The EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2007 (Early Release) is Out
A quick post to inform our readers that the Energy Information Administration has just published an 'early release' version of its 2007 Annual Energy Outlook. Topics covered include: Energy Trends to 2030 Economic Growth Energy Prices Energy Consumption Energy Intensity Electricity Generation Energy Production and Imports Carbon Dioxide Emissions Along with this table outlining a range of energy-related projections to 2030 (PDF document), including revisions from 2006 projections.
Divesting: Last One Out Loses
Tom Konrad CFA Anew report written by Nathaniel Bullard at Bloomberg New Energy Finance highlights the difficulties large institutional investors would have divesting from fossil fuels. What it does not specifically discuss is that these difficulties could lead to large financial losses for investors who see the difficulty of divesting as a reason to delay. Just as we can't easily fill up our cars with solar power instead of gasoline, the report points out that there is no asset class that can directly substitute for oil and gas in large institutional portfolios. A person...
Increasing Risk in Renewable Energy Investing
Garey Vasey, Ph.D. at Risk Center brings us a cautionary warning from the U.K. Financial Services Authority about the increasing risks of commodity investing, largely due to greater investor interest (at all levels from individuals to banks to hedgefunds) without enough true experience in this sector. I feel this same lesson applies to Renewable Energy investing. The higher these stocks rise on a tide of investor enthusiasm (as opposed to earnings fundamentals), the greater the potential for a fall. Among his other points, he says: The best and most knowledgeable energy trading talent was picked off...
New Energy IPOs
by Debra Fiakas CFA IPO Wordcloud photo via BigStock Investors looking for a piece of the public offering action from the alternative energy industry have been sorely disappointed in recent months. The last big initial public offering in the sector was SolarCity, Inc. (SCTY: Nasdaq) in December 2012. Then in April 2013, there was an initial public offering of the REIT Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital (HASI: Nasdaq). Anyone looking for bragging rights to IPO shares will have to look to the...
2012 Energy Stock Predictions
By Jeff Siegel Domestic Oil to Reign in 2012 Last December, I made three predictions for 2011: The mounting solar glut problem would be rectified by the end of the year; Domestic oil and gas production would increase significantly, regardless of environmental concerns related to fracking and tar sands production; and With the introduction of the Chevy Volt and the Nissan LEAF, domestic sales of electric cars would reach no less than 10,000 units. Well, two out of three ain't bad! A Sad Season for Solar Toward the end of 2010,...
Can Public Equity Investing Have Impact?
by Garvin Jabusch There’s an argument in the world of impact investing that goes something like, "impact happens only through private investments; there is no real impact, apart from shareholder engagement efforts, in public equity investing." An associated perception is that investment impact means capitalizing an enterprise beyond what would happen otherwise, meaning private equity alone has the power to provide real impact. But is this true? Publicly traded corporations are the largest and most visible social and environmental bellwethers of the global economy, and the high allocation to public equities in most investor portfolios means public equity...
Delusions: The Secret to Lost Opportunities
By Jeff Siegel This past Thursday, as we sat down to yet another Thanksgiving feast, the obligatory What are you thankful for? question surfaced. To be honest, I've never been a fan of playing this game. After all, if you're thankful for something, why do you have to wait until November 24th to talk about it? Nonetheless, I played along that afternoon and decided I was thankful for all the great thinkers over the years that enabled progress and allowed us to enjoy the many comforts and conveniences we take for granted...
The Case of Divestment From Fossil Fuels (Powerpoint presentation)
This is a presentation from the Third Annual Climate Solution Summit by Katelyn Kriesel, Board President of the Sustainable Economies Alliance on the case for divesting from Fossil Fuels.
_Divestment Presentation - New Paltz
Katelyn Kriesel is an expert in the field of sustainable finance. She is a Financial Advisor with Hansen’s Advisory Services, located in Fayetteville, NY, a firm that has specialized in Socially Responsible Investing for over 30 years. She is also Board President and founder of the Sustainable Economies Alliance (SEA), a not-for-profit organization that is raising community awareness regarding economic sustainability and empowerment. She uses this expertise...
