Covanta Turns Waste into Cash
Debra Fiakas, CFA The Waste Hierarchy, with energy from waste highlighted The self-styled “energy-from-waste” company Covanta Holding (CVA: NYSE) turns municipal waste into electricity and recycled metals. The operations also turned 21.9% of its revenue into cash in 2011. We note that the conversation ratio has declined over the last three years from 28.7% in 2009 and 27.2% in 2010, but we are still impressed with any cash conversion rate over 20%. The company operates forty-one mass-burn facilities around the U.S. that burn all manner...
Focus On Clean Power Income Trusts
Last week, Tom brought you a piece on the Algonquin Power Income Fund (AGQNF.PK), in which he opined that shift in investor attention away from capital gains toward yield might eventually provide a catalyst for the prices of yield-focused securities such as income trusts to rise. So-called utility trusts, or income trusts where the underlying corporation is engaged in utility activities such as power generation, are a common feature of the Canadian income trust sector (the mother of all income trust sectors). A sub-set of utility trusts is the clean power utility trust, where the power generation...
WSTE Not, Want Not
Tom Konrad CFA A truly sustainable economy would produce no waste: everything would be recycled or reused for some productive purpose. We're a long way from that ideal today, but the rising cost of commodities makes recovering used material through recycling increasingly economic. Further, the rising cost of energy makes converting municipal and industrial waste into advanced biofuels or combusting it to produce electricity an increasingly economic option. Attempting to guess which advanced biofuel technology will be successful strikes me as a fool's errand. Why not instead invest in the owners of the feedstock? While I don't...
Ten Solid Clean Energy Companies to Buy on the Cheap: #3 Waste Management, Inc....
In large part, the transition to clean energy will involve using our resources much more efficiently than we do now. One large potential feedstock for biofuels (and arguably the only one which is truly sustainable) is our trash. As the world economy grows, and the available stock of natural resources diminishes, society will have no choice but to use what we have more efficiently and throw less of it away. In addition to the now familiar recycling of Aluminum, glass, cardboard, paper, and plastic, yard and construction waste will find its way to cellulosic ethanol plants, and used cooking...
Advanced biofuels pioneer Terrabon files for chapter 7 bankruptcy: One-off or trend?
Jim Lane Closely-watched green gasoline producer collapses as Waste Management (WM) declines next financing round. What does it mean for companies like Fulcrum Bioenergy, Enerkem, Agilyx, Agnion, Renmatix, Genomatica, and InEnTec? The Digest looks at the inside story. In Texas, Terrabon filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection; the company’s operations will cease and a trustee will be tasked with liquidating the company’s assets for the benefit of creditors. The complete Chapter 7 announcement is here. In a statement, Terrabon’s leadership said that company could not obtain additional corporate funding to finish developing and engineering its...
The Light On Blue Sphere’s Horizon
by Debra Fiakas CFA The stakes were high at the beginning of its fiscal year 2015, as Blue Sphere, Inc. (BLSP: OTC/QB), a developer of waste-to-energy projects, was facing deadlines to fulfill its contractual commitments to the sellers of its two ‘front burner’ waste-to-energy projects in North Carolina and Rhode Island. In the four intervening months it appears Blue Sphere has won all bets. Blue Sphere had purchased a biogas project from original owner Orbit Energy and had received an equipment financing commitment from Caterpillar. Unfortunately, an equity financing source withdrew its interest as...
Global Resource Corporation and Mobilestream Oil
This is the text of an email I received from a reader of my article on Global Resource Corporation (GBRC.PK). He has reason to suspect that things are much worse than just the weak governance issues I uncovered. I have been posting on Investors Hub as a result of family members being stung for a substantial purchase of Mobilestream Oil (MSRM.pk), now being converted to Global Resource stock. A poster gave me the link to your interesting article about Global and your problems contact Jeff Andrews. I am trying to contact Mr...
Earnings Roundup: Covanta, NFI Group, Green Plains Partners
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
Earnings Season Continues
Below are three more updates on second quarter earnings which I've been sharing with my Patreon supporters. If you'd like to support my writing and see those thoughts in a more timely manner, consider becoming a patron. becoming a patron.
For everyone else, I'm reprinting those thoughts below.
Covanta Earnings
(published August 2nd)
Waste to energy company Covanta Holding Corp (CVA) saw most of its business recovering towards the end of the second quarter. Management is reluctant to predict if the positive trend will continue into the third quarter and for the rest of the year, but...
