How Economics Finally Brought Community Solar to IREA
by Joseph McCabe, PE My uber-conservative utility, Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) has been against solar since before I moved into the service territory in 2007. IREA's long-serving general manager, Stanley Lewandowski Jr., would include climate change denial leaflets in the envelope along with the monthly electric bills. Now he is gone, and attitudes seem to be changing towards solar. With a new general manager, a couple of forward thinking board of directors and a handful of active IREA owners/members the solar landscape has changed and now includes a large solar project. Currently IREA...
What A Portfolio Approach To Climate Policy Means for Your Stock Portfolio
Portfolio theory can lend insights into which carbon abatement strategies policymakers should pursue. If policymakers listen, what will it mean for green investors? Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Good Info, Not Enough Analysis I've now read most of my review copy of Investment Opportunities for a Low Carbon World. The quality of the information is generally excellent, as Charles has described in his reviews of the Wind and Solar and Efficiency and Geothermal chapters. As a resource on the state of Cleantech industries, it's generally excellent. As an investing resource, however, it leaves something to be desired. Each chapter is written...
White House Reveals Its Own Fake News
Almost Everyone Believed It by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Press Secretary Sean Spicer reveals the joke. This morning, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer began an epic five-hour press conference with a one-word statement from President Donald Trump: "Bazinga!" Spicer then launched into a detailed explanation of how the President (with help from many Republicans and conservative think-and-humor-tanks) had convinced the nation and the world how he did not believe in climate change. In fact, efforts to roll back EPA regulations like the Clean Power...
The Presidential Candidates on Clean Energy
Politicians will always have an influence on the stock market, through regulation, tax policy, incentives and more. This truism is only more certain in energy policy, where electricity markets and transport are highly regulated, and the next administration is widely expected to enact some sort of carbon regulation, if not a tax. Last night, I heard the head of the Colorado Governor's Energy Office speak on what the state administration is doing on energy policy. Our current governor, Bill Ritter, ran on a three part platform: working to fix Colorado's healthcare, transportation, and energy policies. Last year, the administration...
A Cleantech VC Who is Unconvinced of Man-Made Climate Change
David Gold Go ahead call me a hypocrite. I claim to be a cleantech venture capitalist yet I tell you here and now that I am not convinced of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change (aka global warming). And I will audaciously tell you that my convictions on climate change in no way run contrary to my strong belief in the need for a cleantech revolution Many supporters of clean technologies make it seem as though anthropogenic climate change is an absolute fact. To some of them anthropogenic climate change is almost like a religion where any debate...
Our Energy Bubble
Tom Konrad CFA Our energy policy looks like a bubble. Bubbles are a social phenomenon at least as much as they are a financial phenomenon. At the top of bubbles, participants ignore glaringly obvious risks. In October 2007, Meredith Whitney pointed out the almost glaringly obvious fact that Citigroup was paying out more in dividends than it was earning in profits (i.e. it was being run like the US government, but without a friendly Federal Reserve to bail it out by printing money.) She said that Citigroup would need either to raise capital,...
Obama’s Climate Plan
James Montgomery Yesterday President Obama spoke at Georgetown University about his plans to broadly address climate change. Ahead of his actual talk, the White House released the gist of what he would propose. The EPA, working with states, industry, and other stakeholders, will establish new carbon pollution standards. "Tough new rules" will be established similar to those that exist for toxins like mercury and arsenic. These new rules, as anticipated, will target existing power plants as well as new ones. The federal government will make available up to $8 billion in loan guarantees for "advanced...
What the ARRA Means for Clean Energy: One State’s Example
Last week, several branches of the Colorado state government organized a symposium on "How Colorado Electric/Gas Utilities and Their Customers Can Benefit from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)." I attended, with an ear to how the likely implementation would affect Clean Energy Stocks. Overall, Colorado seems to be taking a very organized approach to a monumental task. According to Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) Chairman Ron Binz, who officiated at the conference, they intend to organize proposals into an overall thematic plan for spending stimulus money. In addition, they are working to eliminate barriers to regulated utilities...
