Renewable Energy Stocks By The kWh
Tom Konrad CFA Disclosure: Long BEP. Short PEGI $20 and $25 puts, short PEGI $30 and $35 calls, short NYLD $40 and $45 calls. I recently sized up five renewable energy power producers using the metric that’s most often used for solar panels: Dollars per Watt ($/W). It’s an intuitive metric, but has serious flaws both for evaluating solar installations and stocks. Slightly better is Watts per Dollar (or W/$100 to make the numbers look nice) as shown in the chart from that article below. The main advantage of W/$100 over $/W is that it’s additive: I can meaningfully...
The MacArthur Foundation Invests In Climate Solutions- And In Fossil Fuels
By Marc Gunther.
Eighteen months ago, the people who manage the endowment at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation got some bad news: Investments they had made in funds managed by EnerVest, a Houston-based private equity firm that operates more than 33,000 oil and gas wells across the US, had plummeted in value to almost nothing.
The losses were small, relatively speaking — roughly $15 million, a fraction of the foundation’s $7 billion endowment — but they were unwelcome, if only because they called attention to the fact that MacArthur, whose mission is, famously, to build a “more just, verdant and peaceful world,” had...
Will We Have Too Much Generation for Renewables?
Too Many Brownies Before Dinner "When you feed your kid six brownies before dinner, you can't expect him to eat the salad, no matter how good it is." So says Leslie Glustrom, a long term renewable energy advocate. This is her metaphor for why Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL) has been reluctant to pursue Demand Side Management (DSM) and renewable energy projects in Colorado as they have been in Minnesota. Because Xcel is currently constructing 500 MW of new coal-fired generation, and they are also interested in a 300-350 MW IGCC plant by 2013, they may have little demand for...
2012 Energy Stock Predictions
By Jeff Siegel Domestic Oil to Reign in 2012 Last December, I made three predictions for 2011: The mounting solar glut problem would be rectified by the end of the year; Domestic oil and gas production would increase significantly, regardless of environmental concerns related to fracking and tar sands production; and With the introduction of the Chevy Volt and the Nissan LEAF, domestic sales of electric cars would reach no less than 10,000 units. Well, two out of three ain't bad! A Sad Season for Solar Toward the end of 2010,...
Getting in on Early-Stage Companies
Question from a Reader: (links mine, in case you have not read the articles I think he's referring to) Hi, I'm a very small time investor and I have a strong longterm belief in the alt energy sector. I have one gripe with the sector, though - the fact that it's hard to get in all the way at the bottom, ie: from the birth of companies. I have a feeling that much more growth will happen at that level, and investing in something like ICLN gets me into mature companies that have much less growth potential. ...
The EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2007 (Early Release) is Out
A quick post to inform our readers that the Energy Information Administration has just published an 'early release' version of its 2007 Annual Energy Outlook. Topics covered include: Energy Trends to 2030 Economic Growth Energy Prices Energy Consumption Energy Intensity Electricity Generation Energy Production and Imports Carbon Dioxide Emissions Along with this table outlining a range of energy-related projections to 2030 (PDF document), including revisions from 2006 projections.
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...
Clean Energy Stocks to Fill the Nuclear Gap
Tom Konrad, CFA If the Japanese use less nuclear power, what will take its place? I'm astounded by the resilience and discipline of the Japanese people in response to the three-pronged earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, perhaps in large part by my cultural roots in the egocentric United States, where we seem to have forgotten the virtue of self-sacrifice for the greater good. Yet while Japanese society has shown itself to be particularly resilient, the Japanese electric grid is much less resilient. According to International Energy Agency statistics, Japan produced 258 TWh of electricity from...
10 Stocks To Last The Decade…
Someone recently sent me a link to a Motley Fool piece entitled "10 Stocks to Last the Decade, Revisited". It appeared on Feb. 2 so some of you may have already read it. For those who have not, I thought it might be an interesting read because so many parallels can be drawn between the tech euphoria of the '90s and the cleantech euphoria of today. In a nutshell, the author looks back at a summer of 2000 Fortune article in which 10 stocks were identified as sure winners for the next decade based on how hot...
