Hi there,
The last Sunday in my exam season is finally here and that means next week will be back to normal. I will finally do a write-up of my semiconductor supply chain research and include it in the next issue of the newsletter.
📃 Here’s what I found interesting this week:
⭐Highlight: the wind-hydrogen combo
🔍Valuation: new data on private company pricing
💽Data: the movement of rental bikes in London
⏭️Next
Have a great week!
⭐Highlight: the wind-hydrogen combo
The EU has an energy problem, that’s nothing new. With geopolitical issues surrounding Russian gas the initial German plans to phase out coal for gas seem very uncertain. Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark have found an alternative: artificial islands in the North Sea that will convert wind energy to hydrogen for energy storage or direct use on shore.
The move means a tenfold increase in power generated from wind turbines at sea and is set to produce the equivalence of 30 nuclear reactors. The fact that there is an integrated energy storage solution (hydrogen) means that the plan recognizes a key issue that we’ve had with renewables so far: there’s no easy way to store excess energy.
If you’re interested in the energy future of the EU and the technological advancements in the field these two articles are a great read.
4 EU countries pledge tenfold rise in North Sea wind power | News | DW | 18.05.2022
Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark plan to build 150 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in the North Sea to help achieve the EU’s climate goals and, eventually, break away from Russian energy.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) has unveiled plans to build an artificial island dedicated to large-scale production of green hydrogen from offshore wind in Denmark and has entered an agreement with Allianz Investment Management (AIM) to perform a feasibility study for a similar project in Germany.
🔍Valuation: new data on private company pricing
We’ve long been pricing private companies based on M&A activity or the price of similar companies in public markets, but now there seems to be a third category: private markets.
In this article by the Institutional Investor data provided by Forge Global is used to show the difference in impact of the economic downturn between public and private companies. Forge Global allows investors in private companies to trade shares on the platform in a bid to make private companies “as easy to trade as public ones”. Forge Global therefore has a unique dataset of more liquid private transactions.
Good and bad companies are being treated the same right now. Being able to discern between the two is where the opportunities are, says EQUIAM’s Ziad Makkawi.
💽Data: the movement of rental bikes in London
An interesting post on /r/london this week showing the flow of London’s rental bikes (“Boris bikes”) over the course of a week. Check out the post for an animated version.
News, Pictures, Events and Discussion about London, UK.
⏭️Next
Next week there should be a blog article again. I might also have some news on some of the other projects I mentioned earlier but we’ll see about that.
Have a great week!