rocket engines, Tom Mueller.

Make employees owners.

As SpaceX's employee count grew, Musk wanted to leverage those employees' sense of ownership. "Because they were spending his money, Musk gave employees an incentive to be frugal with it," explains Berger.

"Early hires received large chunks of stock. When an employee saved the company $100,000 by building a part in-house instead of ordering one from a traditional supplier, everyone benefited."

What followed was a team building a culture of doing huge things with as little resources as possible.

Of course, not every new business owner is already a millionaire, like Musk was when he began building SpaceX.

But almost everyone can take advantage of the lessons Musk demonstrated in those early days of SpaceX:

1. Don't start with a product. Start with a problem.

2. Do your research, first.

4. Make employees owners.

Do this right, and you'll increase the chances your business has at success--and eventually even turn some of the doubters, into believers.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Elon Musk Knows How to Build a Company. Here's How He Did It (SpaceX Edition) - Inc.

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What do the the Tesla CEO and Technoking, SpaceX chief engineer, as well as the Imperator of Mars all have in common? They are all titles held by one person: Elon Musk.

Now Musk followers can add Dogefather to his list of titles. Musk tweeted that out Wednesday, referencing again the meme-fueled crypto currency Dogecoin as well as his upcoming appearance on Saturday Night Live.

The tweet isnt much, but Dogecoin is rallying anyway, up about 15% to 31 cents in Wednesday trading.

The frequency and tone of Dogecoin tweets from Musk are about all the fundamental analysis anyone can do regarding the crypto currency. Musk is no stranger to cryptos and made waves when Tesla (ticker: TSLA) invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and, soon after the investment, announced customers could pay for vehicles in Bitcoin.

Thats part of Musks corporate life. Personally, he has an affinity for Dogecoin, and he has tweeted about it frequently.

Bitcoin is far larger and more significant than Dogecoin. The total market value of Dogecoin is about $40 billion. The total market value of Bitcoin is about $1 trillion. Size and trading liquidity are two reasons Tesla decided to invest in Bitcoin. As for Dogecoin, being smaller means it takes less volume to move prices around. Thats why tweets cause large price spikes.

Bitcoin bulls believe its use as a store of value, like gold in the past, will grow, helping to push up prices. Its hard to say now what will drive Dogecoin in the future, apart from what Musk will tweet next.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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Dogecoin Is Spiking Thanks to Tesla's Elon Musk, the Dogefather - Barron's

Elon Musk and Grimes began dating in 2018 (AFP Photo)

Grimes conceded that her partner Elon Musk has been "very immature on Twitter" at times while defending the Tesla CEO fromcritics. The Canadian singer-songwritercame toElon Musk's defenseafter a TikTok user accused the Tesla CEO of "destroying the planet and humanity" while another asked ifhe was a "Men's rights activist".Grimes and Elon Musk began dating in 2018 and welcomed their first child together in May last year.

According to Us Weekly, it all unfolded when Grimes, 33, shared a clip of herself learning sword dancing on TikTok this Sunday. She received a critical response from a TikTok user questioning her love life and clapped back with little hesitation. When the singerposted her video on TikTok, a user asked her why she was dating a man "who is literally destroying the planet and humanity."

"GRIMESSS. HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS AND ACTIVELY SLEEPING WITH THE MAN WHO [IS LITERALLY DESTROYING] THE PLANET AND HUMANITY," the user asked her in a comment.

Grimes defended her partner and wrote: "How is he doing these things? His whole career is about making travel/house power etc. sustainable and green. It's worth a deep dive."

According to E! Online, a second TikTok user also asked the singer to confirm that Elon Musk is not a "men's rights activist".

Grimes again came to the billionaire entrepreneur's defense, but conceded that he has been "very immature" at times on Twitter.

"He's not. Def he's been very immature at points on Twitter but for ex the president of SpaceX is a woman, as is his right hand [person] at Neuralink etc," she wrote.

The 33-year-old also replied to a comment where one TikTok user asked her to tell her partner to end world hunger.

"People keep asking this," Grimes replied, "but just throwing $ doesn't solve it. He's trying to focus on the issues he knows he can solve and they are real essential issues."

Grimes and Elon Musk welcomed their first child together last year. They named the baby boy "X AE A-XII" in a move that grabbed headlines.

