ETS Interview: The Will the Real Transportation Fuel of the Future Step Forward
For macro reasons, I think that the next generation liquid fuels may be cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel or renewable diesel from algae. But those fuels will increasingly be sharing the roads with the long term transportation fuel of the future: electricity from renewable sources, especially wind. Wind will be important for electric transportation and electric transportation will be important for wind because, when you're already going to be charging batteries, you may as well do it when the electricity is cheap, which will be when the wind is blowing.. Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) neatly solve the main barrier...
Three Green Money Managers; Six Green Stocks for 2013
Tom Konrad When I asked my panel of green money managers their predictions for trends 2013, I got enough material for four articles: On where the cleantech sector is heading in 2013, as well as on Solar, Smart Grid, and LED technology. I also asked them for stock picks, some of which I included in the previous articles. Several had opinions about EnerNOC (NASD:ENOC), which I wrote about here, and two picked LED stocks Veeco Instruments (NASD:VECO) and Universal Display Corp. (NASD:PANL), which I discussed here. Since I just published my annual model portfolio of...
ETS Interview: LEDs and Energy Efficiency
Today, Energy Tech Stocks has the fifth installment from our interview, outlining my LED stock picks. He quotes me at the start saying that it's "going to be a gigantic market" about LEDs. It is, but only when compared to the current size of the market... you can ramp up a lot from a very small base. LED bulbs are increasing in brightness and decreasing in price rapidly. It's these quickly improving economics that make me bullish about LEDs. Unlike many energy efficiency technologies, LEDs are a product that a business can sell. Much of energy efficiency involves...
A Conversation with Ambassador Sklar on Solar in San Francisco
By Neal Dikeman, Partner, Jane Capital Partners LLC, Founding Contributor, Cleantechblog.com, and Contributing Editor, AltEnergyStocks.com. This week I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Ambassador Richard Sklar, the President of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, on renewables and solar power in San Francisco. This is his second stint at the SF PUC, and besides a time in politics, Ambassador Sklar has served as an executive in and advisor to private manufacturing and engineering firms. I had met him and several of the top SF PUC team at Solar 2006 in San Jose, and had been...
A Clean Energy Inflection Point in 2013? The Best ETF to Play the Trend
Tom Konrad In 2007, it seemed like clean energy was finally becoming mainstream. Both candidates for the US Presidency accepted the need to act on global warming, even if they did not agree on the degree, and clean energy stocks were rising even faster than the broad stock market. Then came the 2008 financial crisis, and many Americans discovered they had much more immediate worries than the slow but inexorable warming of the planet. Fossil fuel interests and the politicians who benefited from their donations played to the new mood by providing a worried populace with the excuse they wanted...
Alt Energy Stocks Analyst Tom Konrad On PBS’s WealthTrack
Alt Energy Stocks Analyst Tom Konrad will join a televised roundtable discussion with EnergyTechStocks' Managing Editor Bill Paul and Ardour Global Indexes' Joseph LaCorte this Friday. The discussion will center around the topic of investing in alternative energy. The program, entitled WealthTrack with Consuelo Mack, will air on PBS between November 9th and 12th, after which it will be available for online viewing here. You can find a listing of stations carrying the show with airtimes at the end of this article. Bill Paul may be familiar to our readers because of the series of articles he wrote following...
Fuel Tech – Driving Profits by Cleaning up Coal
Fuel Tech (Nasdaq: FTEK) is one of the fast growing public greentech / cleantech companies focused on cleaning up dirty coal. I have known John Norris, the CEO of Fuel Tech, and his family for years, and have had the pleasure of following his career for some time. He's one of the many former nuclear engineers that grew up in the electric utility industry. He has held utility executive positions including CEO of Duke Engineering & Services, SVP and CEO of Duke Energy Global Asset Development, and Senior Vice President, Operations and Technical Services, at American Electric Power...
Three Money Managers See LED Industry Shining in 2013; Their Stock Picks
Tom Konrad LED lights on an outdoor tree. Photo by author This is the third article in my series based on my panel of green money managers’ predictions for 2013. The first article looked at what they expect 2013 holds for the Solar industry, and the second looked at their predictions for the Smart Grid. This installment focuses on the LED industry. Jeff Cianci: Faster than Anyone Expects Jeff Cianci is Chief Investment Officer at equity investment fund Green Science Partners. Cianci says “The trend toward LED lighting for...
