Alternative Energy Stocks

Ernst & Young recently came out with its quarterly rankings of the investment attractiveness of the main national biofuel markets (PDF file). The report contains three indices: the All Biofuels Index, the Ethanol Index and the Biodiesel Index. No big surprise with most of the results. The report also outlines some of main deals to have occured in the global biofuels space in Q2, and notes two worrying developments. First, the German biodiesel market appears less than healthy at the moment, with many refiners operating at below...

In the last Technology Quarterly, The Economist had a story about the electric busses in 1907 London.  As they tell it, the electric bus had a real chance to beat out the internal combustion engine, and the company only failed because of fraud.  The electric technology was in many ways superior to the internal combustion engines which eventually won out. In fact, many people at the time still considered the horse to be the far superior technology.  These days, the battle is still between the same three fuels: Electric, Petroleum, and biomass (grass and oats for the...

Bottom-Fishing for Batteries I believe that we have only seen the beginning of the current market decline.  You should take that with a grain of salt, since I've been unremittingly bearish since 1999 and for more than half that time, the market has been going up. Even if the market has much further to fall, some stocks may have already taken most of the damage they are likely to take.  Knowing that I might be wrong, I've started to do a little bottom fishing among companies that people have been starting to dump as the realize stock prices can...

On Tuesday, Mark Gongloff at the WSJ's Energy Roundup informed us that Alcoa couldn't wait to go geothermal. This is indeed an interesting development. Aluminum smelters are some of the most electricity-intensive industrial processes around, and, in a context of rising energy prices, there are very real incentives to explore alternatives for firms in this industry. On Wednesday, Kevin Bullis at Technology Review looked into making cheaper solar cells for us. Could Heliovolt be the next First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR)? On Wednesday, Tyler Hamilton at Clean Break warned us of the inherent limitations of so-called "clean coal". The...

Greentech Media is hosting a one-hour webinar at 12:00 PM ET Wednesday, September 19th, entitled "The Advance of the Solar PPA: When an Organization is Ready for a Power Purchase Agreement." PPAs are an interesting new area of activity in alternative energy, and definitely something worth understanding for the alt energy investor. For further details and registration, visit Greentech Media's special section for this event.

On August first, Acciona Energy closed financing on Nevada Solar One, in the first leveraged lease structured financing in the United States. This begs two questions: What in the world is a leveraged lease structured financing? Why do we care? What in the World? An in-depth analysis of the economics of leverage leasing for all three parties involved is available here.  Structured financing is a generic term for any form of financing more complex than a loan or a rental.  For those of you who need to remain awake, here's the short version: a leveraged lease is...

Net metering describes the requirement that an electric utility buy electricity from any of its customers that generate their own electricity (usually with some sort of renewable energy, such as solar or wind) at the same price that they sell it to the customer.  That seems fair, doesn't it? The Utility Perspective It doesn't seem fair to the utility.  Utilities do more than just generate and sell electricity to customers.  They also are responsible for transmission (delivering the electricity) and reliability (making sure that the lights work when you flip the switch.) Taking just the reliability requirement, suppose that...

On Wednesday, Energy Tech Stocks gave us the heads up on a recent warning by Raymond James & Associate about declining oil production. Interesting to see a thesis that was derided as pure fantasy as recently as two years ago slowly creeping up into the mainstream. On Thursday, Sam Abuelsamid at Autoblog Green opined that CO2 regulations in Europe could place the balance of power on the auto parts suppliers' side in the fight for profit margins. We have noted in the past how some of the most interesting (and 'safest') clean car investment opportunities rested with parts...

In June, we launched CleanTech News which generates the top headlines in the cleantech world by automatically by scanning over 240 cleantech blogs and news sources. Today we are launching an RSS feed for CleanTech News. The aim of this feed is to allow you to track what is happening in the cleantech world through a single feed. Tom and Charles have been using the CleanTech News feed for some time and they have also been providing feedback which has been used to improve the application that generates CleanTech News. Both Tom and Charles, who are voraciaous consumers...

It's been six weeks since I last provided readers with an update on the Paper Portfolio.  According to the guidelines I laid out there, stocks are added to the portfolio when Chares or I mention them positively for the first time (leaving out ones for which Yahoo! finance does not have historical data, which are mostly pink sheet stocks.)  Here are the ones we've added since then. Stock Article Date Added Price Price 9/5/07 DOW Investing in energy Efficient Homes 7/24/07 $47.20 $42.20 OC Investing in energy Efficient Homes 7/24/07 $33.00 $24.26 ...

September is starting out as the month of speculation about a massive three day air strike on Iran.  Is Bush ready to attack Iran while our troops are still trying to stabilize both Afghanistan and Iraq?  In February, administration officials were denying it.   The preparations now going on could simply be the stick part of a negotiating strategy; the bad cop to Russia's good cop.  But Bush's chances of successful cooperation with Putin could be better. What if? If Bush does launch a massive three day air strike on Iran, what will that mean for alternative energy stocks?  I...

Last Week, Jacques Diouf at Biofuel Review reminded us that biofuels are a great opportunity for the worlds poor. James Fraser at The Energy Blog told us about Penn State's new method of converting black liquor into DME for biofuel, and Green Car Congress, told us about the partnership which is exploring commercialization. On Monday, Tyler Hamilton at Clean Break told us about Vinod Khosla's big bet on Concentrating Solar Power.  Excellent article, especially since Khosla slams half-measures that don't make a big difference in the global warming problem.  He also...

Being concerned about global warming, but also an investor and advisor who wants to keep my own and my client's money relatively safe is fraught with compromises.  For instance, a lot of environmentalists probably think that Alcoa (NYSE: AA) is an inappropriate investment, although I like it now that it has fallen from its recent highs. There are two major environmental objections to Alcoa.  First, aluminum is extremely energy intensive to refine, and so has a high embodied energy (although recycled aluminum is much better).  Second, like any large mining company, they are responsible for considerable pollution. Yes,...

One of the keys to staying ahead of the game in money management is lateral thinking.  I start with the trend, and then try to think of industries or companies that might benefit, but are not on everyone else's radar.  With Peak Oil-driven demand for biofuels, regular readers know that I consider the people who produce the feedstock (farmers, and industries whose waste can fairly easily be converted into biofuel) to be the most certain winners.  One direction this chain of logic has taken me is to forestry companies.  I'm far from a forestry analyst, so I decided to...

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...

On Monday, Ian Talley at the WSJ's Energy Roundup informed us that there were no alternatives at NYMEX. While the reasons behind this delay may be unclear, the US Futures Exchange is moving ahead with what I believe are the first US wind power futures to be traded on a US exchange. On Wednesday, Dan Lewis at AEI informed us that Vestas was closing a second manufacturing plant in Australia. Not supporting the emergence of a strong renewables industry is, to say the least, an interesting policy choice on the part of the Federal and the various State...