Colorado Voters Approve Amendment 37
Colorado voters have approved an amendment requiring utilities to get part of their electricity from the sun, wind or plant and animal waste. The amendment requires the state's seven largest utilities to get a portion of their retail electricity sales from renewables, beginning with 3 percent in 2007 and climbing to 10 percent by 2015. Four percent of the renewables should be solar sources.
China Poised For Significant Expansion In Wind Power Generation
by William Gregozeski, CFA China is the world’s largest producer of electricity, surpassing the United States in 2011, with demand increasing alongside its strong, sustained growth in GDP. Electricity generation in China has increased 9.6% annually, from 2005 to 2013, reaching 5,425.1TWh of electricity. Coal-fired plants currently make up over two-thirds of power generation, which is partly the result of an abundance of coal in China. Despite this growth, the country expects demand to continue to increase at a rapid pace, reaching 7.295TWh of demand in 2020 and 11,595TWh in 2040. However, the growth in electricity...
The Production Tax Credit & The Year Ahead For US Wind
Even though solar - and especially solar PV - has managed to capture the lion's share of public equity investors' attention over the past three years, wind remains far more competitive with with fossil-fired power generation on a cost basis than solar, and thus presents a fundamentally stronger investment case for the time being (and I emphasize for the time being). What's more, wind as an industry is more mature than solar; for solar, the lack of earnings for many companies and the wildly inflated PEs for others make the sector potentially volatile and risky for investors. While...
Trading Alert: EarthFirst Canada (ERFTF.PK or EF.TO)
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on the upcoming Clean Power Call in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC). In a nutshell, the Clean Power Call consists of an auction conducted by the government-owned integrated power company to award long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) to private wind developers. This is the model that has dominated in Canadian wind power so far. The notable thing about this model is that the PPA facilitates access to financing significantly for successful bidders, since the counterparty is a proxy of a credit-worthy government. EarthFirst Canada (EF) (ERFTF.PK or EF.TO)...
Must Renewable Energy Be Diversified?
Dana Blankenhorn Most renewable energy companies specialize. Solar companies do solar. Wind companies do wind. Geothermal companies do geothermal. Biomass companies do biomass. But a small Canadian merger challenges that assumption. Magma Energy (MGMXF.PK), a geothermal company, said it will spend about $100 million in stock to buy Plutonic Power (PUOPF.PK), which has wind and hydropower projects, and ambitions to get into solar. The combined companies will go by the name Alterra Power. Both companies are based in Vancouver. Size really does matter, crowed Magma CEO Ross Beatty on a conference call announcing...
Finavera Takes $28M for Two (Not $40M for Four)
Tom Konrad CFA Monday morning, Finavera Wind Energy (TSXV:FVR, OTC:FNVRF) announced that it had finalized its agreement with Pattern Energy Group to sell two of its four Canadian wind energy projects for $28 million. This should come as a relief to shareholders, who had been concerned when the original date by which they had expected to ratify the deal, March 31st came and went. Since the start of March, when shareholders would reasonably have expected to have heard an announcement of the meeting date and the circulation of proxy materials, Finavera’s stock had drifted down 15% (from C$0.20...
FPL Group Scores Highest in U.S., Second Globally in Report on Clean, Efficient Energy
FPL Group Inc (FPL) scored the highest ranking in the U.S. and second globally in a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report that analyzed 72 of the world's leading power companies reviewing current use of available technologies to reduce C02 emissions, as well as clear commitments made for future improvements. The new report said FPL is a bright spot in the U.S. rankings. The WWF says FPL Group scored high due to leadership in developing wind energy and a commitment to dramatically improving power plant efficiency.
Hannon Armstrong’s Strong Q2 Keeps It In My Top Picks
By Jeff Siegel Hannon Armstrong (NYSE:HASI), one of my top picks for 2014, just made me very happy. Yesterday, the company announced its Q2 Core Earnings of $4.7 million or $0.22 per share. On a GAAP basis, the Company recorded net income of $2.9 million. Here are some other highlights. . . Raised approximately $70 million in April, 2014 in a follow-on offering. Increased the flexibility and expanded the capacity of its existing credit facility by $200 million. Completed more than $200 million worth of transactions, including the acquisition of a $107 million portfolio of land...
List of Offshore Wind Stocks
Offshore wind stocks are publicly traded companies whose business is involved in the construction or ownership of offshore wind farms and turbines.