Stock Picks for US Energy Dominance
Tom Konrad, Ph.D. CFA Thursday night (Friday morning in Sinapore) CNBC Asia's Street Signs program must have had an interview cancellation, because they needed someone to give them 3 energy stock picks in response the Trump's "Energy Dominance" speech on last minute notice. They sent me (and probably a bunch of other people) an email two and a half hours before air. I did not see it until 20 minutes before the actual interview. I warned them that I do clean energy, not fossil fuels, but apparently they had no other takers who were awake and able to...
They’ll Put the Cellulose in Cellulosic Ethanol
One of the keys to staying ahead of the game in money management is lateral thinking. I start with the trend, and then try to think of industries or companies that might benefit, but are not on everyone else's radar. With Peak Oil-driven demand for biofuels, regular readers know that I consider the people who produce the feedstock (farmers, and industries whose waste can fairly easily be converted into biofuel) to be the most certain winners. One direction this chain of logic has taken me is to forestry companies. I'm far from a forestry analyst, so I decided to...
Royalties: a Financial Innovation for Renewable Energy
The following interview with RE Royalties (RE.V, RROYF) CEO Bernard Tan was conducted in September by AltEnergyStocks.com Editor Tom Konrad. Links and ticker symbols were not included in his original responses, but added by AltEnergyStocks.com as a resource for readers.
Q: What exactly is a renewable energy royalty?
A renewable energy royalty is a stream of cash flows generated by a renewable energy project. When the project generates electricity and sells its electricity, we receive a percentage of the revenues from the electricity sales, otherwise known as a gross revenue royalty. We receive that gross revenue royalty, on average, for about...
Current Picks: Busses and Energy Efficiency
Over the weekend, EnergyTechStocks published two articles based on an interview with me. The first was about my conviction that Peak Oil induced rising gas prices is going to lead to a rush into mass transit building by cities, or investing in mode-shifting last September. I've since written about opportunities in rail transit stocks, (P.TO, TRN, PRPX, and WAB), and more recently Hedging your peak oil risk with your lifestyle. However, I have been frustrated until now that the only pure play bus stock I've been able to find is Firstgroup PLC (FGP.L, FGROF.PK), the British based owner of...
Hither and Yon: Transmission and Biofuels
In the most recent two installments of Energy Tech Stocks' interview with me cover my views on transmission stocks, and biofuel stocks. Readers of AltEnergyStocks know that I am a big fan of electricity transmission, a theme I keep coming back to. You also know that I have a very ambivalent relationship with both ethanol and biodiesel. So I liked Bill's transmission article, but I just wasn't able to convey to him the subtleties of how I feel about biofuels. But he got one thing right: the owners of biofuel feedstock are likely going to be the biggest winners....
Interview on the Bigger Than Us Podcast
Here's an interview https://bit.ly/3dv5ywg I did for the Bigger Than Us podcast. I'm very impressed with Raj Daniels, the interviewer... he saw patterns in my approach to investing (and life in general) that, before he drew them out of me and put them into words, I had not even recognized myself.
https://anchor.fm/nexuspmg/episodes/74-Tom-Konrad-Ph-D---CFA--is-an-investment-analyst-and-writer-focused-on-clean-energy-stocks-eftq3v/a-a2i8ffh
How the Gabelli Green Growth Fund Got Its Five Stars
Tom Konrad, CFA An interview with John Segrich, CFA, portfolio manager at the the Gabelli Green Growth Fund (SRIGX). When I did my recent past performance comparison of clean energy mutual funds, I found that the Gabelli Green Growth Fund (SRIGX and SRICX) beat all its rivals by a long shot over the last three years, earning a coveted five-star rating from Morningstar. In general, I'm a skeptic about short-term past performance: If you look at enough funds, sooner or later you'll find one that has had great performance by sheer luck. Even when a few years'...
EATV: An ETF for Investing in the Agricultural Transition (Interview)
I met VegTech™ Invest CEO, Elysabeth Alfano at the 2023 ESG for Impact Conference, where she made a strong case for investing in food and agricultural systems innovation as a method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental harms. I wanted to learn more about the specific innovative companies she thinks are worth investing in, and so I interviewed her and VegTech™ Invest Chief Investment Officer, Dr. Sasha Goodman about these themes. The interview follows.
Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA -
Editor
Q: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. To begin with, can you tell us what VegTech™...
