Industry General

Global Technology Metals Eamon Keene The Department of Energy (DOE) released a report Wednesday which undertook a strategic review of the use of critical metals in the emerging clean energy space. "Critical Materials Strategy" is a 170 page report which provides a useful overview of the possible metal bottlenecks - and hence investment opportunities - in clean technologies. The investment thesis which can best benefit from shortages is called "Strategic Positioning". Developed by Patrick Wong, former CIO of Dacha Capital, this thesis "basically looks at parts/processes in the building of any product...

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.  ...

Last night, a recent finance graduate introduced himself to me, telling me he had attended my presentation at the Colorado Renewable Energy Society on July 24th. (the whole presentation is available after the link, scroll down to Jul 24.)  He said he wasn't invested in clean energy because "Investing is about making money... there's nothing moral about it."   I'm sure I was quite sarcastic when I replied, "That sounds like a finance major." I believe that finance and economics, as they are currently taught, make people less moral.  I'm not talking about God.  I'm personally agnostic with tendencies towards...

David Gold So, you’re at a networking event and you get an opportunity to talk with a Venture Capitalist (VC) for just a few minutes. After breaking the ice with quick introductory formalities, you present your elevator pitch, right? Wrong. How can you possibly capture that VC’s interest if you don’t know what excites them? Would you try to sell meat to a vegetarian or bricks to a carpenter? Not if you knew a little about their needs and interests!  When you are raising money, you are selling yourself and your company to your prospective...

By all accounts, more money will be invested into renewables in 2014 than was invested in 2013. Our experts lay out where, why, when and how. Jennifer Runyon The world of renewable energy finance is vast: encompassing everything from venture capital funding for innovative start-ups, to research and development (R&D) and manufacturing expansion spending, to project finance and all the way through to investing in clean energy companies on the stock market. Because of that, for the general public, predicting where money will flow over the course of the next year is a shot in the...

Tom Konrad CFA Income investors can also invest in clean energy. Over the past four years, changes in Canadian tax law have led the renewable energy income trusts I introduced investors to in March 2007 to either be bought out like the Boralex Power Income Fund (bought by manager Boralex ) or convert to corporations like Algonquin Power and Utilities . Those that converted to corporations are still out there, and still paying good dividends.  And while a few are gone because of mergers, there are also a few new ones that I did not mention...

David Gold The stimulus bill along with the $31B cleantech element focused on grants and loan guarantees through the Department of Energy was passed into law over 18 months ago.  About a year ago I wrote about how the cleantech stimulus was not very stimulating to our economy. I suggested at that time that the goals of stimulus and of long-term investment are largely incompatible, and the evidence is bearing that out.  At the time, I felt like a bit of an outcast for having such a critical view and yet being an ardent supporter of clean technologies...

by Garvin Jabusch Jack Bogle is flat wrong. I mean, within his worldview and that of Modern Portfolio Theory, he’s right, but in the Anthropocene, he’s wrong. Bogle, founder and retired CEO of the Vanguard Group, is known for championing the superiority of low-fee index funds. His firm’s largest product, the $155 billion Vanguard 500 Index Fund is the perfect poster child for his philosophy. It closely tracks the S&P 500 Index of America’s largest companies, and it has a fee of only 0.06% inclusive. The S&P 500 has performed better than most actively managed portfolios over time, so...

David Gold Katherine Connors, Miss Iowa USA 2010 throws the ceremonial first pitch.  Source: Cathy T, via Wikimedia Commons You landed your first pitch at a venture capitalist’s (VC) office. You’ve practiced the pitch and have your laptop fired up to deliver. So, like a sprinter at the sound of the gunshot, you dive in hard and heavy to make sure you get through the deck. After all, you might only have one chance to excite them with your company’s story. Inevitably, with all the questions...

Tom Konrad Ph.D. CFA In my bio, I usually state My study of chaos theory led to my conviction that knowing the limits of our ability to predict is much more important than the predictions themselves, a lesson I apply to both climate science and the financial markets. Despite having written about financial markets and clean energy stocks regularly since 2006, I have never before explained in print what I meant by that.  This summer's heat wave and stock market turbulence illustrate how my intuition about chaos theory informs both my understanding of the climate and...

by Jake Raden Pope Francis’s encyclical on global warming and environmental degradation, Laudato Si, identifies our disruptive effects on our climate as social justice and spiritual issues. “Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms,” he writes, lamenting that those with privilege lack a “sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded.” (Image Courtesy of: http://www.cgdev.org/page/mapping-impacts-climate-change) The image above is from the Center for Global Development and it’s one in a series that ranks...

The stocks and mutual funds we own have a real effect on the behavior of the companies we choose (not) to invest in.

Investing in clean energy is both an economic and a moral decision.  From an economic perspective, I believe that constrained supplies of fossil fuels (not just Peak Oil, but also Peak Coal and Natural Gas) are leading to a permanent rise in the value of all forms of energy.  From a moral perspective, I know that we and the vast majority of our children are limited to this one planet for generations to come, so we should abuse it as little as possible, so, of all the possible forms of energy to invest in, clean energy (Renewable and...

David Gold Building great businesses typically requires three key ingredients: phenomenal people, compelling technology and investment capital. Cleantech companies are no exception. While cleantech venture capital investments have expanded rapidly, averaging an annual growth rate of 65% over the past five years and now representing over 15% of all venture investments, the compelling technologies are mostly early in their development cycles and the human eco-system for early stage cleantech companies is in its infancy. There is much buzz about the venture capital and government funding that is being invested in cleantech companies,...

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a presentation that was given by FERC officials on the phenomenon of rapidly rising costs in US power generation (presentation link at the end of this post). The FERC, or Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is America's energy watchdog. The presentation begins by noting that across America's major electricity hubs, power prices are up significantly on last year (between 62% in the Midwest and 123% in NYC) and that, unfortunately, this probably isn't an anomaly. In fact, the presentation argues, there may be something secular at play. Two main trends are noted....