© Off-Guardian Org
That's the contention of
a new study, which has been eagerly picked up and run with by all and sundry across the media landscape this morning.
Is the claim true? We'll get to that.
First, a little background.
The lead author of the paper is Colm James O'Shea. He's a 55-year old hedge fund manager who returned to University in 2023 to get a Masters in Climate Change. Why? We don't know.
The Guardian calls him a "former hedge fund manager", but according to
Companies House and his own
LinkedIn profile he's still the CIO of COPAC, the hedge fund he created in 2006.
The holdings of COPAC are not currently publicly listed (and their website is
peculiarly blank), so I don't know if the fund has any investments in Green Energy projects.
Prior to starting his own fund in 2006, O'Shea had worked for —
among others — Soros Fund Management and Balyasny Europe Asset Management. His involvement with Balyasny extended past the end of his employment there, as they are listed as a LLP Designated Member of his COPAC fund from 2005-2009.
A cursory search doesn't show Balyasny to have any green energy holdings either, but they have been buying up gas projects since 2023, including some in Denmark
as recently as July...which is potentially interesting.
Does Balyasny benefit from news coverage potentially lowering the price of gas infrastructure? Or are their purchases intended to somehow sabotage the market and increase the price of gas?
Impossible to say at this point. There's nothing concrete in any of this, but there are interesting questions to ask.
But back to the paper itself, and the key question:
Has wind power REALLY saved the UK £104 billion?
