Monthly Archives: July 2012

On Monday, it came to my attention that AltEnergyStocks.com's email list was not functioning properly, and and our morning emails had not gone out for over a week.  We have fixed the problem, email subscribers received an email containing all the articles we'd published since the the system stopped working.  Since this may have inundated many of our subscribers, I'd like to provide a quick summary of each of the articles to help you pick and choose the ones you'd like to go back and read: EVs, Batteries and Tales From The Valley of Death  John Petersen...

Tom Konrad CFA Deepwater Horizon Oil slick, as seen by NASA satellite, May 24, 2010 For a growing number of people, ecological responsibility means more than just recycling and changing our light bulbs.  Many have started to ask, “How much good does saving a few hundred gallons of gas with a hybrid car do, when the mutual funds in your 401k own companies that are allowing 6.6 million barrels of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, or fund misinformation about climate change?” For most, the answer...

John Petersen Today is the fourth anniversary of my blog on investing in the energy storage and electric vehicle sectors. Over the last four years I've penned 275 Articles and 45 Instablogs on topics ranging from technical minutiae to broad macroeconomic trends. Since most of my work focuses on challenges and risks instead of lofty and optimistic goals, I'm often derided as a curmudgeon who doesn't understand the dream. Truth is I've been a guide in the Valley of Death for over thirty years and while I love panoramic scenery, I can't overlook the dangers of old mine...

by Debra Fiakas CFA Capstone Turbine Corporation (CPST:  Nasdaq) made it to the Efficiency Group of our Mothers of Invention Index because of its line of low-emissions micro-turbines.  The company has sold 6,500 of them around the world.  The fruits of this building installed base are evident in Capstone’s top-line, which has increased in each of the last three years and reached $109.7 million in the fiscal year ending March 2012.  The bottom-line has followed in the same direction, but is still in the red.  In the last fiscal year, Capstone recorded...

Jim Lane Money trap photo via Bigstock  $104 million Elevance private financing round larger than last two IPOs; puts IPOs in focus; do the benefits outweigh the costs? Do advanced biofuels companies really need to be “thinking IPO”, industry leaders were asking this week after Elevance Renewable Sciences announced that it has raised $104 million in its Series E financing round. Lacustrine Limited via Genting Genomics Limited, wholly owned by Genting Berhad, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia led the round with Total Energy Ventures International, based in...

Tom Konrad CFA The unprecedented boom in natural gas supplies over the last few years as been one of the few tail-winds for the US economy over the last few years, as plummeting natural gas prices have lowered costs for both industry and consumers.  Few outside the natural gas industry even understood the shear scale of the shale gas resource, although industry insiders did. The Shale Gas Glut In 2008, I recall a natural gas executive complaining about how he could not get policymakers to understand the sheer scale of the shale gas resource.   To be honest, I...

by Debra Fiakas CFA Clean energy solution provider Rentech, Inc. (RTK:  NYSE) is scheduled to report second quarter 2012 results the first week in August.  Usually the seasonally strong period, this year the June quarter has shareholders sweating.  That is because the warm weather conditions sent farmers out into fields earlier than usual to prepare fields.  Orders for fertilizer products from Rentech’s East Dubuque, Iowa facility were coming even before the end of the March quarter.  The net effect was to pull sales forward.  The question now is whether June will now present...

UPDATE: I just looked into the 7 Series vs the Trilogy 40 in more detail here and came to a slightly different conclusion. Tom Konrad CFA Geothermal heat pump diagram via Bigstock Waterfurnace Renewable Energy (TSX:WFI, OTC:WFIFF) launched its new highly efficient 7 Series geothermal heat pumps (GHP) today.  The 7 Series commercial release beats Climatemaster’s (a division of LSB Industries (NYSE:LXU)) Trilogy 40 as the first commercially available GHP with a variable speed compressor.  The Trilogy 40 is currently available as part of a pilot program, and is expected to be commercially available...

