Interview With Nathaniel Bullard On Fossil Fuel Divestment
by Tom Konrad CFA Renewable Energy World asked me to write a commentary on Bloomberg New Energy Finance's recent report on the difficulties institutional investors are likely to have divesting from fossil fuels. The report details how the scale, yield, liquidity, and historic growth of the oil and gas sector are impossible to match with any other investment sector. While this is quite true, much of the other coverage has missed the point. Ironically, I thought Bloomberg News' coverage was some of the worst, because it focused on the least important aspect of fossil fuels...
Interview with Tom Konrad on the CleanTech Show
An interview with our analyst, Tom Konrad, with Nick Bruse of The Cleantech Show is now available. In it, they discuss various strategies and the outlook for the Cleantech investment space, as well as some of Tom's ideas on industry regulation. You can download or listen to a podcast of the interview here.
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...
Energy Tech Stocks Interview- Utility Scale Batteries
Two weeks ago I did a phone interview with Bill Paul of Energy Tech Stocks. Bill's a long time WSJ reporter who got out in time before Rupert Murdoch swooped in, as well as a long time environmental journalist. As such he interviews those of us whose job it is to have views about what's going on in Cleantech and presents those opinions in a readable and engaging way. He also has this addictive trick of breaking up interviews into several parts and leaving you with a cliffhanger. Bill's first installment showed up in my feed reader last...
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...
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...
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 with Ray C. Anderson, of Interface Inc.
Tom Konrad, CFARay Anderson, the pioneering founder and Chairman of Interface, Inc. (IFSIA) was an early pioneer of sustainable enterprise. We recently had the opportunity to interview him on the benefits he sees for investors from corporate sustainability (full transcript follows.)I've recently been thinking about corporate sustainability (in the green sense) and how it relates to corporate sustainability (in the business survival sense.) Since I expect business conditions to be more difficult in the coming years than they have been in the past, any edge in resilience a company might gain from pursuing sustainability may be useful, both on...
Interview with Dr. Mike Gallagher, President & COO of Westport Innovations
One of the companies I have followed for some time is Westport Innovations, Inc., (TSX:WPT or WPIVF.PK) out of Vancouver. The technology and product suite allows large diesel trucks to run standard diesels on a 95% natural gas mix, enabling fuel switching as well as significantly improved NOx and PM, as well as CO2 emissions. The company's rapid expansions date from a late 1990s joint venture with Cummins (NYSE:CMI), and Westport has led this market sector since then. I had the opportunity at the recent Greenvest 2007 Conference I chaired in San Francisco to hear...
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
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...
Cleantech Venture Capital – Still Rising
As part of our ongoing series on stories on investment in the cleantech sector, we had a chance to discuss the sector with one of the venture capitalists at Emerald Technology Ventures. Scott MacDonald is an Investment Director with Emerald Technology Ventures, a global leader in cleantech venture capital. Founded in 2000 under the name SAM Private Equity, Emerald is a pioneer in this rapidly emerging sector and is focused on innovative technologies in energy, materials and water. With offices in Zurich, Switzerland and Montreal, Canada, Emerald manages three venture capital funds and two venture capital portfolio mandates...
Commodities Specialists Ask About Alternative Energy
Commodities investing site HardAssetsInvestor has published an interview with me from the start of December. We covered a broad swathe of the clean (and not so clean) energy. If you're wondering why my top stock pick from the article was ABB, and not one from my recent 10 Speculations series, it's because all of those are too risky to be my top picks. I like risk, but not with the largest part of my portfolio... stocks like ABB that let me sleep at night. Major topics we touched on: Ethanol (both corn and cellulosic) Cost comparisons in electricity...
Live Interview/Call in on Denver PBS Station KBDI 12
A quick note to Denver area readers: AltEnergyStocks.com Analyst Tom Konrad will be a guest on local PBS show Studio 12 from 8-9PM CDT Wednesday, September 2. This will be a panel discussion on Alternative Energy, and other guests are likely to be a representative of the natural gas industry, and one of the authors of Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America from the Nature Conservancy. They're also trying to get local environmental bête noire, Stan Lewandowski. Viewers will be able to call in and ask questions of...
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...
Are the Declines in Solar and Wind Stocks Structural, or Cyclical?
Tom Konrad, CFA Last week, I asked three green money managers if they thought cleantech stocks, especially solar and wind sectors were near a bottom. While they did tell me about eight cleantech value stocks, they were not ready to call the bottom. Commoditization in Clean Energy In response to my questions, Rafael Coven, the manager of the Cleantech Index (^CTIUS), which is the index behind the Powershares Cleantech Portfolio ETF (PZD,) ...