The iCloud’s Green Lining
Meg Cichon Just one year after Greenpeace called out Apple, Inc. (AAPL) for its use of fossil fuels in its "How Green Is Your Cloud" report – which graded Apple no higher than a "D" in four categories consisting of energy transparency, infrastructure siting, energy efficiency, and renewables and advocacy – Apple announced that its data centers are now powered by 100 percent renewable energy. In fact, renewables contribute to 75 percent of its entire corporate operations energy needs, according to its website. The 2012 report cites Apple’s planned expansion into “iDataCenters” to support its booming iCloud services,...
Energy Investing: What To Expect In 2015
By Jeff Siegel Tonight, I will welcome in the New Year with family. We'll feast on cured meats, pickled vegetables, and lamb neck stew. We'll sip an old fashioned or two with apple and sage, share some laughs, and maybe even shed a few tears as we remember those we lost in 2014. When the ball drops, we'll hug, kiss, and cheer on all that waits to be discovered in 2015. There will be good and there will be bad, but I suppose it's the uncertainty of it all that makes life worth living. Don't Fear the Uncertain It...
Financing Clean Energy: Perspectives
Tom Konrad, Ph.D. I recently moderated a panel on Financing Renewable Energy for the Colorado CFA Society. I took down choice quotes, with the plan of using them on Alt Energy Stocks' new twitter feed. I ended up with enough material for a short article. My panelists were Garvin Jabusch, COO of Green Alpha Advisors, a green-focused investment advisory firm in Boulder; David Gold, a partner at Access Venture Partners, and manager of their Cleantech investments, and Brian Greenman, of Greenman Financial Advisors, who does project development and finance for community wind developers. The broad range of perspectives seemed...
Keynes Meets Carson, And How You Can Invest It (Part 1)
I'm not sure whether John Maynard Keynes, the father of Keynesian economics and an ardent proponent of government interventionism during hard economic times, and Rachel Carson, the mother of modern environmentalism and the author whose work is credited for the eventual creation of the EPA, ever met during their lifetimes. But if current voter sentiment holds until November 4, their ideas could soon converge and form the basis of government policy for at least the next four years. Let me explain. First, John Maynard Keynes. There is no doubt that the deliberate and coordinated nationalization of financial services...
Google’s Renewed Cleantech Investment Binge
James Montgomery Google Doodle for Earth Day 2006 This week the Internet giant Google revealed that in December it invested $75 million in Pattern Energy's (NASD:PEGI) 182-MW Panhandle 2 wind farm in Carson County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, expected to be operational by the end of this year. Pattern will hold an 80 percent stake in the project, whose owners also include Google and two institutional tax equity investors, with Morgan Stanley providing construction and equity bridge loans and a letter of credit. Google certainly has displayed a healthy...
Green Energy Investing For Beginners: Index
Tom Konrad, CFA I write about investing in Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, and other green technologies because I'm worried. I'm worried that the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels driven by peaking supply and climate change could be much more painful than it needs to be because, as a society, we have massively underinvested in the infrastructure that we will need for the transition. I don't care if my readers are motivated by an altruistic wish to make the world a better place, or they just want to cash in on what promises to be the hottest stock market...
Saudis Confirm Switch from Oil to Solar
By Jeff Siegel You probably wouldn't recognize him if you saw him on the street. Heck, you probably don't even know his name. But Ali Al-Naimi is one of the most powerful men in the world. As the Saudi oil minister and chairman of Saudi Aramco, Al-Naimi is not particularly popular with U.S. oil producers, especially after telling the media he didn't care if oil prices crashed to $20 because it was not in the interest of OPEC producers to cut production regardless of price. Still, he remains the most influential oilman on the planet. Listed as one of Forbes' 50...