John Petersen In June an anonymous blogger at Clean Technica dubbed me the “EV Black Knight,” the mortal enemy of electric cars.  While I was flattered by the tribute, I was deeply offended by the suggestion that I might be foolish enough to impale a lithium-ion battery pack with the burnished broadsword of economics. Seriously, anybody who’s spent any time studying battery safety knows that shockingly bad things can happen when you puncture a lithium-ion battery pack with a conductor and even a full metal jacket wouldn’t be enough to protect a knight errant from...

Jim Lane Mud/salt formations on the Badwater, Death Valley plain. Image by Daniel Mayer. What makes a winner in advanced biofuels? Five companies – Abengoa (ABGOY), INEOS Bio, Mascoma, Gevo (GEVO), and American Process reflect on the essential ingredients for success. “We are industrial technology businesses, making a commodity, we have to control costs everywhere and learn, learn, learn.” – American Process CEO Theodora Retsina You could call it VODville, VOD for valley of death that is – a stretch of hard desert that...

Tom Konrad CFA A new report from GTM research, “PV Technology, Production and Cost Outlook: 2012-2016” predicts continued contraction in PV manufacturing.  While recent price declines have driven record-breaking installations, it has also driven most manufacturers’ margins into the red.  You can’t make up for negative margins on volume. For a stock market investor, the best approach to a cut-throat industry is to stay away until competition and lower prices remove or absorb the excess capacity, and to buy the remaining players just before the industry’s prospects revive. As you can see from the chart above,...

Tom Konrad CFA June was a month of recovery for the stock market in general and clean energy stocks to a somewhat lesser extent.   The Russell 2000 index (^RUT, which I use as a broad market benchmark in this series) was up 9% in June, while the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy ETF (PBW) gained 5.3%.  So far for the year, ^RUT has produced a total return of 9.5%, while PBW shows a loss off 12.2%. My model portfolio introduced in January of 11 equally-weighted clean stocks lost ground yet continues to outperform the clean energy...

Tom Konrad CFA I sometimes think Alterra Power (TSX:AXY, OTC:MGMXF) is unfairly lumped with other small, renewable energy developers. A typical problem for small developers over the last few years has been raising the funds to invest, even when they have compelling prospects.  For instance, Western Wind Energy stock (TSX:WND,OTC:WNDEF) has been beat up recently because a large Federal cash grant is delayed.  Finavera Wind Energy (TSXV:FVR, OTC:FNVRF) has been declining for most of the year as they look for a strategic partner to help fund their permitted wind developments, despite significant progress permitting those projects and...

Jim Lane Dire US media headlines abound: “Drought!” What’s real, what’s hype, and what are the impacts? More importantly, what alternatives does science give us now, and in the future, with more drought-tolerant energy and food crops? The Reuters report could not have been more stark this week from a field in Illinois. “We’re in a critical point, could be the beginning of the end,” said Dave Kestel, a farmer, in a Reuters report that ran yesterday. Kestel’s plants in Manhattan, Illinois, the news service reported, “are almost two feet shorter than they should be at...

Tom Konrad CFA  On March 22, Western Wind Energy (TSX-V:WND, OTC:WNDEF) applied for a $90,556,707 tax-free 1603 grant from the US Treasury on behalf of the completed 120MW Windstar project.  The press release stated that the grant is subject to approval by the Treasury and payable within sixty days. The Windstar Wind Farm. Photo credit: Western Wind Energy It’s now more than three months later, and no tax grant.  The stock is down 24% since May 22, when the grant was expected, but management remains confident they will get...

Steve Leone   Delays and cancellations photo via Bigstock Now, energy giant General Electric (GE) said it is putting plans for its Aurora, Colo., plant on hold for 18 months in reaction to the continued drop in crystalline silicon solar panels. When the company announced its plans to jump into American thin-film manufacturing nine months ago, it did so in grand fashion. Company officials unveiled a plan for a 400-megawatt (MW) facility that would churn out cadmium telluride (CdTe) panels, the same thin-film technology deployed by...