Misc

I received, about a month ago, a complimentary copy of Profiting From Clean Energy, a recent book on investing in alternative energy by investment analyst Richard W Asplund. I will do a short review of the book here, as it may be of interest to some of our readers. Just so that there are no doubts lingering in your minds as you read through my review, neither AltEnergyStocks.com nor I is receiving any compensation for doing this other than a free book. Should you want your book reviewed here, feel free to contact us and make a request....

Tom couldn't attend to his usual Monday column this week so he asked me to step in. My own investing has been partially on hold over the past couple of months as I have been watching developments in the markets, so I figured I would open the week with something a little lighter albeit not entirely unrelated to alt energy and cleantech investing. Deflating Valuations = Happy Value Investors One of the good things about the current state of equity markets for alt energy investors is that several great company's stocks that had been trading at...

Altenergystocks.com frequently receives requests to provide links to other websites and/or to join services where several blogs are featured together in one platform (see an example here). As our regular readers have probably noted, our blog rolls (Tom's and mine) are not especially extensive. We thought at this point that it might make sense to let our readers know how we go about selecting sites for inclusion in our blog rolls and what our policy is with regards to giving out links to other sites. Blog Roll Our approach to adding links to our blog rolls...

I was away on holidays last week with self-imposed lack of access to email - thanks to Tom for holding the Alt Energy fort alone! Several of you sent me emails to which I haven't gotten around to responding yet. I apologize for that. I will get on that tonight and you can expect a response in the next few days at the latest. Best, Charles

For this post, a tad bit of shameless promotion for a friend. My former grad school roommate and good friend Brad Parks, who works at the Millennium Challenge Corporation in DC, co-authored a book on the asymmetry that exists between emerging countries' share of global greenhouse gas emissions and the price those countries will have to pay, not only monetarily but also in terms of health and quality of life, as the effects of climate change materialize. Brad put a tremendous amount of work into this and the few chapters that I had a chance to read...

A while back, Jeff, one of our readers pointed me to an announcement on ammonia fuelled irrigation pumps. Late last week, Jeff sent me another link to Market Watch's coverage of the Ammonia Conference in Algona, Iowa. In the article, Ted Hollinger, President of Hydrogen Energy Center (HYEG.OB), outlines the company's efforts to produce ammonia fueled engines. From the article: HEC projects their ammonia-fueled engines will produce 2.33 times more horsepower than a gasoline-fueled engine and plan to have finalized systems ready for sale in 2008. "Ted Hollinger's presentation was one of the highlights of the...

A recent post by Tyler Hamilton at Clean Break brought a few things into focus for me. On cleantech investing, Tyler says: the fact remains if you want to get businesses to embrace a more sustainable way of operating and convince consumers to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle you've got to go back to basics: Will this lower costs/monthly bills? Will this improve operational efficiency? Will this lower risk? Will this give me an edge over rivals? I could not agree more. In my opinion, there is also an important analogy between the adoption of clean...

TreeHugger.com points out that Ceres.org has sent out petitions and letters to Fidelity, Vanguard, and American Funds asking them to begin addressing the economic risks of climate change by supporting global warming shareholder resolutions filed with U.S. companies. "In 2005, none of the three mutual fund companies supported such resolutions, which typically request that firms disclose the financial risks and opportunities of global warming and describe their strategies for managing those challenges"

American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC) received an order for a D-VAR® voltage regulation system from Econnect Construction, a U.K. company specializing in grid connection for renewable energy sources. The D-VAR system will be installed in Scotland where it will provide voltage support and power factor regulation in a mixed hybrid solution designed by Econnect Construction for a 35 megawatt (MW) wind farm. AMSC expects to commission the D-VAR system in October 2006.

Guinness Atkinson Asset Management, Inc., announced the upcoming launch of the no-load Guinness Atkinson Alternative Energy Fund, which will invest in companies involved in the production, distribution or storage of alternative energy, including energy conservation. The fund is designed as a vehicle for investors seeking to profit from and participate in the shift from conventional fuels to alternative energy sources. The fund will invest primarily in companies that produce 50 percent or more of revenues from alternative energy and will be managed with an emphasis on value. Lead manager of the fund will be Tim Guinness,...

As promised earlier this week, I have been given permission to post the abstract of the ChangeWave Research Alternative Energy Trends report. I work for the publishing company that produces the ChangeWave services and have been involved with ChangeWave from the beginning. I am also an Alliance member. The ChangeWave Alliance is a group of about 5,000 industry insiders and professionals that are regularly surveyed to track economic and investment trends in various sectors of the market. You can learn more about ChangeWave at their newly redesigned website. If you are currently an alternative energy professional and want...

You may have noticed that I have not been posting to this website very frequently for the last couple of weeks. During this time I have been working very hard at my day job launching a redesigned website. Working 12+ hour days for the last couple of weeks has put a toll on my free time. But I'm glad to say that we launched the new site yesterday and I should be able to pick backup again soon. For those of you interested, here is a link to the new site that has taken all of my time....

Joel Makower points to a special report published by Wells Fargo Private Client Services "Identifying the Opportunities in Alternative Energy" (PDF.) It is a good primer on alternative energy resources (hydro, wind, solar, hydrogen, biomass, and yes nuclear), along with an analysis of their respective advantages, disadvantages, and outlooks.

"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world" Thanks to Mr. Bush's state of the union address last night, we should see some nice gains across the board in the Alternative Energy sector. Some of the big winners may be the Ethanol companies like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Pacific Ethanol, Inc. (PEIX). The EnergyStockBlog.com has a nice write up on the potential for ADM. GreenCarCongress.com has a nice summary of the important parts of the speech. In his State of the Union 2006 address, President...

The Energy Stock Blog points to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency list of the current top 25 purchasers of renewable energy, and their suppliers. From the release: Top 25 Partners are Partners whose annual green power purchase is the largest, and whose green power purchase has been completed. Their actions are helping drive the development of new renewable energy sources for electricity generation. Combined, their purchases amount to 3.3 million megawatt-hours (MWh) annually, which is approximately 75 percent of the green power commitments made by all Partners. These Top 25 Partners provide an example to their peers,...

I read several financial sites and feeds throughout the day and I have an entire section devoted to various stock blogs in my Bloglines feed reader account. A post on Andrew Tobias's website today really caught my attention where he was talking about his $100,000 “idea� contest. In response to the $100,000 “idea� contest, Alan Q writes: “Here’s mine and it’s a damn fine idea. Building on the success of the X Prize in reusable spacecraft: Expand government funded X Prizes in areas where innovation is vital to the nation's economic future and national security. For...