Tim McDonnell
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covering energy & climate @semafor. Previously @qz @NPR, @MotherJones, @natgeo, @FulbrightPrgrm. Also bread. Get in touch: tmcdonnell@semafor.com
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Articles by Tim McDonnell
Exclusive / ADNOC Gas lifts profit outlook after beating earnings forecast
ADNOC Gas has raised its outlook for full-year profits by at least 14% after third-quarter earnings smashed expectations — and views a looming glut of LNG on the global market as an opportunity rather than a risk, CEO Fatema Al Nuaimi told Semafor. Although overall Gulf LNG exports are recovering — in October they reached the highest level since the start of the US-Iran war — ADNOC Gas’ exports remain slightly below what they were when the conflict began.
View / COP should put itself out of business Original
Tim’s view In the decade since the Paris Agreement, the annual round of UN climate summits has seemed like a parallel universe, increasingly out of touch with geopolitics and the real economy. Between the idealism-bordering-on-naivete, and the impenetrable thicket of acronyms, jargon, and obscure treaty provisions, “sometimes I come into negotiation rooms and the contrast with the real world cannot be any bigger,” Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s special climate envoy, told me here.
Exclusive / US solar learns to live without China
The News Washington wants to make it harder for US solar firms to rely on China. A panel factory in Texas shows how that’s already happening — but why weaning them off entirely could be harder than it looks. The industry is bracing for one of its biggest shocks in years: In December, new Commerce Department rules will require panel manufacturers to pay a fixed minimum price and a tariff of up to 15% for cells and certain other specialized components they import from abroad.
AI companies race to lock down oil clients
AI companies are racing to lock down clients in the oil industry. A deal announced Monday between ADNOC and OpenAI was the highest-profile example in a broader push at ADIPEC by tech companies to pitch bespoke, AI-driven tools to help operate drilling rigs, refineries, and other oil assets.
Exclusive / Mubadala looks to boost US investment, CEO says
Mubadala Energy, one of the top Gulf-based investors in global oil and gas projects, is looking to increase its footprint in the US despite the election outcome, its CEO told Semafor. The company is a key backer of Commonwealth LNG, the first new export terminal to have reached a final investment decision during US President Donald Trump’s second term, and is “really looking” for other new US projects, Adnan Bu Fateem said.
Oil sector’s nuts and bolts sales pick up
After months of war-related belt-tightening by global oil and gas companies, the makers of bolts, pumps, and other widgets for the industry are beginning to see sales pick up. ADIPEC is first and foremost a trade show, with hundreds of vendors selling every imaginable tool and piece of equipment, from simple screwdrivers to entire offshore drilling platforms.
View / Big Oil sweats the blue wave
Tim’s view One of the many ironies of Tuesday’s Democratic sweep of Congress was that for Big Oil, the same bull energy market that delivered one of its most profitable years ever also returned power to the party that’s often bent on bringing the industry to heel. Still, Mike Sommers, who as president of the American Petroleum Institute is the country’s top oil lobbyist, told me he’s not particularly worried about a green backlash.
AI companies race to lock down oil clients
AI companies are racing to lock down clients in the oil industry. A deal announced Monday between ADNOC and OpenAI was the highest-profile example in a broader push at ADIPEC by tech companies to pitch bespoke, AI-driven tools to help operate drilling rigs, refineries, and other oil assets.
Oil sector's nuts and bolts sales pick up
After months of war-related belt-tightening by global oil and gas companies, the makers of bolts, pumps, and other widgets for the industry are beginning to see sales pick up. ADIPEC is first and foremost a trade show, with hundreds of vendors selling every imaginable tool and piece of equipment, from simple screwdrivers to entire offshore drilling platforms.
View: Big Oil sweats the blue wave
Liberal View 16 hours ago 'Officially a Green Wave Too': Climate and Eco Champions Triumph in Historic Midterms commondreams.org - Olivia Rosane • 16h Tuesday's historic rebuke of President Donald Trump's policies and party was also a major victory for the climate and environment, campaigners said, … Investing 1 day ago This energy stock is forming a classic bullish cup-and-handle pattern CNBC - Jay Woods • 1d (See the video above for Jay's complete chart breakdown.) It's no secret energy...
Exclusive / BP not eyeing return to renewables
BP isn’t likely to reverse its pivot away from renewable power generation anytime soon, CEO Meg O’Neill told Semafor. Since she took the helm in April, O’Neill has been focused on salvaging the company’s finances. She got a big helping hand in the third quarter as its profits nearly quadrupled thanks to high oil and gas prices and a busy trading desk, which O’Neill channeled into cutting debt by nearly 40%.
