Sarastro
financeguy.bsky.social
Sarastro
@financeguy.bsky.social
Institutional money manager 🇬🇧🇨🇭🇫🇷
Markets, energy, history, politics
Versus a cost in London of £2.50 per cubic metre or $3.40. I find this extraordinary
July 14, 2025 at 9:52 PM
I see that Hannah Daly concurs with your numbers so that’s about 4c cubic metre
July 14, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Understood!
July 14, 2025 at 9:49 PM
I don’t follow the maths .. if it takes 3KWh to make a cubic metre and it costs say $1.3 cents per kWh surely it would cost 1.3x3 or 3.9c cubic metre not $0.30 cubic metre ? Or did you mean 30Kwh per cubic metre ?
July 14, 2025 at 9:44 PM
This of course is a feature not a bug of open markets
July 14, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Sarastro
I think a big reason prices are so low in SA is that, while the costs of solar and BESS are falling yearly, Chinese manufacturers are also just undercutting everyone else in open/no tariff markets—see the two SA BESS systems that were priced at ~72/kWh: www.linkedin.com/posts/mlkubi...
📰 BESS prices outside China have just hit some fresh record lows – here's the latest on international #energystorage market benchmarks: | Marek Kubik
📰 BESS prices outside China have just hit some fresh record lows – here's the latest on international #energystorage market benchmarks: 💰 Some fresh public data has just dropped, and it’s clear ...
www.linkedin.com
July 14, 2025 at 4:51 PM
At these levels we are within the envelope in which SA can have plentiful supplies of water from desalination at v low prices and it can probably manufacture synthetic (and renewable) fuels that can store energy for use in other areas at prices that are lower than the cost of oil or gas today.
July 14, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Just take a look at the prices at which these deals cleared.. these are obviously for intermittent solar (without batteries) but all the same they represent interesting benchmarks for public procurement of solar power in sunny places
July 14, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Isn’t the problem that trees sequester carbon only for a period - as long as they live, after which the carbon is released back into the environment as they decay. The conditions under which the coal, oil and gas reserves were laid down in the distant past no longer exist.
July 6, 2025 at 5:34 PM
on.ft.com/3Tdrfbx

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on.ft.com
June 30, 2025 at 5:34 AM
It’s a theory of course. But it’s plausible because the market is a discounting mechanism and long term costs of climate change translate into short term costs for corporates and societies through among other things the insurance markets.
June 29, 2025 at 9:32 PM
This isn’t just a US issue but the US housing market is a huge cog in the wheels of global financial stability.
June 29, 2025 at 9:32 PM
“If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post... “The economic value of entire regions — coastal, arid, wildfire-prone — will begin to vanish from financial ledgers,” he added. “Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally.”
June 29, 2025 at 9:32 PM