Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Energy sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Engine No. 1, the hedge fund that bested ExxonMobil in a fight over its approach to climate change, is teaming up with the supermajor\u2019s rival Chevron to build fossil fuel plants to meet soaring artificial intelligence-driven power demand.The former activist investor said on Tuesday it was forming a joint venture with Chevron and agreed to a partnership with energy company GE Vernova to develop natural gas power plants under a fast-track timeline.The venture comes four years after Engine No. 1 launched one of Wall Street\u2019s most audacious proxy wars against Exxon, arguing that the oil major faced an \u201cexistential business risk\u201d by pinning its future to fossil fuels.At the time the hedge fund claimed Exxon had not adequately considered that oil and gas demand could decline, saying the producer lacked a \u201ccredible plan to protect value in an energy transition\u201d. Although it held only 0.2 per cent of Exxon\u2019s shares, Engine No. 1 won three seats on its board in a victory that sent shockwaves across corporate America and became the emblematic victory of the environmental, social and governance movement.Chris James, Engine No. 1\u2019s founder and chief investment officer, said the investment with Chevron was consistent with its previous Exxon campaign. \u201cThis is not a pivot.\u00a0The Exxon campaign was focused on governance and capital allocation as a way to create value for shareholders. It was not about ideology or fossil fuels or renewables,\u201d James told the Financial Times.\u201cThis partnership with Chevron and GE is about allocating capital in an economy that is undergoing a re-industrialisation and needs dramatically more power\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009This will lead to value creation for shareholders.\u201d\u00a0 The companies plan to co-locate power plants with data centres and deliver up to four gigawatts of electricity \u2014 enough to power up to 3.5mn homes \u2014 by 2027.The investment, which analysts estimate at up to $8bn, is part of a race by energy companies to capitalise on surging power demand forecasts linked to the rollout of AI data centres.\u201cThis is the beginning of these AI wars,\u201d James said, referring to the race between China and the US to harness a technology its boosters believe will transform the global economy. \u201cWe all know that China has an enormous amount of power available. But if we are really going to do a digital re-industrialisation of the US we\u2019re going to need to make these investments at scale,\u201d James said.Engine No. 1\u2019s decision comes as Wall Street and large businesses across the US beat a steady retreat from ESG and other progressive programmes that have drawn fire from President Donald Trump and Republicans. James, a hedge fund industry veteran who made a fortune as a technology and biotech investor, has taken Engine Number 1 in a different direction since the Exxon campaign. In 2023 he announced the hedge fund would put $780mn into the base metals business of Brazilian miner Vale and told the FT that he never considered himself an activist investor.\u201cI consider myself an investor and\u00a0activism\u00a0is a tool of last resort, not a strategy,\u201d he said.The investors said they expected the gas plants to be designed with the flexibility to integrate carbon capture and storage \u2014 a technology that has yet to achieve full commercial and technical feasibility.The gas plant joint venture also marks a strategic shift for Chevron, which is entering the electricity business a few months after Exxon also declared plans to build gas power plants to fuel AI data centres.The announcement on Tuesday came a day after tech stocks slumped on news that China had developed a cheaper AI model that could need far less power than Silicon Valley\u2019s energy-intensive AI systems.\u201cWe still see the growth in electricity demand being significant, just in the rest of this decade, not to mention past it,\u201d said Jeff Gustavson, president of Chevron New Energies.\u201cAI will be the big driver, but there are other drivers: reshoring of US manufacturing and just overall electrification in the pursuit of a lower carbon energy future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Energy sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Engine No. 1, the hedge fund that bested ExxonMobil in a fight over its approach to climate change, is teaming up with the supermajor\u2019s rival Chevron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-184230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}