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LIVE: Elon Musk Tops Bloomberg Green's List of Climate Billionaires
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February 2, 2021
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23:01:51Now Playing(Feb. 2) John D. Rockefeller became the richest person in history revolutionizing the oil industry. A century and a half later, Elon Musk is in the running for that same title by eliminating demand for Rockefeller’s chief product.
As the planet’s climate crisis accelerates, the fastest-growing fortunes in the world are now green thanks to a new generation of tycoons amassing wealth in the clean energy boom. Topping the list is the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., whose fortune soared 622% in the past year, to $199.2 billion. Musk’s riches have recently come the closest of any modern fortune to matching the estimated, inflation-adjusted value of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire.
The 15 billionaires on Bloomberg Green’s new ranking showcase the explosive growth of electric vehicles, batteries, and solar power. Not every dollar in these fortunes is derived from climate-aligned businesses whose core products reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With Musk, for example, his green net worth, or the portion of his fortune tied to cars and solar, is $180.7 billion—91% of his overall wealth—but it excludes his interests in other businesses such as space rockets.
What links Tesla’s stunning rally in 2020 to the other rising fortunes on this list is investors’ growing acknowledgement of the dire risks posed by global warming and the necessity of technology to slow it. Nine of the 10 biggest economies will have net-zero emissions goals now that President Biden is expected to strengthen U.S. climate commitments. Hundreds of companies worldwide have also pledged to neutralize their carbon output by midcentury or sooner, prodded by mega-shareholders such as BlackRock Inc.
That momentum has boosted shares in makers of solar film, wind turbines, and e-bikes. Since April the S&P Global Clean Energy Index has soared 231% vs. a 53% jump for the S&P 500. And that in turn has generated a hefty windfall for a select group of new-wave green industrialists. The 15 biggest fortunes derived from the climate-solutions industry total $355 billion, more than twice the market capitalization of Royal Dutch Shell Plc and quadruple that of BP Plc.
Musk’s green fortune is almost three times the combined wealth of the four Chinese billionaires ranked second. Zeng Yuqun, Huang Shilin, Pei Zhenhua, and Li Ping have a green net worth of $60.7 billion thanks to their stake in Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., the world’s biggest supplier of batteries to electric-car makers. CATL’s customers include Tesla.
The foursome behind CATL are more characteristic of the prototypical green billionaire than is Musk: 80% of the billionaires in this ranking are from China, a sign of that nation’s role as a manufacturing hub for clean technologies such as solar components and the biggest market by far for electric cars.
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