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Energy

What everything costs, and the politics of where it comes from.

45: in business
10:57: average
493 min: in total
59: across the network

Energy across the network →

All briefs45

ABB

Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown · 1988

ABB is a post-merger industrial incumbent whose value lies in proven, regulated, physical infrastructure — not software, platforms, or scalability stories.

American Electric Power

AEP isn’t a tech company — it’s a 118-year-old infrastructure monopoly built on volts, miles, and regulation.

Bharat Petroleum

BPCL is not a disruptor — it is India’s second-largest government oil refiner, built on nationalisation, sustained by scale, and constrained by its mandate.

Canadian Solar

Shawn Qu · 2001

Canadian Solar is a vertically integrated solar energy firm founded in 2001 by Dr. Shawn Qu, headquartered in Kitchener, Ontario, with operations spanning manufacturing, project development, and storage system provision.

CMS Energy

A holding company built to separate a century-old monopoly from its speculative bets — and keep both profitable under one roof.

ConocoPhillips

A vertically stripped hydrocarbon extractor — upstream only, emissions-heavy, legally separated from its own downstream past.

Dominion Energy

A utility built on 18th-century river trusts now profits from gas pipelines and LNG terminals — but its 2022 power mix still runs on coal and gas.

DTE Energy

A coal-dependent utility masquerading as a diversified energy company — its non-utility projects are real, but their economics are invisible.

Duke Energy

A century-old utility built on coal and nuclear isn’t transitioning—it’s being transitioned, one regulator-approved rate case at a time.

Enbridge

Enbridge runs the world’s largest oil export pipeline network — and its first renewable investment was a single wind farm, bought in 2002.

Enphase Energy

Enphase didn’t invent solar—it invented a way to sell inverters as the bottleneck, not the afterthought.

Entergy

A century-old utility built on monopoly franchises—not markets, not tech, not disruption.

Equinor

A state-owned petroleum giant that calls itself ‘Equinor’ still emits more than most nations — and answers to Oslo, not shareholders.

Eskom

A state monopoly that powers a nation also poisons its air—and blackouts prove it runs on inertia, not investment.

Exelon

Biggest isn’t safest — Exelon’s scale came from mergers, not reliability.

First Solar

Harold McMaster · 1999

First Solar is a U.S. solar panel manufacturer that builds cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film modules in domestic factories. It was founded in 1990 as Solar Cells, Inc. by Harold McMaster, acquired and rebranded in 1999, and went public in 2006. Its technology diverges from mainstream silicon PV. As of March 2026, it had ~14 GW of annual domestic nameplate capacity across facilities in Ohio, Alabama, and Louisiana. It does not produce silicon panels, does not operate overseas factories, and does not integrate storage or software.

GAIL

GAIL isn’t building energy markets — it’s building the state’s physical authority over gas, one pipeline at a time.

Gazprom

A state monopoly isn’t an accident of history — it’s a legal instrument, and Gazprom is its most fully realised form.

GE Renewable Energy

A rebranding exercise disguised as a renewable energy play — anchored in acquisition terms, not innovation.

Goldwind

Goldwind didn’t invent wind power in China—it imported it, scaled it with state money, and outsold rivals by mastering procurement, not physics.

Husky Energy

Hong Kong interest · 1938

Husky Energy was a long-lived, vertically integrated petroleum company whose geographic reach and operational scope did not prevent its absorption into Cenovus Energy in 2021.

Intercontinental Exchange

Jeffrey Sprecher · 2000

ICE is a financial infrastructure consolidator — not a technology innovator or market creator. It turned energy trading into a global clearing and exchange empire by acquiring failing or exposed rivals, shutting down physical floors, and layering data and mortgage tech atop core exchange revenue. Its business model depends on regulatory moats, scale-driven pricing, and vertical integration — not speed, intelligence, or user experience.

Lukoil

Vagit Alekperov · 1991

Lukoil is a Russian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Moscow, formed in 1991 by merger of three state-run western Siberian oil enterprises: Langepasneftegaz, Urayneftegaz, and Kogalymneftegaz.