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Elon Musk Has Been "Very Immature" On Twitter, Says Grimes - NDTV

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Earth Week is over, but the residue of excitement over environmental, social and governance investing remains. ESG funds have been among the biggest winners to date from the pandemic, and the Biden administrations announcement that it wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030is seen to add fresh impetus.

The money flowing into ESG ETFs has been impressive, whilea survey of big institutions and fund selectors for Natixis SA shows a sharp increase in the numbers claiming to use ESG criteria when they allocate capital:

But how confident should we be? Surveys like this will always be vulnerable to the risk thatrespondents are just saying what they think they should. And when it comes to investing, there is a huge issue with definition. E, S and G are all somewhat ambiguous particularly the G. There are ever more anxious attempts to draw up precise standards, which are vital for the creation of passive ESG funds.

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This raises many issues. The ratings being used for ESG indexes are almost comically varied. In governance, in particular, there is almost no agreement between the main companies currently offering ESG ratings. The correlation between their choice of companies that score well on governance is almost zero, meaning that one raters opinion is of no guidance at all in guessing what anothers will be. I featured the following graphic, produced by the British academics Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton for last years Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook, in a Points of Return last year, and it remains relevant. It shows the degree of correlation between ratings from FTSE Russell, MSCI and Sustainalytics, all companies that offer ESG ratings for use in indexing:

All of this suggests that it is dangerous to attempt to use passive investing to encourage good behavior just yet. Companies are unclear as to exactly what they are being asked to do and how they are to be judged. Further, they will be tempted to game" the evidently flawed metrics. Such issues also call into question how much government policy should incorporate climate risks. If the data are this unclear, for example, is there really a good case for monetary policy to include climate goals?As monetary policy is decided by people with expertise in monetary economics, and not necessarily climate science, they would be particularly vulnerable to relying on unreliable metrics.

Beyond that, there are broader questions about how to motivate a battle against global warming. Traditional economics suggests that we deal with a negative externality (like pollution) by making it expensive. That leads to emissions permits, carbon taxes, environmental fines and so on. But if we try to channel insights from behavioral psychology, questions arise. Carbon taxes are like being told to eat your greens by an over-powerful government. With social distrust at high levels, and many in the U.S. disbelieving the notion of man-made global warming, this isnt the way to reach ambitious targets.

It might make better sense to shower rewards on those who can come up with technology and products to deal with the problem. The remarkable fame of Elon Musk of Tesla Inc., who next month will host Saturday Night Live, or Cathie Wood of Ark Investment Management, shows that couching climate goals in positive rather than negative terms has a future. People get excited by them, and they dont invoke ESG criteria, or a sense that they are somehow good for you, to generate excitement.

Musk and Wood may turn out not to have all the best answers. Capital might yet get showered on others who do. As ever in markets, there is a risk of overshooting. That may well have happened already. But given the seriousness of the problem, its a risk worth taking.

Were not so naivethat we believe that things will be solved by countries and companies making vague, distant insufficient targets, said Greta Thunberg, the teenage activist and multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominee,to Congress last week. But it appears that the same cannot be said of equity investors, who are prepared to hand out a lofty valuation on the basis of good intentions alone at least when it comes to climate change.

Some number-crunching from Savita Subramanian of BofA Securities Inc. shows thatESG is having a big effect on valuations: All investors need to see is a lofty target or ambition, rather than actual success in reducing emissions. Companies with below-median carbon emissions trade at significantly higher multiples of book value, it is true although companies that make no disclosure trade at slightly lower multiples than those that admit to bad ones. How companies present these numbers is important:

However, in the sectors that account for the bulk of emissions (utilities, energy and industrials), an ambitious carbon-neutral target will earn a sharply higher price-earnings ratio. This isnt true of other sectors. So companies can do a lot to boost their share price, and reduce the cost of equity capital, by announcing a lofty long-term goal. This appears to impress the stock market, even if it doesnt impress Greta Thunberg:

