5 Things to Watch on Global Energy Front in 2018

(Bloomberg View) -- Five events from 2017 hold clues to what lies ahead for energy, technology and finance:

Electric buses just keep on going: The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen has amassed a total of 16,359 electric buses, making its fleet bigger than the six largest North American combustion-bus fleets.

Cities keep a close eye on their vehicle fleets: The Lion City has always tightly controlled the number of cars on its roads, taxing them stiffly enough to make an Audi A4 cost more than $160,000. After holding the growth rate for passenger vehicles and motorbikes to a scant 0.25 percent for two years, the city's Land Transport Authority set 2018's growth rate at zero.

Worth noting: The city's total vehicle fleet hit its peak in 2013. Back then, there were just under a million vehicles on Singapore's roads, more than at the end of 2016.  

Coal mining is still dangerous: In 2010, 48 people died while mining U.S. coal, including 29 in a coal dust explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. It was the deadliest coal mine accident in more than 40 years, and thankfully, mining fatalities since fell, bottoming out at eight in 2016.

Last year, though, the number rose to 15, including eight deaths in West Virginia.

At the same time, U.S. coal production rose only 9.1 percent -- to a level on par with those of the early 1980s.

U.S. energy companies keep raising money: U.S. oil and gas exploration and production companies, pipeline operators and liquefied natural gas firms have a knack for raising new money in the capital markets. For most of the past decade, that money has split fairly evenly between equity and high-yield bonds, with a few exceptions. But in 2016, energy companies raised money in equity almost entirely and then, in 2017, turned to debt. Last year, in a record 12 months for new capital, they raised 80 percent of their money -- more than $50 billion -- through debt.

The U.S. exports more oil: Until the middle of 2014, the U.S. exported a negligible amount of oil. But by the end of last year, exports briefly topped 2 million barrels per day. The U.S. is far from being energy-independent (or energy-dominant, for that matter), but it is now capable of exporting as much oil per day as Norway produced in 2017. 

Reads of the week

• 2017 was the second-warmest year on record. The warmest year ever? 2016. Third-warmest? 2015.
• California will no longer allow sales of incandescent light bulbs. The state anticipates energy savings by 2029 equivalent to all the households in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties (about 400,000 homes).  
• A new bill in the California Legislature would also ban the sale of new fossil-fuel-powered vehicles in 2040.
• Insurers in California have begun dropping homeowners exposed to more frequent and more intense wildfires.
• India added the least amount of new coal-fired power generation in the April-to-November period since 2006.
• Texas set a new winter record for electricity demand, according to its grid operator -- exceeding the old record by more than 5 percent.
• The self-driving auto technology company Aurora, founded by the previous head of Google's self-driving car efforts, has signed a strategic partnership with Volkswagen Group.  
• The Genovation GXE is an 800-horsepower all-electric Corvette … with a seven-speed manual gearbox.
• The $125,000 Tucker Sno-Cat is hitting its peak after 75 years of production.  
• Investor Jeremy Grantham says that “we are currently showing signs of entering the blow-off or melt-up phase of this very long bull market.”
• In 1998, Americans bought 5.36 movie tickets per person. In 2017, they bought only 3.8.

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

Nathaniel Bullard is an energy analyst, covering technology and business model innovation and system-wide resource transitions.

To contact the author of this story: Nathaniel Bullard at nbullard@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.net.

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