The Truth Ain’t That Incovinient Anymore, So What’s Next?
I attended Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth lecture in Toronto tonight. I assume many of you have seen the movie so I'm not going to go into the details of the presentation, which is essentially the same as the movie give-or-take a couple of slides. Instead, I'm going to share with you some of the thoughts I had as I was listening to the former VP. Firstly, I bought this whole climate change thing a long time ago and I've seen the movie, so substantively I got very little out of this. As with the movie, I...
The Next Tesla Or SolarCity
Tom Konrad CFA Andrew Shapiro Speaking at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum – Wall Street this morning, Andrew Shapiro, the Founder of Broadscale Group, presented his ideas on how small clean energy companies can succeed: Collaborate with big corporations. That does not mean going cap in hand looking for the cash those companies can bring, but forging collaborative partnerships where interests are aligned with a corporate investment, and leveraging the reach and scale of those companies to rapidly achieve scale that entrepreneurs have trouble finding on their own....
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.
Big Money Looking For Green Investments
Sean Kidney Climate Finance session at UN Summit is electric. Insurers go wild with promises; investors plead for green investments; Jim Kim almost breaks out in song about green bonds. It's the day after the UN Climate Summit party in New York. Yes I do feel as if I'm hungover; but it was a gas. If you're one of those who worry about the world, there is something magical in being inside the totemic General Assembly, with it's embodiment of one world idealism. Ban Ki Moon's audacious Summit convening (that's really the only power we allow...
Why Alternative Energy Stocks
Are Alternative energy stocks the Microsoft of the future? If you invested $1,000 in MSFT back in 1986 your investment would now be worth over $300,000. If you really believed in the Personal Computing industry you could have also invested in companies like Intel, Apple, and Cisco at bargain basement prices.
Still Renewable, Still Paying Good Dividends
Tom Konrad CFA Income investors can also invest in clean energy. Over the past four years, changes in Canadian tax law have led the renewable energy income trusts I introduced investors to in March 2007 to either be bought out like the Boralex Power Income Fund (bought by manager Boralex ) or convert to corporations like Algonquin Power and Utilities . Those that converted to corporations are still out there, and still paying good dividends. And while a few are gone because of mergers, there are also a few new ones that I did not mention...
Google’s Renewed Cleantech Investment Binge
James Montgomery Google Doodle for Earth Day 2006 This week the Internet giant Google revealed that in December it invested $75 million in Pattern Energy's (NASD:PEGI) 182-MW Panhandle 2 wind farm in Carson County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, expected to be operational by the end of this year. Pattern will hold an 80 percent stake in the project, whose owners also include Google and two institutional tax equity investors, with Morgan Stanley providing construction and equity bridge loans and a letter of credit. Google certainly has displayed a healthy...
Solar & Storage Finance Conference Notes
I attended the Solar & Storage Finance conference hosted in NYC in late October 2018. Presenters included a mix of capital providers & asset managers, private non-profit entities & public agencies, legal, accounting & consulting firms, intermediaries, firms providing risk analysis, ratings & mitigation, & various vendors of energy storage and IT-related services. The tone of the discussions was noteworthy for its near total absence of ideological comments about environmental urgency. Rather, it was a meeting of finance technicians and technocrats focused on the nuts & bolts of accomplishing those ends, with the merits and relevance of mission assumed.
The...
Why Oil & Shipping Firm A.P. Moller-Maersk and Steelmaker POSCO Are ‘Green’ Investments
by Bill Paul There's no such thing as an "experienced" alternative energy investor. The sector simply is too new. Also, like an iceberg, most of it lies hidden beneath the surface. To succeed in these uncharted waters, I believe that alternative energy investors (a group that eventually will include all investors) need to follow a particular set of guidelines that I've started identifying in recent articles. The first guideline is that you must be a long-term investor with a time horizon of at least three to five years. Otherwise, you'll miss out on most of the incredible financial payoff...
Cleantech Venture Capitalists Beware – What You Don’t Know About Energy Can Kill You
Oil prices quietly (at least in the cleantech world), slipped below $80 last week, off some 50% from their highs a few months ago. Did I say 50%? Yes 50%. And gas has slipped, too, as with some variations, natural gas historically trades at a roughly 10:1 price ratio of Barrels to MCF. It's easy to get caught up in the cleantech hype and forget that only 10 years ago this year oil prices fell two thirds, caught between rising supply from a decade of drilling and nasty Asian flu, triggered in part by, wait, a financial debt...
Will Rare Earths Cripple the Green Economy? Part 3
Eamon Keane This is Part Three of a three part series based on a rare earth elements (REE) review which is available for download at slideshare, where references can be viewed. Part 1 is an introduction to REEs. Part 2 analyzes REE consumption and refining and Part 3 looks at how REEs might affect the green economy. There have been several forecasts made for future demand. Approximate data was derived from Byron Capital Market’s own estimate and the data contained in Oakdene Hollins’ May 2010 report “Lanthanide Resources and Alternatives” for others . Figure...
Watt’s Watt?
Watts are standard, but the way we talk and write about them is not.
Green New Deal Roadmap – Accelerating Renewable Energy Infrastructure Development
Investment in renewable energy is rising, but clearly needs to grow faster to meet the goals for an expedited transition away from carbon infrastructure if we are to avoid dangerous climate change, given that now even the Trump administration forecasts a 7°C increase by 2100, which would be catastrophic.
The Paris Agreement determined that in order to keep warming below 2°C, the global economy would need to be restricted to a 600 gigaton carbon “budget”, and completely decarbonize by 2040.
Emissions must be cut by 70% in the Paris-congruent Remap case, and 90% of those cuts in energy-related CO2 emissions can...
Earnings Are Mixed for the New Year
By Harris Roen There have been six earnings reports released so far in 2013 for alternative energy stocks, all small or microcap companies. There were no blowouts, but also no superstars – most were within analyst expectation or somewhat below. Date DayStar Technologies Inc. (DSTI) More Info 1/7/2013 Revenues remain elusive for this thin cell PV producer. EPS dropped about 10%, and gross losses doubled. The stock is down 35% for the year, but has bounced up 20% for the quarter. SEC...
Feel-Good Government Grants Leading Cleantech Astray
David Gold Grants for smart grid projects. Grants for battery manufacturing lines. Loan guarantees for renewable energy project development. Grants to private companies for energy efficiency projects. And with each it seems that the cleantech world cheers. Yet for all our desire to create sustainability in our consumption and use of energy, this model of getting us there is not only unsustainable but is of questionable value. I want to emphasize that I am speaking about government grants to the private sector where the government is not the end customer and...
2013 Alternative Energy Stock Predictions
Will Natural Gas Crush Alternative Energy in 2013? By Jeff Siegel Swami photo via Bigstock In 2004 a hotshot Wall Street type cornered me after I spoke at a private luncheon in New York. He told me I had a lot of balls wasting his time talking about alternative energy declaring he was an “important man” who didn't find it amusing that some tree hugger in a suit (yes, that's what he called me) would lecture him about a coming boom in solar... I never forgot that...