Subramanians research also revealed an unwitting short-termism. Technology companies are popular with ESG funds, for obvious reasons. They tend not to have large factories, and have very liberal social attitudes. The problem is that while they indeed have low Scope 1 emissions (direct from sources owned or controlled by the company), their Scope 3 emissions aren'tmuch lower than those of auto manufacturers. This category refers to the broader range of emissions caused by the company, such as from business travel or leased assets, or from use of its products. As large tech companies also tend to have a relatively low headcount and to back the gig economy, there is an argument (covered here) that ESG investors enthusiasm for tech unintentionally furthers trends such as inequality and underemployment:

Two of the biggest trends in global finance could be about to come into conflict. ESG investment is all the rage, while Chinas growth continues to fascinate the world. But China is notorious both for environmental pollution (as any visitor to Beijing in winter can attest), and governance issues. The government maintains direct control over many companies, even if it invites others to contribute capital, while it has shown enthusiasm recently to interfere with the biggest private companies.

So do these trends conflict? This was the center of a fascinating debate held on the ERIC research network last week. The argument from Stewart Paterson of Capital Dialectics was very much that China could find itself a victim of ESG methodologies. It is a massively coal-intensive economy. This is from Patersons presentation, and shows that Chinas appetite for coal is now almost equal to the rest of the world:

He points out:

On such a basis, it would seem that any fund making some pretense of following ESG criteria would by default exclude China. That has knock-on geopolitical effects, as the country could do with foreign capital.

Andy Rothman of Matthews Asia, a long-time bull on China, offered a more positive perspective. Chinas entire economic planrevolves around moving to a model that is far less carbon-intensive, focused on consumption and services rather than construction and manufacturing. Primary industries, such as agriculture and forestry, account for a tiny share of the economy, but what is most important is the declining share of secondary industry mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction. Tertiary industries such as real estate, finance and retailing now account for more than half of Chinese GDP, and the leaderships desire is for the share to keep growing:

Beyond the environment, investors in China must contend with the possibility of governmental interference. There has been an escalating attempt to rein in Big Tech in recent months, led by the adventures of Jack Ma at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.What should we make of this?

For Rothman, it should be viewed as part of the complicated and evolving relationship between the Communist leadership and capitalism, as it has held on to power by steadily allowingmore of a role for the private sector. The Communist Party leadership understands that the reason its remained in power much longer than any other authoritarian regime is that its changed in terms of economics and personal freedom. All the wealth creation is coming from privately owned entrepreneurial companies.

Looking at the experience of the Soviet Union and Russia, Rothman says the lesson China has taken is that it was a mistake to let the wealthy interfere in politics. So the message is feel free to get rich, but dont feel that getting rich and famous allows you to interject yourselves into politics. That doesn't mean, for Rothman, that the Chinese leadership will do anything to limit the power of private capital.

For Paterson, however, the commanding heights of the economy remain dominated by the state. The party is increasingly moving away from judging its success on economic criteria because its much harder to reach those criteria. The emphasis is now on national rejuvenation, or exceptionalism, and redistribution. That to my mind doesnt seem to be a very good environment in which to manage capital.

Finally, should Americans or Europeans invest in China at all, given that it is an opponent, or even an enemy? There is an interesting call from the Biden administration to come on this. In May last year, the Trump administration told the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which manages pension money for federal employees including many veterans, that it shouldnt change its benchmark for non-U.S. stocks from the MSCI EAFE (covering the rest of the developed world) to the MSCI All Countries Excluding U.S. (which includes emerging markets), because this would involve investing in China.

The membership of the five-member investment board was about to turn over as several members reached the end of their term, so it decided to defer a final decision on whether to use the new benchmark. Three Trump nominees were never confirmed. In February, Biden confirmed that their nominations had been withdrawn. So the commission, which now includes several acting members, carries on until they can be replaced and the issue can be addressed again.

If China becomes subject to some government-sponsored disinvestment push, akin to the campaign against Apartheid-era South Africa, that will force a lot of institutions into difficult decisions. With ESG growing stronger all the time, its easy to imagine that the criteria could be seen to have expanded to exclude China.

After a strange Oscar night, it was good to see that My Octopus Teacher was named best documentary; it's on Netflix and was plugged in this space a few months ago.

