In Solar, Eric Savitz at Barron’s Tech Trader Daily wondered whether stock loan deals would be repaid. It’s always important for shareholders to pay attention to which financing structures companies chose. In this case, if you understood this well, it could have a been good lateral short play on Lehman’s problems. However, if you were long ESLR and had not paid this financing too much attention, you were probably not pleasantly surprised. Good CleanTech let us know about a new report claiming that thin-film will make up a whooping 40% of the solar PV market by 2012. In Energy Efficiency, Kristin Underwood at TreeHugger informed us that lighter roofs could save up to $1 billion yearly. I found it interesting that this is mandated in California. Might be a good idea to look for companies in the roofing and paint industries with exposure in this area. In Wind, Keith Johnson at the WSJ’s Environmental Capital wondered how long the economics were going to work in favor of clean energy. Wind’s variability, it seems, is becoming a lesser concern than nat gas and coal prices volatility. In Clean Transportation, Katie Fehrenbacher told us that Picken’s Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE) was hooking up with a Seattle-area garbage collection company. At a forward PE of nearly 60x, investors are implicitly putting a lot of hope on the future of natural gas-powered road transportation. Is this a sound bet? In Politics, Matter R Network informed us that McCain had voted 50 times against clean energy measures over the course of his career. Our friend and Contributor Editor Neil Dikeman argued a couple of weeks ago that McCain-Palin was nothing short of a “cleantech dream ticket”. Yet every time the facts are put forward the picture that emerges isn’t especially promising for alt energy investors. In Biofuels, Michael Kanellos at Greentech Media told us that the biofuels business was going horizontal. This could be an interesting trend to watch. In Oil, Matthew McDermott at TreeHugger argued that tar sands could be the oil industry’s version of sub-prime meltdown. The Week In Cleantech is a collection of our favorite stories from the past week generated by our Cleantech News service. Register your site with us if you want your articles to appear here.
