Alt Energy Stocks Analyst Tom Konrad On PBS’s WealthTrack
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...
Three Money Managers See LED Industry Shining in 2013; Their Stock Picks
Tom Konrad LED lights on an outdoor tree. Photo by author This is the third article in my series based on my panel of green money managers’ predictions for 2013. The first article looked at what they expect 2013 holds for the Solar industry, and the second looked at their predictions for the Smart Grid. This installment focuses on the LED industry. Jeff Cianci: Faster than Anyone Expects Jeff Cianci is Chief Investment Officer at equity investment fund Green Science Partners. Cianci says “The trend toward LED lighting for...
A Conversation with Ambassador Sklar on Solar in San Francisco
By Neal Dikeman, Partner, Jane Capital Partners LLC, Founding Contributor, Cleantechblog.com, and Contributing Editor, AltEnergyStocks.com. This week I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Ambassador Richard Sklar, the President of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, on renewables and solar power in San Francisco. This is his second stint at the SF PUC, and besides a time in politics, Ambassador Sklar has served as an executive in and advisor to private manufacturing and engineering firms. I had met him and several of the top SF PUC team at Solar 2006 in San Jose, and had been...
Interview with Dr. Mike Gallagher, President & COO of Westport Innovations
One of the companies I have followed for some time is Westport Innovations, Inc., (TSX:WPT or WPIVF.PK) out of Vancouver. The technology and product suite allows large diesel trucks to run standard diesels on a 95% natural gas mix, enabling fuel switching as well as significantly improved NOx and PM, as well as CO2 emissions. The company's rapid expansions date from a late 1990s joint venture with Cummins (NYSE:CMI), and Westport has led this market sector since then. I had the opportunity at the recent Greenvest 2007 Conference I chaired in San Francisco to hear...
Royalties: a Financial Innovation for Renewable Energy
The following interview with RE Royalties (RE.V, RROYF) CEO Bernard Tan was conducted in September by AltEnergyStocks.com Editor Tom Konrad. Links and ticker symbols were not included in his original responses, but added by AltEnergyStocks.com as a resource for readers.
Q: What exactly is a renewable energy royalty?
A renewable energy royalty is a stream of cash flows generated by a renewable energy project. When the project generates electricity and sells its electricity, we receive a percentage of the revenues from the electricity sales, otherwise known as a gross revenue royalty. We receive that gross revenue royalty, on average, for about...
Interview With Nathaniel Bullard On Fossil Fuel Divestment
by Tom Konrad CFA Renewable Energy World asked me to write a commentary on Bloomberg New Energy Finance's recent report on the difficulties institutional investors are likely to have divesting from fossil fuels. The report details how the scale, yield, liquidity, and historic growth of the oil and gas sector are impossible to match with any other investment sector. While this is quite true, much of the other coverage has missed the point. Ironically, I thought Bloomberg News' coverage was some of the worst, because it focused on the least important aspect of fossil fuels...
Eight Cleantech Value Stocks
Tom Konrad CFA Three professional Cleantech money managers' top stock picks. On Tuesday I published Money Managers See Value in Clean Energy Sector, but Hesitate to Call the Bottom based on my correspondence with Rafael Coven, manager of the Cleantech Index (^CTIUS), Garvin Jabusch, manager of the Sierra Club Green Alpha Portfolio, and Sam Healy, a portfolio manager at Lamassu Capital. These three professionals were in strong agreement that many cleantech stocks are currently excellent value plays, even if cleantech and the market as a whole may have farther to fall, especially if the broader market continues to decline....
ETS Interview: LEDs and Energy Efficiency
Today, Energy Tech Stocks has the fifth installment from our interview, outlining my LED stock picks. He quotes me at the start saying that it's "going to be a gigantic market" about LEDs. It is, but only when compared to the current size of the market... you can ramp up a lot from a very small base. LED bulbs are increasing in brightness and decreasing in price rapidly. It's these quickly improving economics that make me bullish about LEDs. Unlike many energy efficiency technologies, LEDs are a product that a business can sell. Much of energy efficiency involves...