View / Gas on the ballot in US elections Original
Tim’s view Today’s US election is a test of how much voters will want to punish the president for soaring gasoline and power prices. Energy costs are always an important factor in elections; gas prices are the only economic indicator displayed in big bold numbers at major intersections.
View / Trump’s methane rollback could backfire Original
Tim’s view US President Donald Trump’s apparent handout to Big Oil this week is really more of a favor for small producers, and may actually hand more regulatory sway to Europe. At a campaign event in Texas on Tuesday, Trump said the Environmental Protection Agency will scrap “expensive and unnecessary” Biden-era restrictions on methane emissions from thousands of low-producing oil and gas wells.
Exclusive / TPG rolls out $10 billion climate fund
While ESG investing has fallen out of fashion on Wall Street, the AI boom has done a lot to strengthen the case for the types of companies the firm was already interested in, Coulter said: “On the long-term trend towards decarbonization investing, the world’s focus goes in and out a little bit. But underneath that trend, we’re still seeing a lot of progress.
Democrats divided on timing for permitting reform Original
Leading Democrats are divided on whether to press forward now on a bipartisan permitting reform bill, or wait and try for more concessions after the midterm elections. A group of left-leaning Senate Democrats, echoing concerns from environmental groups, said a vote should be put off until the White House commits to restore clean energy funding it cut.
View / Kyiv misses chances for upper hand in energy war Original
Tim’s view The balance of power in Ukraine’s energy war is shifting. In Washington, bipartisan blowback is mounting against the Trump administration’s dangling of lucrative energy prizes for the Kremlin. Senate Democrats issued a stern warning on Monday that they plan to investigate any US entity that imports Russian diesel if they regain their majority after next week’s elections. Republican Sen.
Anthropic says energy difficulties could slow down the AI buildout
Anthropic warned potential investors in its landmark public offering that it expects its already-high energy costs to get higher, and that delays in securing access could slow down the AI buildout. In its IPO prospectus filed on Monday, the tech giant revealed it is on the hook for about $400 billion in chip purchases and data center leases, and lost $81 billion in the first half of this year.
View / Climate talks are failing Original
Tim’s view Climate diplomacy is deeply broken. The latest dire United Nations projection, published on Wednesday, stressed that the ambitions to limit global warming adopted a decade ago in Paris are all but out of reach, absent an urgent economic and political pivot that appears nowhere on the horizon. Blowing past 1.5℃ of warming is inevitable, and even the most far-fetched techniques possible to claw temperatures back down probably won’t return it to that level in the future.
Exclusive / Trump and an oil shock aren’t enough for Texan drillers
The Scene MIDLAND, TX — This should be a glorious era for Diamondback Energy. In the 15 years since the oil company went public, it has leveraged savvy fracking skills and astute acquisitions to grow from a scrappy West Texas driller — its stock ticker is FANG — to a behemoth responsible for about 4% of US oil production.
View / Fossilflation is a permanent risk to the US
Tim’s view Fossil fuels are an economic liability, and not just because of the war in Iran. Rising energy costs were a major driver of the hotter-than-expected US inflation figures reported yesterday. This fact won’t surprise anyone reading this newsletter. Still, the numbers are pretty astonishing: Behind an overall gain of 3.7% across all goods and services in the past 12 months, gasoline prices are up 34.2%, and fuel oil prices (relevant mostly for home heating) are up 74.2%.
Exclusive / Big Law talent battle for data center expertise moves South
Competition among US law firms for attorneys with data center expertise is heating up. The top 200 US firms are on pace to hire nearly 300 data center lawyers this year, up 21% from the year before and triple the rate in 2020, according to an analysis of public data by the legal business intelligence firm Pirical, first shared with Semafor. Kirkland & Ellis and Dentons have the biggest teams, each with more than 200 lawyers in this area.
View / Trump’s Russian energy strategy could backfire Original
Tim’s view The contradictory tangle of energy policy actions taken by US President Donald Trump toward Russia over the weekend risks repeating mistakes that he and his allies often slammed his predecessor for. On Friday, Trump announced the US would waive sanctions on Russian diesel exports until the spring and permit it to release 300,000 metric tons of diesel into the global market, before announcing an energy ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv.
Exclusive / Octopus looks to buy software startups to manage data center demand
Octopus Energy US is looking to acquire more software startups that can help utilities manage the influx of data center power demand, its CEO told Semafor.In March, the company bought the technology firm Uplight, which utilities can use to free up more power in the grid by subtly modulating their customers’ consumption. The company also recently rolled out a battery for homeowners in Texas that can release power to the grid at moments of high demand.
