Alternative Energy Will Outperform The Market, With Storage Stocks Leading the Way
The public relations firm Waggener Edstrom released a survey of investors and analysts yesterday seeking opinions on what was in store for alternative energy for 2009 (link to the survey at the end of this article). Of the 81 respondents, 47 were institutional investors, 26 were brokerage analysts, five were from independent research firms and three were classified as "Other industry participants". Overall, 58% of respondents were from the buy side, 32% from the sell side and the remainder from "Other". Here are a few tidbits that caught my attention. Storage: The Next Boom? Overall, 50% of respondents expect...
Next Economy and Faith for Empiricists
Garvin Jabusch Let's be clear: Justice is not an immutable law of nature. Neither math nor physics nor chemistry recognizes justice as one of the universe's governing principles. The strong, rich, and powerful have, since long before humans emerged, by and large taken what they wanted, when they wanted, and never counted the costs to those they took it from. Despite what Socrates may have said, justice has forever occurred, at best, in fleeting, ephemeral flashes. We yearn for a god capable of seeing and ultimately judging all rights and wrongs because we know we can't be counted...
The Case of Divestment From Fossil Fuels (Powerpoint presentation)
This is a presentation from the Third Annual Climate Solution Summit by Katelyn Kriesel, Board President of the Sustainable Economies Alliance on the case for divesting from Fossil Fuels.
_Divestment Presentation - New Paltz
Katelyn Kriesel is an expert in the field of sustainable finance. She is a Financial Advisor with Hansen’s Advisory Services, located in Fayetteville, NY, a firm that has specialized in Socially Responsible Investing for over 30 years. She is also Board President and founder of the Sustainable Economies Alliance (SEA), a not-for-profit organization that is raising community awareness regarding economic sustainability and empowerment. She uses this expertise...
The Truth Ain’t That Incovinient Anymore, So What’s Next?
I attended Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth lecture in Toronto tonight. I assume many of you have seen the movie so I'm not going to go into the details of the presentation, which is essentially the same as the movie give-or-take a couple of slides. Instead, I'm going to share with you some of the thoughts I had as I was listening to the former VP. Firstly, I bought this whole climate change thing a long time ago and I've seen the movie, so substantively I got very little out of this. As with the movie, I...
Divesting: Last One Out Loses
Tom Konrad CFA Anew report written by Nathaniel Bullard at Bloomberg New Energy Finance highlights the difficulties large institutional investors would have divesting from fossil fuels. What it does not specifically discuss is that these difficulties could lead to large financial losses for investors who see the difficulty of divesting as a reason to delay. Just as we can't easily fill up our cars with solar power instead of gasoline, the report points out that there is no asset class that can directly substitute for oil and gas in large institutional portfolios. A person...
Energy Efficiency and Solar Lead Alternative Energy Stocks Skyward
By Harris Roen Industry Day Week Qtr Year Energy Efficiency -0.3% 2.3% 18.7% 49.9% Environmental -0.2% 1.1% 9.8% 11.8% Fuel Alternatives -0.3% 1.3% 19.6% 29.2% Smart Grid -0.1% 2.4% 9.5% 31.9% Solar 0.5% 6.8% 40.3% 52.8% Wind 0.0% 2.1% 9.7% 21.6% Average -0.1% 2.7% 17.9% 32.9% Data as of: 7/17/2013 Alternative energy stocks are up over 30% on average for the year, reflecting impressive gains off of widely oversold lows in 2012. Almost three-quarters of...
Pop Goes the Clean Energy Stock Bubble
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
2020 ended with a massive spike in clean energy stock prices. From the end of October, election euphoria drove Invesco WilderHill Clean Energy ETF (PBW) from $63.32 to $136 at the close on February 9th, a 114% gain in 100 days.
Joe Biden is as strong a supporter of clean energy as Donald Trump was a supporter of big fossil fuel companies, but even with control of the presidency and both chambers of congress, there is a limit to what a president can do in a short time. This is especially true when their top priority...
2006 & Alt Energy Investing: 6 Key Points to Remember from a Great Year
It is customary, at the dawn of a new year, to reflect back on the past year’s highlights. This exercise is generally conducted immediately before the new year, so you could say I’m a little late. However, this time around, instead of creating my own list of key things to remember from 2006, I decided to see what the heavy hitters in the alt energy and clean tech spaces had to say. I picked 3 sources that I read religiously and that all published such a list for '06. They are: Clean Break, Cleantech Blog and Red Herring....
