The Week in Cleantech

Jeff Siegel and Tom Konrad April 23: Solar Grade Silicon Industry Under Pressure TK: Ed Gunther reports that the RSi (Renewable Silicon International) Easton facility has been shuttered.  Closure is attributed to pricing pressure in the solar silicon industry. April 24: Will PowerSecure (NASDAQ:POWR) Bounce Today? JS: PowerSecure International (NASDAQ:POWR) announced today that it landed $10 million worth of new orders for its smart grid power systems and LED area lights. Some of these deals are actually repeat orders, which certainly offers some confidence for the company's products....

On Monday, Richard Stuebi at Cleantech Blog highlighted the extent to which NBC is in the dark about energy efficiency. I couldn't agree more with Stuebi here - this idea is so painfully bad that it's a bit of a mystery why anyone in their right minds would agree to it. In the space of a few minutes, GE likely managed to undermine over two years of flashy press events and other publicity stunts aimed at convincing investors and the populace that "green is green." If Alt Energy Stocks awarded a prize for misplay of the week, this would...

Jeff Siegel March 13: Do Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Shorts Get Burned? LED-maker Energy Focus, Inc. (OTCBB:EFOI) announced this morning that it entered into a 5-year cooperation agreement with Communal International, Inc. Under the terms of the deal, Communal will introduce Energy Focus to new potential customers in Asia and assist in reducing manufacturing cost. This is a stock we played a few years ago for massive gains after the company landed a number of deals with the U.S. Military. Not sure how today's news will impact the stock, but it could be good for a quick pop....

Tom Konrad June 25: Pure Technologies Expands in the US Pure Technologies Ltd. (TSX:PUR, OTC:PPEHF) today announced plans for a major expansion of its Engineering Services business through the establishment of up to five new regional offices in the United States.  Last year, Pure was struggling when the Arab Spring stopped work at their biggest customer, a Libyan water authority, but the company did an admirable job cutting costs and developing business in other parts of the world.  Work (and payments) from Libya resumed this spring, and the company's business in North America is growing at a breakneck...

Jeff Siegel August 21: What Will Happen to Trina Solar (NYSE:TSL)? Following the hypocritical “unfair subsidy” complaint against China solar panel producers along with the 31 percent import duty placed on them by the US government, the Chinese have now responded through their Commerce Ministry by stating that the United States must cut support for six government-backed renewable energy programs or face unspecified penalties. And so continues the trade war, which was launched by the sour-grapes management of SolarWorld,(PINK SHEETS:SRWRF) and supported by those in Washington who have no clue how bad this could be for the...

Jeff Siegel September 17: Will LDK Solar (NYSE:LDK) Become a Penny Stock? LDK Solar (NYSE:LDK) has sent a revenue warning and cut its full-year revenue forecast for the second time this year. The company is now expecting Q3 revenue to come in at between $220 million and $260 million. Analysts were expecting more than twice that on the low-end of LDK's estimates with $453.6 million. And to add insult to injury, I overhead an analyst last week saying China solar companies, like LDK, are on a one-way track to penny stock status. Ouch! I was actually at...

On Tuesday, Himanshu Pandya at Financial Nirvana informed us that alternative energy companies were taking advantage of the recent run with stock offerings. As pointed out by Himanshu, shareholders don't currently seem to care too much about value dilution, so companies may as well take advantage of this to raise cheap capital. On Thursday, Angela Barnes at Report on Business argued that cool ethanol stocks could be expected to heat up. While we are no fans of corn-ethanol, the slew of generous support schemes put in place by North American governments to support ethanol growth should eventually positively...

The Economist is currently running an interesting poll on whether we can solve our energy problems with existing technologies or whether we will need breakthrough innovations. Add your vote! On Sunday, Domenick Yoney at AutoBlog Green told us that electric bike sales were soaring world-wide. I'm not sure what's a good play on this, but an interesting trend to note nonetheless. On Monday, Matthew McDermott at TreeHugger told us about another biofuel feedstock we may not have considered. Earlier this summer, David Pauly at Bloomberg was telling us about yet another such potential feedstock, which apparently is...