Two Numbers: One Matters, the Other Gets All the Attention
Garvin Jabusch This morning, in the realm of those who follow such things, the world became aware of two newsworthy numbers, 69,000 and 400. The former number is how many jobs were added to the U.S. economy in May according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); the latter is how many parts per million (ppm) in our atmosphere are represented by carbon. You can guess our opinion: 400 parts per million is a far more significant milestone than the apparent ‘bad news’ of America adding 69,000 more jobs. The jobs number is, at best, banal ephemera....
Why We Need More Energy in the Economy But Less in the Atmosphere
Garvin Jabusch Preface: As per my usual, this post is more or less a narrative, and is definitely not math-centric. But, still, nothing quite conveys the stark reality of a thing like its governing equation. So, two of those found their way in here, but both are short and explained in English. With that, let’s look at why energy is so good. And bad. Any system in nature, including the human economy, is bound by a simple fact: it can only thrive and grow in proportion to the energy inputs it has access to. Energy equals growth. In economic...
What Obama Did To Coal Investors, What The Next President Might, And How Investors...
by Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA Investing in the past is a good way to lose money. Just ask anyone who has been investing in coal stocks since Obama we re-elected. A glance at the chart above shows that the VanEck Vectors Coal ETF (KOL) is down about 50% over the last four years, even while the broad market (as represented by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)) has gained almost 50%. But even if we knew this was going to happen, should investors have rushed into the energy sectors most loved by liberals: That is, Wind, Solar,...
Right About Tesla, Wrong About Yingli
Doug Young Bottom line: Beijing should promote cutting-edge companies like Tesla that can help advance its new energy agenda, while abandoning ones like Yingli that use old technology to make cheap copycat products. Two green energy stories were in the headlines last week, spotlighting China’s drive to become a global leader in the new technology and also the right and wrong ways to achieve that aim. An item involving US electric vehicle (EV) powerhouse Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) represented the right approach, with reports that the company might near a deal with Beijing to build a manufacturing plant in China....
Creating a Climate Resilient America: A Green Investment Adviser Testifies To Congress
The prepared remarks of Garvin Jabusch, Chief Investment Officer of Green Alpha Advisors before the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in Washington, DC, July 25th, 2019.
Chairwoman Castor, Ranking Member Graves, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to testify and contribute to this important conversation.
Climate disruption and resource degradation present significant threats to and opportunities for American business. Every sector and industry are affected, and my industry of asset management, in its role deploying capital across the economy, is directly exposed to it all, risks and opportunities inclusive.
First, risks. The purpose of investing is to preserve and...
Trump Administration Flip-Flops On Oil Refinery Waivers Again, Farm Groups Protest Again
by Jim Lane
In Washington, what must have become a weary if vigilant posse of the nation’s biofuel and farm advocates are out on the hustings again this week, over a fresh attack on the US Renewable Fuel Standard, this one led by officials in the Trump Administration, if a story reported by Bloomberg stands up against scrutiny.
What has been described as a “misinformation campaign spearheaded by Senator Ted Cruz” is seeking to overturn a unanimous court decision that would halt the Environmental Protection Agency’s abuse of Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs) under the Renewable Fuel Standard.
The backstory
In a unanimous panel, the...
Aggressive New CAFE Standards; The IC Empire Strikes Back
John Petersen Last Friday President Obama and executives from thirteen leading automakers gathered in Washington DC to announce an historic agreement to increase fleet-wide fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks from 27.5 mpg for the 2011 model year to 54.5 mpg for the 2025 model year. While politicians frequently spin superlatives to describe mediocre results, I believe the President's claim that the accord "represents the single most important step we've ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil" is a refreshing example of political understatement. After three decades of demagoguery, debate,...
Shifting the Cost of Pollution
by Debra Fiakas CFA The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to review the recently enacted MATS Rule - Mercury & Air Toxics Standards that went into effect at the end of 2011. At least two dozen states and forty utility companies have filed suit against the EPA over the rule, which is intended to cap mercury and other toxic emissions as well as particulates. The rules particularly impact power plants that use coal-fired boilers to generate electricity. The EPA provides an interactive map to see where these plants are located. They are predominantly in the eastern half...
