Inaugural Edition: Transition Finance Weekly from Pleiades Strategy

June 14, 2024

Transition Finance Weekly 

Exploring the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition

Welcome to Transition Finance Weekly — a new weekly newsletter from Pleiades Strategy.  Each week, we’ll summarize the top stories and trends related to the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition in the states.


This is our first issue, and we want to hear from you. What would you like to see in this newsletter? What kinds of developments do you need us to track? You can reach us at newsletter@pleiadesstrategy.com.


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1. Hyundai’s Georgia EV Investment Will Reap Clean Energy Dividends And Create 14,500 Georgia Jobs

A year after its groundbreaking, Hyundai reports fast progress on their $7.6BN Savannah electric vehicle plant — spurred by Biden incentives — that will bring good-paying jobs and economic growth to Georgia.


“We’ve been talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America for my entire life,” said Princeton University clean-energy researcher Jesse Jenkins. “We’re finally doing it, right? That’s pretty exciting.”

2. Meanwhile, In Oklahoma, Power Customers Are Paying A Steep Surcharge For Unreliable Fossil Fuel Generation

Gas system failures during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, which blanketed Oklahoma in bitter cold and killed more than a hundred people, have stuck the state’s residents with a $4.5 billion bill to cover what power companies spent — mostly on fossil fuels to cover surging demand.


OKC laundromat owner Ellen Graham will be paying $80 in combined monthly surcharges for decades. “The only thing I’ve ever financed for 30 years has been my house,” she said.

3. Anti-Woke Stock Exchange Launches In Texas, To Weak Corporate Response

BlackRock and Citadel are backing TXSE, a new Dallas-based stock exchange pitched to CEOs who want to bypass NYSE and NASDAQ fees and rules, including disclosure requirements and  board diversity policies.

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott claimed that the exchange would allow companies to avoid “policy decisions made from the left.” Meanwhile, Abbott’s anti-ESG bans have cost the state nearly $700M in lost economic output and 3,000 jobs.

  • The exchange’s leadership were not subtle in their situating the TXSE within ongoing culture wars, saying that the exchange aims to be “CEO-friendly,” which some took as a nod to controversial corporate leaders like Elon Musk.

  • Industry response has been skeptical.

4. Congressional Republicans Confuse Collusion, Collaboration, Convening, And Coordination

Another House hearing on “Decarbonization Collusion” continued the right-wing anti-ESG rhetorical push.

  • Background: House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and other Republicans at the state and Federal levels want to prohibit companies from considering risks like climate change in investment decisions, through legislation and executive action.

  • This week’s House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing  was framed as an opportunity to “deter anti-competitive collusion to promote ESG-related goals in the investment industry.”

  • But the “anticompetitive” angle is bunk, as Committee Democrats explained this week in a report aptly titled “Unsustainable and Unoriginal: How the Republicans Borrowed a Bogus Antitrust Theory to Protect Big Oil.”  

  • Committee Democrats apologized to the witnesses for the Majority’s harmful circus; Chair. Jordan (R-OH) repeatedly claimed that sustainable investing would somehow lead to a cap on hamburger consumption.

  • Anti-ESG policies — pushed by Big Oil and GOP dark money — pour state funds down the drain, kill jobs, and drag down returns for investors, including public pension funds. Business leaders are widely opposed, and court challenges are advancing.


“The weakness of Chairman Jordan’s case, combined with the broader landscape of right-wing attacks on ESG, leads us to conclude that the Majority launched this investigation with an improper purpose; namely, to impose a cost on investors and financial institutions that take seriously the threat of climate change and to chill legitimate business activity.” – House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff Report (Rep. Jerry Nadler, Ranking Member)

5. CO2 Levels Are Climbing Faster Than Ever, But Peak Oil Is Almost Here

Source: https://www.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/GRAPH-June-2024-KeelingCurve-MLO-CO2-data.png


This year the UCSD Scripps Institute of Oceanography reported its highest atmospheric carbon dioxide readings ever. The May increase between 2022 and 2024 is the biggest two-year jump NOAA has ever recorded.

  • Short-term consequences: much more extreme weather, drought and flooding, ocean acidification and marine die-offs.

  • The International Energy Agency predicts global oil demand will level off permanently by the end of the decade, and then begin to drop due to the rapid adoption of renewable energy technologies and electrification. In a statement, IEA Director Fatih Birol told fossil fuel companies that it is time they make sure their business strategies and plans are prepared for the changes taking place.

  • Meanwhile, companies are already planning carefully for a world in which oil makes up a declining part of the global energy equation.

New Poll: Voters Want Politics Out of Their Business Decisions


New polling commissioned by the National Taxpayers Union and by Public Opinion Strategies shows:

  • Nearly 70% of voters oppose bills prohibiting companies with ESG policies from doing business with the state.

  • Nearly two-thirds said it’s “not OK” for state lawmakers to ban doing business with companies based on their climate-change or diversity stands.

  • Three-quarters said state governments shouldn’t punish companies for business decisions.

  • 92% said state lawmakers shouldn’t pursue personal agendas using taxpayer funds.