The Week in Cleantech

On Monday, Todd Sullivan at Seeking Alpha informed us that ADM (NYSE:ADM) was planning on entering the Brazilian sugar cane ethanol market. It's no mystery that Brazil is an ethanol powerhouse and will be looking, in the years ahead, to export much of its output to the lucrative US and European markets. There is a lot of talk about China becoming an emerging market cleantech powerhouse, but don't forget about Brazil! On Monday, Mark Gongloff at the WSJ's Energy Roundup reported that Shell (NYSE:RDS-B) CEO Jeroen van der Veer was a big believer in energy efficiency, but not...

Many of our readers may know about this already, but earlier this week I came across The Energy Challenge, a series of articles by New York Times writers on energy and environment issues. This is a great resource for alt energy investors and aficionados. On Monday, David Biello at Scientific American discussed the state of the science for us. This is likely nothing new for many of our readers but serves as a good reminder of why I believe the cleantech space will be so strong in the next few decades. On Wednesday, Rebecca Smith and Kevin...

The December edition of Bloomberg Markets Magazine is devoted partly to the rise of carbon capitalism. An interesting series of articles on the budding carbon economy. While there are currently few ways for North American investors to play this, I continue to believe that this is an area the environmental investor must keep an eye on. On Monday, Jim Kingsdale at Seeking Alpha discussed ethanol and biodiesel: two very different biofuels. This is an interesting piece with a bullish outlook for two biodiesel stocks. Biodiesel often lingers in the shadow of ethanol in North America, yet it is...

On Tuesday, Andrea Quong at Red Herring told us that investors reaped returns on clean energy. A quick look at returns in the European cleantech VC and PE spaces. On Wednesday, Emily Gertz at World Changing gave us the run-down on the legal climate on climate change. This action by NY's Attorney General formalizes what many have been saying for a while - certain power gen companies, and the investors that own them, could be exposed to serious regulatory risks related to global warming in the years ahead. Strangely, those companies and their investors often seem to favor...

On Tuesday, Dallas Kachan at Inside Greentech gave us the scoop on a recent GE move (NYSE:GE) to gain greater access to the European wind market. Interesting how GE is leveraging its capacity in the finance realm to complement its Ecomagination efforts. On Tuesday, Chris Coad at Seeking Alpha wondered whether high gas prices where increasing demand for hybrids. The reverse begs asking: would a collapse in gas prices lead to a material drop in demand for hybrid cars? On Wednesday, Dan Lewis at AEI directed us to an interesting article on vanadium redox-flow batteries (VRBs) (PDF...

On Monday, Cassandra Vinograd at the WSJ's Energy Roundup told us about Merrill Lynch's new Energy Efficiency Index. You can read more about the index here. As our regular readers know, we are big believers in energy efficiency as an investment thesis, and think significant opportunities will materialize in this space in the coming years. On Tuesday, Todd Woody at Business 2.0 wondered whether a small Norwegian company was about to reverse 100 years of automotive history. Could we be looking at the next wonder-boy of the clean automotive movement? On Wednesday, Dan Lewis at AEI shared...