Rates for oil tankers hit record high, as more crude passes through Hormuz
Charter rates for oil tankers hit a fresh record, driving a larger wedge between the nominal price of crude futures and what it costs to actually receive barrels. Crude oil exiting the Strait of Hormuz averaged about 10 million barrels per day over the past week, despite a rising number of attacks on tankers. But the time required for the largest tankers to rest outside the strait waiting for crude deliveries from smaller vessels has effectively created a tanker shortage.
View / El Niño comes to Ukraine’s aid Original
Tim’s view As Russia again ramps up its attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid ahead of the winter heating season, this time Kyiv has a new ally in its corner: El Niño. Last week, 8,000 households around Ukraine temporarily went dark after the Kremlin’s first large-scale grid attack since last winter.
Iberdrola becomes the world’s largest power provider by market cap
Iberdrola, the Spanish electric utility and renewable energy developer, surpassed Florida-based NextEra Energy as the world’s largest power provider by market capitalization on Tuesday, reaching above €141 billion. Iberdrola’s growing strength comes from its broader global footprint, which includes assets in Europe, North and South America, and Australia, a spokesperson said.
‘Enough to go around’: Brookfield’s bullish on AI investing, even if it has to share it with rivals
The Scene Wall Street isn’t built for consortiums. Blood feuds flourish, and the pressure to outperform rivals leaves little reason to team up with them on investments. But the sheer size of the AI buildout has competitors playing nice. “There’s enough to go around for all of us,” Brookfield Asset Management CEO Connor Teskey tells Semafor.
Exclusive / UAE pushing for more investment in global water infrastructure
The UAE is pushing governments and private financial institutions to drastically scale up investment in global water infrastructure, a senior government official told Semafor.
Exclusive / Texas politics could delay investment decision for huge Chevron data center
The Scoop Texas state politics could delay the final investment decision on one of the US’ largest new data center projects. Project Kilby, a joint venture between Chevron and the newly formed energy project developer Joulent, is set to use nearly 3 gigawatts of “behind-the-meter” gas turbines — that is, unconnected to the state grid — to power a massive Microsoft data center in West Texas.
View / Enough about the data centers already
Tim’s view We should probably talk less about data centers. That might sound like blasphemy, and also hypocritical, given how often I do exactly that. To be clear, the challenges have barely begun: What we’re seeing being built today is only a small fraction of the data center capacity in the pipeline.
View / Data centers have an insurance problem
Tim’s view On top of power hardware shortages, angry neighbors, and permitting delays, data center developers have a new headache to deal with: skeptical insurers. Wall Street is more than happy to rain cash down on AI infrastructure.
View / Climate finance needs an overhaul
Tim’s view For developing countries, more green tech capital doesn’t always translate to a cheaper and cleaner energy system. There’s more money than ever available from private and public financial institutions for investments in clean tech in emerging economies: nearly $400 billion in 2025, according to the Climate Policy Initiative, double the sum five years ago.
Exclusive / EDP can’t ‘take the risk’ of moving forward with US wind projects
“Several hundred megawatts” of planned onshore wind farms in the US remain on indefinite hold because of opposition from the Trump administration, Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, CEO of Portuguese developer EDP, told Semafor.Last month, a federal judge ordered the Department of Defense to move forward with processing applications for wind farm licenses that had been held up over ostensible national security concerns.
View / No relief for power prices
Timâs view Clean energy executives are an increasingly nervous bunch. I moderated a lunch discussion under Chatham House rules at New York Climate Week yesterday made up of leaders from large-scale renewables developers, equipment manufacturers, and tech companies, as well as energy financiers and lawmakers. We were focused on the practical challenges of building the low-cost clean energy the US grid is crying out for, but not getting at sufficient scale.
Major gaps remain to tripling global renewable energy capacity Original
The world must build more than 6 terawatts of renewable power in the next five years — more than all previous years combined — to deliver on a goal to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, according to a new report. At COP28 in the UAE in 2023, countries agreed to collectively reach 11.2 TW of installed renewable capacity by 2030.
Data centers drive a surge in climate tech funding
The Scoop The data center buildout is driving a rush of venture capital investment in clean tech, breathing new life into startups that were at risk of being steamrolled by the Trump administration’s pullback on climate policy. Global climate tech venture investment hit $26 billion in the first half of this year, 55% above the previous year, according to climate tech finance tracker Currence.ai.
Russia sanctions advance, as the US deepens economic pressure Original
US President Donald Trump is expected to sign new legislation to step up economic pressure on Russia’s energy sector, over the objections of Democrats worried about handing him new trade powers. The House of Representatives passed the sanctions bill, which had been championed by the late Sen. Lindsay Graham, on Wednesday.
No energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia yet Original
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy downplayed an assertion by US President Donald Trump that Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to a ceasefire for mutual attacks on energy infrastructure.Although “there is now a strong US proposal” for an energy ceasefire, Zelenskyy tweeted on Monday, “so far, no one has seen any genuine desire on Russia’s part to move toward ending the war.” Over the past few days, Trump and his top officials have sought to blame Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries for...
Hydrogen investment projected to hit a bureaucratic cap on growth Original
Global investment in low-carbon hydrogen will reach a new high this year, but the nascent industry is close to hitting a bureaucratic cap on its growth, an industry group report warned. Cumulative investment since 2020 in projects to manufacture hydrogen using either renewable energy or natural gas paired with carbon capture will reach $130 billion, spread across nearly 600 projects, of which 90% are under construction, according to the Hydrogen Council.
Ukraine is going into winter with a gas surplus, despite war Original
Despite attacks by Russia on its natural gas production fields, Ukraine has moved to a gas surplus and is angling to increase exports to Europe this winter, the CEO of the country’s top private energy company said. Ukrainian energy companies spent much of the last few years scrambling for gas imports, including several LNG cargoes from the US.
Global coal consumption to reach new record Original
Rising natural gas prices wrought by the Iran war will boost global coal consumption to a new record of nearly 9 billion metric tons this year, the International Energy Agency reported.China remains by far the world’s coal heavyweight: Its power sector alone consumes one-third of the world’s coal. Yet although China and India both saw rising demand this year, “for the first time in 50 years, both countries generated less electricity from coal than the year before,” the IEA reported.
View / A long war will permanently damage oil demand Original
One lesson from the return of crude oil prices back above $100 per barrel is that US President Donald Trump seems to be hastening the end of the oil age. Apart from the psychological impact of that extra digit on US voters, there’s nothing intrinsically special about the $100 threshold. But Wall Street, which has spent most of the Iran war feeling decidedly bearish about oil prices, is clearly getting anxious about the latest round of mutual tanker attacks.
Oil importers less vulnerable to supply shocks than expected Original
Maritime shipping lanes may not be the most important chokepoint facing the global oil market.
View / Oil executives are anxious about Venezuela Original
Big Oil companies have always moonlighted as geopolitical risk assessment firms. That capability faces a big test now. It takes guts to thrive in the oil business, where the wipeouts can be as spectacular as the slam dunks. Molecules are in the ground where they are, and engineering is not the only hurdle: Sometimes, a highly sophisticated navigation of political risk is required to get them out.
Oil importers less vulnerable to supply shocks than expected
They grew up breathing Detroit air. Generations of women are pushing for new approaches to pollution This story was originally reported by Ebony JJ Curry of The 19th. Meet Ebony and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy. DETROIT — …
View: Oil executives are anxious about Venezuela
9 hours ago The Roman Emperor Titus has one. Napoleon Bonaparte ordered up the world’s most famous example. And the Duke of Wellington’s iconic version is the gateway to London’s Hyde Park. Now, Donald Trump wants his own ceremonial arch. And his latest architectural passion project may tell history rather more …
Exclusive / Big Law sees a gold mine in data centers Original
The Scoop The rush by AI hyperscalers and their Wall Street backers to build billions of dollars’ worth of data centers and associated energy projects has set off fierce competition for talent among major law firms. A few years ago, electricity-related dealmaking was a backwater at many Wall Street firms, often immersed in staid regulation and involving relatively small fees. That has completely changed, attorneys at several big firms told Semafor.
View / Venezuela oil deal needs transparency to last Original
US President Donald Trump hasn’t won the energy war in Venezuela yet. The White House this week released the first details of the deal Trump announced Friday between Washington and Caracas: The Pentagon will take an equity stake in the Venezuelan oil producer NABEP, which will then assume responsibility for what the administration said will be the world’s second-largest privately held oil reserve.
View / Europe’s warning for US gas exporters Original
Europe is facing a test of how much it has learned from half a decade of successive energy shocks — and US gas exporters should pay attention. Natural gas prices in Europe hit their highest point in three years this week. While the volume of crude oil escaping the Persian Gulf has moderately ticked up recently, liquefied natural gas exports from Qatar — which, prior to the war, accounted for one-fifth of global supply — remain near rock bottom.
Exclusive / Trump’s new affordability push runs on highways, rail Original
The Scoop The Trump administration is unveiling a new proposal aimed at turning the nation’s highway and rail lines into “multi-use” utility corridors that could hold critical infrastructure like transmission wires, fiber optic lines, and water pipelines. The plan, dubbed “America’s Great Corridors of Commerce,” is being billed by the Transportation Department as a “voluntary nationwide opportunity,” and comes as the administration looks for ways to drive down energy costs for Americans.
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