In General Industry News, The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital told us about the Green Meltdown. There is no doubt that alternative energy stocks have a rough ride ahead of them. On the one hand, revenue-less companies whose business model is heavily leveraged to technological innovation may not be able to access sufficient funding to go on for an extensive period of time. On the other hand, business models that rely on cheap credit and large amounts of debt, like large wind and solar parks, will get squeezed by credit tightness. In Environmental Markets, McKinsey discussed...

The Week in Cleantech is a weekly roundup of our favorite clean tech and alt energy blog posts and stories from across the web. If you know of a good piece that you think should be included here, don't hesitate to let us know! This week, we particularly liked... On Wednesday, Himanshu Pandya at Financial Nirvana made some predictions about which alt energy stocks could see some upside from the upcoming State of the Union Address. On Wednesday, Jim Jubak at TheStreet.com told us how to turn a profit from global warming stocks. On Wednesday,...

On Wednesday, Energy Tech Stocks gave us the heads up on a recent warning by Raymond James & Associate about declining oil production. Interesting to see a thesis that was derided as pure fantasy as recently as two years ago slowly creeping up into the mainstream. On Thursday, Sam Abuelsamid at Autoblog Green opined that CO2 regulations in Europe could place the balance of power on the auto parts suppliers' side in the fight for profit margins. We have noted in the past how some of the most interesting (and 'safest') clean car investment opportunities rested with parts...

On Sunday, Lascelles Linton at AutoBlog Green informed us that VW intended to offer a hybrid option for ALL of its models. I'm a big fan of electric hybrid and plug-in hybrid technologies, but this looks to me like a risky bet. VW is already a leader in fuel efficiency, which taken alone represents a competitive advantage in an era of rising fuel prices and tightening environmental standards. HEV is a whole different ball game, and it remains unclear at this stage whether this will end up being the winner technology. If I were a shareholder, I probably would...

Jeff Siegel and Tom Konrad April 30: Orion Energy Systems (OESX) Triples Stock Buyback TK: Sometimes microcap stocks fall just because no one is paying attention.  The directors of Orion Energy Systems (AMEX:OESX) clearly think their company is one such. Orion is an energy management company with a focus on high efficiency lighting systems and alternative energy system integration in commercial buildings.  The company is profitable, with a trailing Price/Earnings ratio of 18, a Price/Sales ratio of 0.5, and sold at less than half of book value ($4.05) when the market closed on Friday...

On Sunday, Dan Lewis at AEI wondered what we could re-weight the dollar exposure of alternative energy into. An interesting take on global monetary policy and alternative energy investing. On Monday, Kevin Bullis at Technology Review informed us that novel batteries were getting a boost. This is a big vote of confidence for A123. The growing interest from consumers and policy-makers in hybrids and HEVs will make batteries an essential area to keep an eye on for the cleantech investor. On Thursday, Todd Woody at Green Wombat informed us that big banks were backing big solar. The...

In Solar, New Energy Finance told us that Spain had raised the cap on new solar capacity, but not enough to appease critics. Ucilia Wang at Greentech Media brought us analysts' picks for 2009's winning Solar stocks, but they didn't mention Sharp (SHCAY.PK), which GoodCleanTech told us had developed a technique to halve silicon wafer costs. In Clean Transportation, Autoblog Green brought us Insight into Honda's new Global Hybrid.  And Autoboog Green also told us GM's Lutz was bragging about the Volt's "flawless" batteries, GoodCleanTech introduced Mazda's plans for a rival. Treehugger...

On Sunday, Cory Jenkins at Seeking Alpha told us about the next green energy phenomenon. The carbon offset space where credit origination is coupled with commoditization of what would otherwise be 'waste' (i.e. methane from livestock can be used to produce power instead of vented into the atmosphere) is a space I am very excited about. Some of you may have read the article in the December edition of Bloomberg Magazine on privately-owned Blue Source, and, if you haven't, I'd definitely recommend it. I think the business model makes an increasing amount of sense the more whatever you initially...