Can Broad Shoulders Shake Off The Rate Hike?
by Debra Fiakas CFA Some investors may be surprised by the repercussions of an increase in the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate. The Federal Open Market Committee is expected to take action next week for the first time in nine years to increase the rate from near zero. Odds makers have pegged the magnitude of the rate increase by a quarter percentage point. We decided to take a look at some of the companies in Crystal Equity Research’s Beach Boys Index composed of biofuel, ethanol, renewable diesel and other alternative fuel producers. We looked to see which...
Will 2010 Be the Year of Cleantech Revenues, IPOs and, Maybe, Even Profits?
David Gold As a “gearhead” (engineer) I must admit I truly enjoy looking at all the cool technologies being developed by cleantech companies. The promise of cleantech hinges, in part, on these innovations. So it is not surprising that so much focus in the blogosphere and the press is given to the funding and development of these new technologies. Much like the dot-com buzz in the mid-90s, today we celebrate the amazing innovations that are taking seed. But for cleantech to avoid the fate of synfuels of the ‘70s or that of many of the early...
AltEnergyStocks.com’s Ten Best Competitors
When I began writing about clean energy investing in 2006, my competition was sparse. The quality blogs with industry heavyweights were either not focused on investing, or were primarily focused on venture capital. Now the world has changed. I keep finding new blogs and writers with a strong focus on both clean energy and public companies. Here are a few I'd like to share with readers: Dedicated Blogs Energy Tech Stocks - Three articles a day can be a little daunting, but that's what happens when you try to cover everything. Camino Energy - Their PurePlay indices are a...
REDI-ing Your Portfolio for a Low-Carbon Economy
Tom Konrad, CFA Colorado's recently released Renewable Energy Development Infrastructure (REDI) report looks at what the resource-rich state needs to do to accomplish the state goal of reducing CO2 emissions 20% from 2005 levels by 2020. Investors who expect the developed world to attempt similar cuts in emissions should take note of the report's conclusions, and invest accordingly. Since Colorado Governor Bill Ritter recruited my friend Morey Wolfson for the Colorado Governor's Energy Office (GEO) he's had a lot less time to socialize with the rest of us in the clean energy community, but we caught up over lunch...
Crude Oil & Alt Energy: The Non-Relationship That Just Won’t Go Away
Charles Morand The relationship - or lack thereof - between oil prices and the performance of alt energy stocks has been a long-time interest of mine. I discussed it last in late March when I looked at correlations between the daily returns of alt energy and fossil energy ETFs. At the time, I found that only a weak relationship existed between the two and that if someone wanted to make a thematic investment play on Peak Oil, alt energy ETFs were not an ideal way to do so. Seeing as the popular press and countless "experts"...
Clean Tech Investing and the Democrats’ Victory
What are the implications of the Democrats' electoral victory for the clean tech industry? That probably won't become clear for a few more months. In the meantime, Red Herring, one of my favorite technology magazines, just published this short piece on the topic: "U.S. election a mixed bag for Cleantech". The early conclusion of industry insiders interviewed for the article is the same as ours - namely that the defeat of Proposition 87 won't be a signficant event in the long-run...and that the future looks overall bright. Happy reading!
The Alternative Energy Revolution – Summary of Industry Sectors
Last week I was speaking to Jim Atkinson of Guinness Atkinson Funds (or GA Funds) (see Disclosure below). Jim sent me document or research paper called, "The Alternative Energy Revolution" which was written in April 2006. The document is usually accompanied by a prospectus for the GA Alternative Energy Fund. Today, I am not commenting on the fund itself but will summarize some of the information I found important in "The Alternative Energy Revolution" paper. A link to the document itself follows my summary. Please note, I am simply presenting the information and numbers in the document. ...
Why Oil & Shipping Firm A.P. Moller-Maersk and Steelmaker POSCO Are ‘Green’ Investments
by Bill Paul There's no such thing as an "experienced" alternative energy investor. The sector simply is too new. Also, like an iceberg, most of it lies hidden beneath the surface. To succeed in these uncharted waters, I believe that alternative energy investors (a group that eventually will include all investors) need to follow a particular set of guidelines that I've started identifying in recent articles. The first guideline is that you must be a long-term investor with a time horizon of at least three to five years. Otherwise, you'll miss out on most of the incredible financial payoff...
