Alternative Energy Stocks

John Petersen Last month Ricardo PLC (RCDOF.PK) published a report titled "GB Rail Diesel Powertrain Efficiency Improvements" that it prepared for Great Britain's Department for Transport. While most of the fuel efficiency technologies Ricardo evaluated for the report were mechanical systems, its analysis of the fuel efficiency benefits of stop-start and hybrid systems for locomotives offered an intriguing view of a cost-effective vehicle electrification opportunity that can be implemented at relevant scale within a few years. The two types of locomotive systems Ricardo evaluated for the report were simple stop-start idle elimination and full hybridization. The following table...

Capstone(CPST), Siemens (SI) and China BAK(CBAK) announce deals; Brightsource withdraws IPO. Jeff Siegel and Tom Konrad April 9: Capstone Turbine (NASDAQ:CPST) Lands Another 10 Megawatts JS: Capstone Turbine (NASDAQ:CPST) announced this morning that it received about 10 megawatts worth of new orders from two oil and gas producers in the Eagle Ford shale play. For the past few years we've seen Capstone become one of the many beneficiaries of the oil & gas boom in the U.S. I expect to see Capstone continue to benefit from this space. That's the good news....

For now, electrics have won a fan base, but bio seems to be doing a better job of advancing the technology, reducing or eliminating tax credits, and giving customers more power of choice when it comes to selecting a car. The reason – bio-based is more affordable, and generally more infrastructure-compatible.

The Pew Charitable Trusts just released the 2011 edition of their report, "Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race?"

Easter Treats for Energy Focus, Solazyme, Capstone, Alstom, and Iberdrola; SemiLEDS Lays an Egg

Tom Konrad CFA Portfolio performance March was a volatile month for clean energy, with many of my picks reporting earnings.  My 11 picks were down 4% on average since my last update (March 1st to April 5th), compared to a 9% decline in the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy Index (PBW), while the broad Russell 2000 index was flat.  The hedged portfolio (see the original article for details) lost 5%. For the year to date, the portfolio has put in a strong performance, and is up 15%.  PBW and the Russell 2000 are up only 3%...

Steve Sollheiser KWT Breaks Support There is very interesting price-action in the Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (KWT) in the last trading day. We can see that price has closed below the support level of $3.40 which is a bearish signal. We can also see that the breakout price was touching an ascending resistance line twice - which creates this a Descending Broadening chart pattern. We would expect price to continue downwards with target at approximately $2.00. If price opens above the level it will be a sign that the support...

Finland’s Neste Oil Corporation (NEF: F) brought its fourth renewable diesel plant on-line in September 2011, earning bragging rights to the world’s largest facility of its kind.  Located at the Port of Rotterdam, the plant has the capacity to produce 800,000 metric tons of renewable diesel that Neste brands NExBTL and claims is the “cleanest and highest-quality renewable diesel on the market today.”  Along with Neste’s three other plants already in operation in Finland and Singapore the fourth plant in Denmark brings Neste’s total production capacity to 2.0 million metric tons per year.

John Petersen Last month Lux Research released a bottom-up evaluation of the cost effectiveness of eight energy storage technologies in six grid-scale applications throughout 44 countries, including all 50 U.S. states. Their report titled "Grid Storage under the Microscope: Using Local Knowledge to Forecast Global Demand" predicts that annual global demand for grid-scale energy storage will reach an astounding 185.4 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by 2017 and represent a $113.5 billion incremental revenue opportunity for an industry that currently generates sales of $50 to $60 billion a year. In the grid-scale sector alone, Lux predicts an average...

Steve Leone Germany's Q-Cells, a solar industry giant that helped usher in a new era of solar energy, announced Monday that it will file for bankruptcy, but that it will continue to work to restructure. In a statement released by the company, “the Executive Board and the preliminary insolvency administrator will work together to secure the continuity of the company within the insolvency proceedings.” The move follows an unrelated higher court ruling on Friday that Q-Cells says limits its ability to move ahead with a debt restructuring plan. The filing is the most prominent to date in...

John Petersen The first quarter of 2012 was the best of times for shareholders of companies that are developing and manufacturing cheap energy storage products like lead-acid batteries, but the worst of times for shareholders of pure-play lithium-ion battery developers. The following table tracks stock price performance in the energy storage and electric vehicle sectors for the first quarter of 2012 and for the twelve months ended March 31st. Long-term readers will notice that the current list is a good deal shorter than it was in March of last year because of my decisions to...

Jeff Siegel March 26: Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) Upgraded to $49 A123 Systems (NASDAQ:AONE) announced today that it will have to replace battery modules and packs that may contain defective cells. The replacement is likely to cost about $55 million. The stock is down about 4 percent in pre-market. If the broader market stays positive today, the damage could be contained. I expect to see a number of follow-up articles blasting A123 because, well, the company works in the electric vehicle space and it's received government support. The combination of the two makes it a popular target....

John Petersen We all know that you can't have a cost-effective electric car without a cost-effective battery. We also know that a small but vocal hodgepodge of ideologues, activists, politicians and dreamers wants everyone to believe that rapid and stunning advances in lithium-ion batteries will finally make the dream a reality after a century of one abject failure after another. I frequently caution readers that it won't be anywhere near as easy as the proponents claim. In a new report titled "Searching for Innovations to Cut Li-ion Battery Costs" Lux Research did a yeoman's...

David Gold So, you’re at a networking event and you get an opportunity to talk with a Venture Capitalist (VC) for just a few minutes. After breaking the ice with quick introductory formalities, you present your elevator pitch, right? Wrong. How can you possibly capture that VC’s interest if you don’t know what excites them? Would you try to sell meat to a vegetarian or bricks to a carpenter? Not if you knew a little about their needs and interests!  When you are raising money, you are selling yourself and your company to your prospective...

Steve Sollheiser  Both Wind ETFs are showing interesting chart patterns. In the PowerShares Global Wind Energy Portfolio (PWND) chart we can see a Falling Wedge patern, that consists of two non-parallel trend lines that engulf price. The upwards trend line has been tested for 5 times, which is an indication of its strength. The support trend line was tested four times, which confirms its validity and the accuracy of the pattern. The Falling Wedge, contrary to intuition, is a Bullish pattern which predicts a breakout upwards and an uptrend in 68%...

Tom Konrad CFA Heavy duty transit bus manufacturer New Flyer Industries (NFI.TO/NFYEF.PK) released its fourth quarter earnings and annual report on March 21, quickly followed by analyst downgrades from CIBC and Canacord Genuity. Too far, too fast Over the next few days, the stock fell from over $8 to below $7, although it is still well above the level where followers of my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2012 would have purchased ($5.65) even after dividend payments worth $0.22.  After a rise like New Flyer has had over the last three months, some investors took the...