Plastic Bottle-neck
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
In September 2019, the California State Assembly sent out legislation that sets a 10% recycled plastic mandate by 2021 and increases the hurdle rate to 50% by 2030. The law covers plastic bottles that are already covered under the state’s container redemption program. Companies will need to use plastic bottles made from recycled plastic such that at least a minimum percentage of the plastic used meets the mandate.
Environmentalists and even consumers might be celebrating the new law, but the plastic recycling industry could be less than jubilant. The recycling news feed is peppered with headlines that reveal some fraying...
Covanta on a Mission to Up-cycle Municipal Waste
Debra Fiakas, CFA The Waste Hierarchy, with energy from waste highlighted Covanta Energy (CVA: NYSE) is a champion of renewable energy. So much so that Covanta commissioned an elaborate sustainability report in 2010, detailing the company’s three-year track record in elevating municipal waste from the landfill to a higher order of use. Compliant with standards set by the Global Reporting Initiative, the report is full of choice tidbits from Covanta’s municipal waste experience - at least through the year 2009. Let’s look at 2009, the last...
$3 Billion For Cleantech & Alt Energy
Charles Morand The DOE made public earlier today the amount of money that will awarded to clean power projects in lieu of the usual tax breaks: $3 billion. This will allow project proponents to receive a direct cash grant now instead of a Production Tax Credit or an Investment Tax Credit later on. The guidance document notes the following: "Section 1603 of the Act’s tax title, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act, appropriates funds for payments to persons who place in service specified energy property during 2009 or 2010 or after 2010 if construction began...
The Pros Pick Two (Correction:Four) Offbeat Cleantech Stocks for 2014
Tom Konrad CFA Green 2014 image via BigStock Among the dozen stocks picked by my panel of professional green money managers for 2014, most followed three themes: Solar stocks, IT stocks, and income stocks. Two didn’t, and they are included here. This Cash-Rich Water Company Could Produce a Big Dividend The first is a Japanese water utility, picked by Rafael Coven, the Managing Director at the Cleantech Group, and manager of the Cleantech index (^CTIUS) which underlies the Powershares Cleantech ETF (NYSE:PZD.) Coven likes...
Global Resource Corporation: Needed Technology; Unanswered Questions About Management
On July 3, The Energy Blog told us about a process of turning old tires back into valuable oil and gasses. Given the problems of Peak Oil and plastic waste which can mimic almost anything in the environment, I was intrigued, and I had the feeling that other watchers of the alternative energy space would be, too. After a quick review to make sure that the technology was based on sound science (I believe it is, although that is no guarantee that it can be commercialized), and a search for information about their governance policies and a board list...
Casella Back In The Dumps, But Ready To Pick Up?
by Debra Fiakas CFA Casella Plants Flag in Waste-to-Energy The solid waste collection and disposal industry has been transformed by the building enthusiasm for waste recycling. Founded in 1975, Casella Waste Systems (CWST: Nasdaq) has been around to experience a lot of change and has been quick to get on the bandwagon. The company is a self-described recycler and resource manager as well as a solid waste collector. Granted the company is still heavily focused on its conventional solid waste business. Casella management has outlined a four-point plan to grow the company and increase profits. Top on...
Earnings Roundup: Metals Prices Boost Covanta and Umicore
By Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
You don’t have to own mining companies to benefit from rising metals prices.
This is a roundup of first quarter earnings notes shared with my Patreon supporters over the last week. Waste to energy operator Covanta and specialty metals recycler Umicore are both benefiting from skyrocketing metals prices.
Just as renewable energy and energy efficiency stocks have long shown that investors don’t have to own fossil fuel companies to benefit from rising prices of fossil fuels, recyclers like Covanta and Umicore are showing that you don’t have to own environmentally damaging mining companies to benefit from rising...
List of Waste-to-Energy Stocks
Waste-to-energy stocks are publicly traded companies whose business involves using municipal or other waste as a feedstock to create fuel or electricity. Organic matter and plastics in a waste stream can be converted to fuel and/or electricity chemically, by means of pyrolysis, biologically such as in anaerobic digestion, or by incineration. Alternatively, energy from waste can be captured from natural processes, such as in the collection of methane gas from landfills.
This list was last updated on 6/23/2021
Active Energy Group PLC (AEG.L)
Attis Industries, Inc. (ATIS)
Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. (BW)
BioHiTech Global, Inc. (BHTG)
Blue Sphere (BLSP)
Capstone Microturbine (CPST)
China Recycling Energy Corp....