Having seen none of the best-picture nominees, I cannot comment. But it's interesting to look at how wrong the academy usually manages to be. A list of the acknowledged great films includes few that won, and plenty that weren't even nominated. There's Citizen Kane,of course. Time can discern that Goodfellas is a better movie than Dances With Wolves, or that both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption are superior to Forrest Gump. Vertigo won nothing and was nominated only for sound and picture editing in the year that Gigi swept nine awards. Vertigo has lasted longer.

The only time I've seen all the best-picture nominees before the awards ceremony was in 1997, when The English Patient won. Trainspotting and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet both failed to get nominated that year, and have left a much greater impression on my memory. Of the others, Fargo has probably fared best in critical memory (Frances McDormand won that year as well). Shine, about the pianist David Helfgott, has been forgotten. So, less fairly, has the lovely Mike Leigh movie Secrets & Lies. The one perceived as a makeweight at the time which I think has lasted better than any of them was Jerry Maguire, which introduced Renee Zellweger and brought a supporting role Oscar for Cuba Gooding Jr. Too mainstream to win, it introduced at least two enduring phrases, Show me the moneyand You had me at helloto the culture. Thoughts welcome. Have a good week.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:John Authers at jauthers@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:Matthew Brooker at mbrooker1@bloomberg.net

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Elon Musk's Fame Is a Better Climate Weapon Than ESG Lectures - Bloomberg

Its now nearly two years since Tesla boss Elon Musk announced his company would start offering insurance to its customers at a 20 or even 30 per cent discount to regular insurance. Now, some in the insurance industry are saying this is the start of a trend of car makers becoming insurers.

The result, they say, could be devastating for traditional insurers, who simply have nothing like the level of data about their customers that Tesla and other car makers do. Its the same disadvantage brick-and-mortar retailers have against the likes of Amazon: an often fatal lack of customer information.

Traditionally insurance has been a very blunt instrument. Yes, you can broadly identify high risk groups young men, if were talking about car insurance, or smokers if were talking about life insurance but its very difficult to tailor premiums to the precise risk of each individual. Inevitably low-risk customers end up subsidising high-risk customers.

Technology is massively changing this, for all types of insurance. The ability to collect data about your customers continuously, and to use artificial intelligence to analyse that data, is allowing insurance companies to provide much more accurate, up-to-date risk analyses, and to price policies accordingly.

Its a trend that is fraught with ethical problems, particularly in health and life insurance, as it could allow insurers to monitor the state of your health and ramp up your premium accordingly. For car insurance it may be less controversial (beyond objections to the basic invasion of privacy). If youre a consistently safe driver, you should be rewarded with a low premium.

For car companies that can be bothered to get into the insurance business, that provides one huge advantage over traditional insurers: they are the ones that have access to all that data.

A company like Tesla can track your driving behaviour in real time, and build a risk profile to a level of detail that would have been unimaginable to insurance companies even a few years ago.

In an interview on US TV news network CNBC, Daniel Schreibe, chief executive of AI-focused insurer Lemonade, said the traditional motor insurance industry should be worried.

You think about what Tesla is doing with the connected car that has profound impact on insurance, he said.

Theres going to be massive dislocation in this entire sector. And the data implications are profound and they arent good for incumbent insurers.

He said Teslas advantage came from the constant stream of live data feeds.

All of the pricing of insurance until now has had to look at big groups of people in aggregate and price them on average. As soon as you can break apart that average that monolith and price people using specific data to them, you have a massive advantage that incumbent insurers dont like, he said.

He said safer cars and a potential shrink in car ownership as new models of car use emerge would make things even worse for insurers.

Over the course of the next decade, if youre sitting on the board of directors of one of these big incumbents its pretty daunting because youre going to see the total pie shrink. Accidents are going to decline and car ownership may well decline and, in any event, some of those dollars are going to go to businesses insurance fleets rather than individuals owning them.

Financial analysts at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley think Schreibe is on to something, and says other car makers are sure to follow suit.

We expect to see over the near to medium term, with rather few exceptions, that all auto OEMs (not just Tesla) will offer auto insurance services directly to their customers on their connected vehicle platforms, they said in a note to investors last week.

James Fernyhough is a reporter at RenewEconomy and The Driven. He has worked at The Australian Financial Review and the Financial Times, and is interested in all things related to climate change and the transition to a low-carbon economy.

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How Elon Musk is planning to put motor insurers out of business - The Driven