NextEra Energy

The world’s largest renewable generator still gets more than a third of its power from fossil fuels—and that’s the point.

Norsk Hydro

Kristian Birkeland · 1905

Norsk Hydro began as a single-purpose vehicle for Birkeland’s nitrogen-fixing arc — a physics experiment turned factory. Its early dominance came not from IP or management, but from locking in Norway’s hydropower geography. It survived obsolescence not through reinvention, but by ceding chemical control to IG Farben. Its WWII role — sole European heavy water producer — was accidental infrastructure reuse. Its current aluminium and renewables business shares no technology with its origin, only its dams, debt, and place.

Novatek

Leonid Mikhelson · 1994

Novatek is a state-tolerated gas monopoly-in-waiting: dominant domestically, absent internationally, priced by regulation not competition.

Origin Energy

A coal-powered retailer that calls itself 'energy' while minimising renewables to please shareholders.

Pemex

A national oil company that peaked before the iPhone—and still pays for half of Mexico’s federal budget.

Perenco

A private oil firm that publishes nothing but its output — and has thrived for half a century doing exactly that.

Petrobras

A state oil company built fast — but its first-year output was barely a rounding error on global demand.

Rosneft

Rosneft isn’t a company that competes — it’s a sovereign hydrocarbon apparatus dressed as a public firm.

Sasol

A state-built coal-to-liquids project became a global mining and chemicals giant—not by pivoting away from coal, but by scaling it.

Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric didn’t discover electricity — it discovered that renaming yourself after your latest acquisition is the most reliable form of corporate reinvention.

Siemens Gamesa

A merger built scale, not dominance — Siemens Gamesa is Europe’s

SMA Solar Technology

SMA proves that in the energy transition, hardware scale — not software hype — still pays.

Southern Company

A regulated utility isn’t a tech platform — it’s a 120,000-square-mile, ratepayer-funded machine for moving electrons and gas.

TC Energy

TC Energy doesn’t build the energy transition—it rents the pipes that keep the old one running.

Ultrapar

A 1937-founded Brazilian conglomerate proves infrastructure dominance doesn’t require innovation—just scale, regulation, and control over the last mile of physical energy logistics.

Valero Energy

Valero isn’t going green—it’s adding green to an oil-refining empire, one acquired plant at a time.

Vestas

Christian Hansen · 1945

Vestas is a Danish wind turbine company founded in 1945, engaged in manufacturing, selling, installing, and servicing turbines globally; it details major operational milestones including global installations, R&D investment and patenting activity, strategic mergers, facility expansions and closures, and technical innovations such as stealth blades and floating turbines.

Xcel Energy

A regulated utility doesn’t innovate — it adapts under compulsion, and Xcel Energy proves it.

Reliance Industries

Reliance isn’t built on innovation—it’s built on accumulation, arbitrage, and the strategic weight of being India’s largest exporter.

SK Group

Chey Jong-hyon · 1953

SK Group is a South Korean chaebol founded in 1953 through the acquisition of Sunkyong Textiles — Japanese-owned property seized by the South Korean government after the Korean War armistice. It is the second-largest chaebol by revenue, controlled by the estate of Chey Tae-won via SK Inc., and operates 186 subsidiaries under the SKMS management system. Its cornerstone remains energy and chemicals, though it spans AI semiconductors, flash memory, telecommunications, and petrochemicals. The material confirms no revenue figures, margins, valuations, or operational metrics beyond structure, origin, control, and sectoral scope.

State Grid Corporation of China

A monopoly grid operator that doesn’t generate power — and never meant to.

Tesla, Inc.

Elon Musk · 2003

Tesla is not a software or AI company—it is a vertically integrated hardware manufacturer whose valuation rests on future scale, not current unit economics. Its founders were Eberhard and Tarpenning. Musk joined in 2004, led funding, took control, and shaped its public narrative. It sells cars, batteries, and solar—but publishes no per-product margin data. Its market dominance is financial, not operational.