The Buffett Shareholder Letter & Alt Energy
It is fair to say that most people continue to equate the terms "alternative" and "energy" with expensive, unreliable and plain unpractical. This naturally leads a majority of people to view alternative energy investing as a high-risk play on some unproven technology with an uncertain probability of success. This is a perception we've tried to dispel on several occasions, whether we were talking about blue chip alt energy stocks, dividend alt energy stocks or utility alt energy stocks. It's also fair to say that most people don't typically associate value investing and, by extension, ...
Water Stocks: Better Than Oil Or Smartphones
By Jeff Siegel I've never understood it, but no one really gives a damn about water. Sure, it's the foundation of life. But what does that matter when we can get cheap smartphones and Internet-connected washing machines? Those things are exciting, and there's proverbial gold in those silicon hills. Don't get me wrong; I love technology and continue to profit handsomely by devoting a small portion of my portfolio to tech stocks. My point, however, is that while technology is great, without water, we die. It's pretty simple, really. Yet when it comes to investing, few investors take...
Top 5 Things Cleantech Entrepreneurs Fail to Understand About Raising Capital
David Gold After decades of venture capital investment, growth and exit, the traditional focus areas of venture capital (such as IT, web and software) have developed strong entrepreneurial ecosystems. A high percentage of start-ups in these traditional areas come to market with one or more experienced entrepreneurs or with a strong and active network of investors/advisors who have “been there, done that.” They know what it takes to raise capital and to build a great fast-growing business. Cleantech companies, however, are much more likely to be led by first-time entrepreneurs who often struggle to create an ecosystem of...
Financing Clean Energy: Perspectives
Tom Konrad, Ph.D. I recently moderated a panel on Financing Renewable Energy for the Colorado CFA Society. I took down choice quotes, with the plan of using them on Alt Energy Stocks' new twitter feed. I ended up with enough material for a short article. My panelists were Garvin Jabusch, COO of Green Alpha Advisors, a green-focused investment advisory firm in Boulder; David Gold, a partner at Access Venture Partners, and manager of their Cleantech investments, and Brian Greenman, of Greenman Financial Advisors, who does project development and finance for community wind developers. The broad range of perspectives seemed...
Cleantech Stimulus Still Not Stimulating
David Gold The stimulus bill along with the $31B cleantech element focused on grants and loan guarantees through the Department of Energy was passed into law over 18 months ago. About a year ago I wrote about how the cleantech stimulus was not very stimulating to our economy. I suggested at that time that the goals of stimulus and of long-term investment are largely incompatible, and the evidence is bearing that out. At the time, I felt like a bit of an outcast for having such a critical view and yet being an ardent supporter of clean technologies...
Commodity Energy Vs. Technology Energy: This Changes Everything
by Garvin Jabusch We now live in a global economy with two fundamentally different types of energy: commodity-based in the form of fossil fuels and uranium, and technology-based, represented primarily by solar and wind. That observation is interesting as far as it goes, but what does it mean? The term renewable (as it pertains to energy) gets used so often that it is easy to forget what it really entails. For starters, tech-based renewables become less expensive over time, as demand for them drives scale, innovation, and improves cost structures in implementation (think about the last couple of computers...
Presentation from May 10, 2008 NREL Seminar
For those who attened my presentation yesterday, thank you for all the great questions. I'm having trouble uploading the presentation (it's too large for my server.) However, it should soon appear on NREL's presentation's page. As usual, I own most of the stocks mentioned in the presentation (too many to list,) and the Guiness Atkinson Alternative Energy fund (also mentioned) is an advertiser on AltEnergyStocks.com. UPDATE: It's still not on NREL's page, but I uploaded it on another server here. Although I had to cut it off because of time, if you have...
Renewable Energy Finance Outlook for 2014: Where Will the Cash Flow?
By all accounts, more money will be invested into renewables in 2014 than was invested in 2013. Our experts lay out where, why, when and how. Jennifer Runyon The world of renewable energy finance is vast: encompassing everything from venture capital funding for innovative start-ups, to research and development (R&D) and manufacturing expansion spending, to project finance and all the way through to investing in clean energy companies on the stock market. Because of that, for the general public, predicting where money will flow over the course of the next year is a shot in the...
