Alternative Energy Stocks

The market has fallen sharply, and Solar stocks have fallen even more following rumors that Congress will pass the Energy Bill without the Production Tax Credit or Investment Tax Credit.   Given this volatility and Renewable Energy's reputation for profitless startups, now might seem like an excellent time for a risk adverse investor to abandon the sector altogether.   Not so.  Even if all tax credits and other incentives for Renewable Energy were to be removed, the underlying drivers of Alternative Energy remain firmly in place: Rising energy prices and decreasing reserves, the need to reduce our Greenhouse gas emissions to avoid...

The December edition of Bloomberg Markets Magazine is devoted partly to the rise of carbon capitalism. An interesting series of articles on the budding carbon economy. While there are currently few ways for North American investors to play this, I continue to believe that this is an area the environmental investor must keep an eye on. On Monday, Jim Kingsdale at Seeking Alpha discussed ethanol and biodiesel: two very different biofuels. This is an interesting piece with a bullish outlook for two biodiesel stocks. Biodiesel often lingers in the shadow of ethanol in North America, yet it is...

Most studies show that the greatest potential for reducing our carbon emissions comes from energy efficiency technologies.  And, unlike many renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency is almost always less expensive than developing new energy sources, so energy efficiency businesses can be profitable now, and still have a large potential upside which will come with regulatory efforts to reduce our carbon emissions and rising energy prices. Unfortunately, the reason this free lunch exists is because selling and implementing energy efficiency technologies isn't easy.  It's also much more difficult to find companies that profit from energy efficiency than those that produce...

Since I first profiled Electro Energy Inc. (EEEI) on September 16, the stock first fell substantially to as low as 30 cents, and just recently has shot back up to the price it was when I wrote the article, a very cheap 50 cents.  bipolar rebound I have bought the stock for myself and clients repeatedly in the intervening dip, and I made another purchase at $.50 today because of two news items which dramatically improve the prospects for the company. On October 29, they announced that they raised $750,000...

In August, I argued that Biodiesel stocks could be in trouble from more efficient ways to turn the oils and fats they use as feedstock into fuel, and concluded the article by saying that the likely winners are suppliers of oils and fats, not the processors.  James Kingsdale, of Energy Investment Strategies has been thinking along the same lines.  Last week he wrote an excellent overview of the major biofuels industries, including some stock picks.   One of those stock picks was the diamond in the rough I wish I had known about when I wrote Biodiesel's Nightmare: Renewable Diesel...

The following is a Special Information Supplement from our Featured Company sponsor The Efficiency and Renewable Energy Summit The Efficiency and Renewable Energy Summit is a Two-Day Strategic Event that will focus on the Best and Most Effective Trends in Efficiency and Renewable Energy for the energy and utilities industries. As the nation works towards meeting the growing energy demands while maintaining security, energy independence and environmental protection, many industry participants are turning towards cleaner sources of energy. Some are looking at better ways of utilizing existing supplies of power producing material like coal and natural gas...

Last month, I wrote that investors concerned about peak oil should invest in suppliers of alternatives to driving.  One of the sectors I highlighted was public transit: busses and rail, although I did not provide any stock picks at the time. Here, I will focus just on rail transit.  It's a bit tricky to invest in rail transit systems as they are operated by cities, not by private companies, so I took a step up the value chain and started looking for companies which supply transit operators.  I focused not on rail line operators, but suppliers, since these companies...

On Monday, Richard Stuebi at Cleantech Blog highlighted the extent to which NBC is in the dark about energy efficiency. I couldn't agree more with Stuebi here - this idea is so painfully bad that it's a bit of a mystery why anyone in their right minds would agree to it. In the space of a few minutes, GE likely managed to undermine over two years of flashy press events and other publicity stunts aimed at convincing investors and the populace that "green is green." If Alt Energy Stocks awarded a prize for misplay of the week, this would...

