Natural gas will be 'big winner' if it powers AI: Evercore ISI

Clean energy stocks — such as solar providers First Solar (FSLR), Sunrun (RUN), and SolarEdge (SEDG) — are trailing behind in the days following Donald Trump's 2024 election victory. The sector was considered a part of the "Harris Trade" attributed to the Biden-Harris administration's investments into the Inflation Reduction Act's (IRA) low-carbon initiatives. Oil giants Chevron (CVX) and Exxon Mobil (XOM) — components of the so-called Trump Trade — saw gains the day after this week's election Evercore ISI senior managing director James West speaks more about whether fears of Trump's impact on the industry are overblown. "The fact remains that the IRA bill, which is the largest investment in climate and clean tech that the world has ever seen, is largely going to remain intact because 80% of the job creation and the capital spending is going to red states, or red districts, if not higher now that more states have flipped red," West tells Yahoo Finance. Clean energy producers and even nuclear energy developers have been posed as the solution to AI data center's energy demands. "The AI prize is so big that they want to use whatever energy source they have now, and whatever energy source they can use in the future to capture that prize. And so we think actually natural gas is going to be a big winner over the next couple of decades," West explains to Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton. "And from a volume standpoint, because they're going to use a lot of natural gas. They already have natural gas facilities, have the infrastructure in place as we're building out more clean energy as we get to a nuclear renaissance." To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.