Monthly Archives: April 2012

For now, electrics have won a fan base, but bio seems to be doing a better job of advancing the technology, reducing or eliminating tax credits, and giving customers more power of choice when it comes to selecting a car. The reason – bio-based is more affordable, and generally more infrastructure-compatible.

The Pew Charitable Trusts just released the 2011 edition of their report, "Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race?"

Easter Treats for Energy Focus, Solazyme, Capstone, Alstom, and Iberdrola; SemiLEDS Lays an Egg

Tom Konrad CFA Portfolio performance March was a volatile month for clean energy, with many of my picks reporting earnings.  My 11 picks were down 4% on average since my last update (March 1st to April 5th), compared to a 9% decline in the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy Index (PBW), while the broad Russell 2000 index was flat.  The hedged portfolio (see the original article for details) lost 5%. For the year to date, the portfolio has put in a strong performance, and is up 15%.  PBW and the Russell 2000 are up only 3%...

Steve Sollheiser KWT Breaks Support There is very interesting price-action in the Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (KWT) in the last trading day. We can see that price has closed below the support level of $3.40 which is a bearish signal. We can also see that the breakout price was touching an ascending resistance line twice - which creates this a Descending Broadening chart pattern. We would expect price to continue downwards with target at approximately $2.00. If price opens above the level it will be a sign that the support...

Finland’s Neste Oil Corporation (NEF: F) brought its fourth renewable diesel plant on-line in September 2011, earning bragging rights to the world’s largest facility of its kind.  Located at the Port of Rotterdam, the plant has the capacity to produce 800,000 metric tons of renewable diesel that Neste brands NExBTL and claims is the “cleanest and highest-quality renewable diesel on the market today.”  Along with Neste’s three other plants already in operation in Finland and Singapore the fourth plant in Denmark brings Neste’s total production capacity to 2.0 million metric tons per year.

John Petersen Last month Lux Research released a bottom-up evaluation of the cost effectiveness of eight energy storage technologies in six grid-scale applications throughout 44 countries, including all 50 U.S. states. Their report titled "Grid Storage under the Microscope: Using Local Knowledge to Forecast Global Demand" predicts that annual global demand for grid-scale energy storage will reach an astounding 185.4 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by 2017 and represent a $113.5 billion incremental revenue opportunity for an industry that currently generates sales of $50 to $60 billion a year. In the grid-scale sector alone, Lux predicts an average...

Steve Leone Germany's Q-Cells, a solar industry giant that helped usher in a new era of solar energy, announced Monday that it will file for bankruptcy, but that it will continue to work to restructure. In a statement released by the company, “the Executive Board and the preliminary insolvency administrator will work together to secure the continuity of the company within the insolvency proceedings.” The move follows an unrelated higher court ruling on Friday that Q-Cells says limits its ability to move ahead with a debt restructuring plan. The filing is the most prominent to date in...

John Petersen The first quarter of 2012 was the best of times for shareholders of companies that are developing and manufacturing cheap energy storage products like lead-acid batteries, but the worst of times for shareholders of pure-play lithium-ion battery developers. The following table tracks stock price performance in the energy storage and electric vehicle sectors for the first quarter of 2012 and for the twelve months ended March 31st. Long-term readers will notice that the current list is a good deal shorter than it was in March of last year because of my decisions to...