There are at least 22 Electric car startups (not counting aspiring makers of electric bikes, electric motorcycles, and stranger contraptions) today, each competing to break in as a new manufacturer. I expect that some of them will succeed, and that the traditional car manufacturer who are currently pursuing the PHEV will be relctant to forsake their highly refined ICE technology. Existing carmakers could thus fail to head off outside competition, leaving a niche open for EV-only manufacturers. I'm not trying to say that the internal combustion engine is dead, long live the electric motor (although I wish I were), but I do expect that a growing proportion of the vehicle fleet will be all electric, even as Plug-In Hybrids are gaining ground.

Alt Energy Stocks Analyst Tom Konrad will join a televised roundtable discussion with EnergyTechStocks' Managing Editor Bill Paul and Ardour Global Indexes' Joseph LaCorte this Friday. The discussion will center around the topic of investing in alternative energy. The program, entitled WealthTrack with Consuelo Mack, will air on PBS between November 9th and 12th, after which it will be available for online viewing here.  You can find a listing of stations carrying the show with airtimes at the end of this article. Bill Paul may be familiar to our readers because of the series of articles he wrote following...

I recently got around to reading Deutsche Asset Management's (DeAM) note on investing in climate change (PDF document). There is very little original work in this paper. Most of the tables and figures are derived from existing studies by the likes of McKinsey, the IPCC and New Energy Finance, to name a few. The paper synthesizes publicly-available information on cleantech and climate change trends into a broad investment thesis. DeAM sees investment opportunities as falling in two main categories: Adaptation (e.g. water management, disaster control, infrastructure) and Mitigation (renewable energy, clean power gen, energy efficiency). They identify four...

Priming the E85 Pump This Sunday, I had dinner with my aunt, who lives in Chicago.  She recently bought an Impala LT (she's a loyal GM customer), and was surprised when she received a $1000 debit card with which to buy E-85, the 85% Ethanol, 15% gasoline blend used in flex-fuel vehicles.   I was not able to find any web reference to this offer (including on the GM website), but Google still had a cached article from HowStuffWorks.com which explained: To help defray fuel costs, GM, as part of its "Live Green, Go Yellow" E85 ethanol...

On Monday, Hybrid Cars told us that Honda was ready to embrace the hydrogen economy. I don't believe that there currently is anywhere near enough hydrogen refueling stations in North America to make this a viable project. Nevertheless, I am impressed that Honda is ready to move on this years before anyone predicted it would happen. I still believe that hybrids and plug-in hybrids offer the most attractive opportunities in the near and medium terms, and I doubt that this will usher in a renaissance for fuel cell stocks. On Monday, Jim Fraser at The Energy Blog discussed...

The following interview is provided to us by Guinness Atkinson Funds, a Featured Company Advertiser at Alt Energy Stocks. Fund managers Tim Guinness, Edward Guinness and Matthew Page discuss the Guinness Atkinson Alternative Energy Fund in a question and answer forum covering topics from the alternative energy market to management style and methodology for selecting stocks and managing the portfolio. To view the complete Q&A, please see below. - Q. Tim, your experience in managing energy comes from your many years managing more conventional energy investments. What led you to alternative energy? A. I have been...

Black and Veatch Corporation (B&V) recently completed and in-depth assessment of renewable energy generation potential for three Arizona utilities (Arizona Public Service (APS), the Salt River Project (SRP), and Tucson Electric Power (TEP)) which must comply with Arizona's Renewable Energy Standard.   Nate Blair, a senior energy analyst (and fellow board member at the Colorado Renewable Energy Society) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory sent me the link.  Thanks, Nate! The Renewable Energy Standard requires that APS and TEP generate 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and the SRP has adopted a...

On Monday, Maria Surma Manka at Green Options told us how Kansas killed coal plants. This is an interesting precedent, and it certainly buttresses the argument that coal will increasingly mean uncertainty and risk in the US power gen industry. On a related note, on Tuesday, David Ehrlich at Cleantech.com reported on NY's greenhouse gas cap-and-trade plans. This is the first of the RGGI states to flesh out its plan in some detail. On Tuesday, Jim Fraser at The Energy Blog discussed the timeline for solar power parity with fossil fuels. Does this mean that there is...