Current Picks: Busses and Energy Efficiency
Over the weekend, EnergyTechStocks published two articles based on an interview with me. The first was about my conviction that Peak Oil induced rising gas prices is going to lead to a rush into mass transit building by cities, or investing in mode-shifting last September. I've since written about opportunities in rail transit stocks, (P.TO, TRN, PRPX, and WAB), and more recently Hedging your peak oil risk with your lifestyle. However, I have been frustrated until now that the only pure play bus stock I've been able to find is Firstgroup PLC (FGP.L, FGROF.PK), the British based owner of...
Commodities Specialists Ask About Alternative Energy
Commodities investing site HardAssetsInvestor has published an interview with me from the start of December. We covered a broad swathe of the clean (and not so clean) energy. If you're wondering why my top stock pick from the article was ABB, and not one from my recent 10 Speculations series, it's because all of those are too risky to be my top picks. I like risk, but not with the largest part of my portfolio... stocks like ABB that let me sleep at night. Major topics we touched on: Ethanol (both corn and cellulosic) Cost comparisons in electricity...
Energy Tech Stocks Interview- Utility Scale Batteries
Two weeks ago I did a phone interview with Bill Paul of Energy Tech Stocks. Bill's a long time WSJ reporter who got out in time before Rupert Murdoch swooped in, as well as a long time environmental journalist. As such he interviews those of us whose job it is to have views about what's going on in Cleantech and presents those opinions in a readable and engaging way. He also has this addictive trick of breaking up interviews into several parts and leaving you with a cliffhanger. Bill's first installment showed up in my feed reader last...
Interview with Ray C. Anderson, of Interface Inc.
Tom Konrad, CFARay Anderson, the pioneering founder and Chairman of Interface, Inc. (IFSIA) was an early pioneer of sustainable enterprise. We recently had the opportunity to interview him on the benefits he sees for investors from corporate sustainability (full transcript follows.)I've recently been thinking about corporate sustainability (in the green sense) and how it relates to corporate sustainability (in the business survival sense.) Since I expect business conditions to be more difficult in the coming years than they have been in the past, any edge in resilience a company might gain from pursuing sustainability may be useful, both on...
Live Interview/Call in on Denver PBS Station KBDI 12
A quick note to Denver area readers: AltEnergyStocks.com Analyst Tom Konrad will be a guest on local PBS show Studio 12 from 8-9PM CDT Wednesday, September 2. This will be a panel discussion on Alternative Energy, and other guests are likely to be a representative of the natural gas industry, and one of the authors of Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America from the Nature Conservancy. They're also trying to get local environmental bête noire, Stan Lewandowski. Viewers will be able to call in and ask questions of...
A Clean Energy Inflection Point in 2013? The Best ETF to Play the Trend
Tom Konrad In 2007, it seemed like clean energy was finally becoming mainstream. Both candidates for the US Presidency accepted the need to act on global warming, even if they did not agree on the degree, and clean energy stocks were rising even faster than the broad stock market. Then came the 2008 financial crisis, and many Americans discovered they had much more immediate worries than the slow but inexorable warming of the planet. Fossil fuel interests and the politicians who benefited from their donations played to the new mood by providing a worried populace with the excuse they wanted...
Are the Declines in Solar and Wind Stocks Structural, or Cyclical?
Tom Konrad, CFA Last week, I asked three green money managers if they thought cleantech stocks, especially solar and wind sectors were near a bottom. While they did tell me about eight cleantech value stocks, they were not ready to call the bottom. Commoditization in Clean Energy In response to my questions, Rafael Coven, the manager of the Cleantech Index (^CTIUS), which is the index behind the Powershares Cleantech Portfolio ETF (PZD,) ...
Three Green Money Managers; Six Green Stocks for 2013
Tom Konrad When I asked my panel of green money managers their predictions for trends 2013, I got enough material for four articles: On where the cleantech sector is heading in 2013, as well as on Solar, Smart Grid, and LED technology. I also asked them for stock picks, some of which I included in the previous articles. Several had opinions about EnerNOC (NASD:ENOC), which I wrote about here, and two picked LED stocks Veeco Instruments (NASD:VECO) and Universal Display Corp. (NASD:PANL), which I discussed here. Since I just published my annual model portfolio of...