General Electric (GE)
Equinor ASA (EQNR)
NaiKun Wind Energy Group Inc. (NKW.V, NKWFF)
Northland Power Inc. (NPI.TO, NPIFF)
Orsted (ORSTED.CO, formerly DENERG.CO)
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (GCTAF, SGRE.MC)
Sif Holding NV (SIFG.AS)
Vestas (VWS.CO, VWSYF, VWDRY)
If you know of any nuclear energy stock that is not listed here, but which should be, please let us know in the comments. Also for stocks in the list that you think should be removed.
Endesa Completes a New 78.4 MW Wind Power Complex in Tarifa -Cadiz-
ENDESA (ELE) will have another 78.4 MW of new wind power capacity in Andalusia once subsidiary Endesa Cogeneracion y Renovables (ECYR) completes its new wind complex in Tarifa, Cadiz province, comprising the five wind farms of La Manga, Rio Almodovar, El Ruedo, El Gallego and Cortijo de Iruelas. The complex is wholly contained in the town of Tarifa, and has 98 wind turbines: 42 Made AE-56 and the other 56 Made AE-59, both designs being 60 metres tall with unit generating capacity of 800 kV. The complex required an investment of Euro 75 million.
Warm Wind For Vestas
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
A stream of impressive news has been delivered by wind turbine producer Vesta Wind Systems AS (Copenhagen: VWS.CO, US OTC: VWSYF, US ADR: VWDRY) over the last few weeks. Over the last two months the company has received orders for wind power turbines totaling 3,781 megawatts. Customers in the U.S. appear to be quite shy, withholding their names and the final destination of the power projects. Nonetheless, the more transparent European, Chinese and Brazilian customers provide a good view on how well regarded Vestas has become.
Business has been so good Vestas is opening a new nacelle and hub assembly factory in...
Investing in in Prairie Winds
Last week NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE: NYSE) broke ground on its newest wind power project. The company plans to build 71 wind towers in Wayne County, northeastern Nebraska, outfitting each with General Electric (GE: NYSE)turbines. Called the Sholes Wind Energy Center, the wind farm will have a collective generating capacity near 160 megawatts and require $200 million in to build. Construction is expected to begin in March 2019, to meet a December 2019 planned operational start.
The Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) has already signed a twenty-year power purchase agreement with NextEra, making return on the Sholes project close to guaranteed. OPPD is the twelfth largest public power utility in the...
Renewable Energy: a Better Bribe
Bribing and Pressuring Fissile Regimes On July 25th, France offered to build a nuclear reactor for Libya to power a water desalinization plant. Russia is delaying the delivery of nuclear fuel for Iran's nearly completed Bushehr to help pressure them to comply with UN Security council demands for less secrecy. South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States promised to provide 950 thousand tons of oil or equivalent aid to North Korea in return for permanently disabling all its nuclear facilities. I'm not going to argue about whether using energy aid is the best way to influence this...
Book Review: Investment Opportunities for a Low Carbon World (Wind + Solar)
Charles Morand Tom and I recently received complimentary copies of a new book called "Investment Opportunities for a Low Carbon World", edited FTSE Group's Director of Responsible Investment Will Oulton*. The book is a compendium of articles by 31 different authors broken down into three main categories: (1) environmental and low-carbon technologies; (2) investment approaches, products and markets; and (3) regulation, incentives, investor and company case studies. While Tom will provide a comprehensive review of the book once he's finished reading it in its entirety, I will instead review a few selected chapters over...
Inverter Stocks: A Backdoor to Solar and Wind Energy
Avoiding the Rush Whenever there is a gold rush, the people who make the real money are seldom the gold miners, but rather the suppliers to the miners that come home with the lion's share of the profits. This is not because there is not an incredible amount of money to be made in mining gold, but because the nature of a gold rush is that too many optimistic miners are encouraged by the early profits of a few to rush to pursue too few opportunities. To many, the rush into solar stocks seems to be just...
Wind Works Power Corp
A Bet on Wind Industry Growth Tom Konrad, CFA Wind Works Power Corporation (WWPW.OB) presents investors in publicly traded wind power stocks a new type of opportunity with the potential for high reward, and a complementary risk profile to existing plays. In the past, I've lamented the dearth of choice in publicly traded wind power stocks on North American markets, but both the number and types of opportunities are growing, allowing investors to diversify risk or to make more narrowly focused bets on how they expect the sector to evolve. I classify wind stocks into three types: Wind...
