Alternative Energy Stocks

by Billy Parish Five years after the Great Recession, most Americans have yet to regain their faith in our country’s largest financial institutions. The Dow is up, but the latest Financial Trust Index shows that 58% of Americans expect the stock market to drop 30% or more this year. Meanwhile, a recent Harris Poll noted that only seven percent of the public trusts the leaders of Wall Street. Strangely, the same poll which found that most Americans think stock prices will decline also found that 92% of Americans plan to hold or increase their investments in the stock...

Tom Konrad CFA This article was first published on the author's Forbes.com blog, Green Stocks on May 31st as "Kandi Technologies: Weighing The Evidence." I have since added a short update to the end of the article. Last year, I brought Chinese off-road vehicle and electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Kandi Technologies (NASD:KNDI) to readers’ attention.  I like Kandi because the company was already profitable and trades for a tiny fraction of what a US-based EV maker would. The Strategy I also like Kandi’s electric vehicle strategy, which focuses on inexpensive commuter vehicles...

Jim Lane We were suitably intrigued by the headline, “Renewable Energy Program Could Make Fracking and Biofuels Obsolete.” And so the press release began: “Project Volt Gas Volt, a new green program, shows the potential of storing renewable energy in surplus, which could make nuclear energy, natural gas, fracking, and biofuels seem like energy sources from the past.” If that’s starting to sound like a pitch to fringe interests, read on. “Surplus electricity that is generated by wind farms and solar parks and converted into methane can be stored for months in the existing...

Doug Young China is quickly learning how to play the game of tit-for-tat trade wars, with news that Beijing has launched a new anti-dumping probe against wines imported from the European Union. Anyone who has followed recent China-EU trade relations will know, of course, that announcement of this new probe by the Commerce Ministry comes the same day that the EU formally announced anti-dumping tariffs against imported Chinese solar panels. While I certainly don’t condone this kind of trade war rhetoric, I have to say that China’s decision to target Europe’s wine industry looks like a very...

Doug Young After more than a year of antagonism, I’m happy to see that the voice of reason finally seems to be coming to the ongoing clash between China and the west in their prolonged dispute over Beijing’s state support for solar panel sector. Germany seems to be the driving force behind this welcome change in tone, following German Chancellor Angela Merckel’s remarks last week that she opposed anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese solar cells being proposed by the EU’s trade office. Merkel correctly realized that a trade war over solar panels wouldn’t benefit anyone, and could potentially deal...

by Sean Kidney The Massachusetts AA+ green bond I mentioned last week got a lot of coverage on release this week – even the WSJ ran the story. But there was a twist: it seems the State had to scale back the total $1.1bn GO offering to $670m on tepid demand, but the green bond bit was 30% oversubscribed. For all you prospective issuers out there: the green bonds also lured as many as 9 new institutional investors for Massachusetts bonds. One buyer went so far as to say “We think more municipalities should do the same." So perhaps...

By Harris Roen The stock market has been paying attention to SunPower (SPWR) in a big way. At the end of May the stock hit an annual high of 23.76, a gain of 125% from where it was just a month earlier. That price is quadruple levels it was trading at in the beginning of the year. Since May, the stock has seen about a 17% correction, and is trading sideways in the 18 to 20 price range. Volume at these high price levels have been impressive tooshares exchanging hands in the past 30...

Doug Young China’s struggling solar panel makers must are slowly transforming into de facto state-owned enterprises as they take increasing loans from Beijing, with Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) becoming the latest to take a handout from the policy lender China Development Bank (CDB). If Beijing is trying to convince Europe and the US that it’s not unfairly supporting its solar sector, then this certainly isn’t the way to do it. But that said, I doubt that Canadian Solar or many of its peers could get financing to maintain their operations from any true private sector banks right now,...

by Debra Fiakas CFA Sometime back Poet, LLC, the private producer of ethanol based in Sioux Falls, SD (my home state), filed a lawsuit against the State of California, strenuously objecting to rules related to ‘carbon intensity’ adopted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) When the dust settled, the California rules were still standing and Poet skulked off to the appeals court.  The appeal was filed this week in the California’s Fifth Appellate District in Fresno. Originally approved in 2009, California’s ‘low carbon fuel standard’ (LCFS) is aimed at sorting apples and oranges in the renewable...

By Harris Roen Mutual Funds Performance for MF’s have been outstanding, following a surge in solar stocks, energy efficiency companies, and other alternative energy sectors. Over the past 12-months the average alternative energy MF returned 30.3%, and not a single fund was down for the year. Three-month and one-month returns were similarly spectacular, gaining 10.5% and 7.3% respectively on average, also with no losers. I expect this trend to continue, as many of these alternative energy sectors are bouncing back from the overly pessimistic levels of 2012. Exchange Traded Funds ...

Bluefield IPO to Be the Second Green Energy Fund Flotation in London This Year by Alice Young Bluefield Solar Income Fund Limited, an investment fund focussed on solar power, plans to raise £150 million in a London IPO. The Bluefield IPO will be the second flotation of a green energy find on the London Stock Exchange this year following the IPO of Greencoat UK Wind (LON:UKW). Bluefield Solar Plans London IPO On Wednesday, May 29, London-based Bluefield Solar announced that it intended to launch an initial public offering on the LSE’s main market. The fund, which is focussing...

James Montgomery The Skies are Brightening as Manufacturers Resume Spending to Improve Efficiency Slumping solar PV equipment spending has finally bottomed out, and we're about to witness a "revival" in investments that will finally close the yawning gap between oversupply and demand, according to a pair of analysts reports. Solar PV manufacturers spent nearly $13 billion in 2011, but then their investments plunged more than 70 percent to $3.6 billion in 2012, and will probably drop another 36 percent this year to $2.3 billion, the lowest level since 2006, says Jon-Frederick Campos, analyst with IHS...

Doug Young Trade War. photo via Bigstock It’s been interesting to watch all the different interpretations coming out of a brief flurry of talks in Europe late last week aimed at settling a trade dispute between the EU and China over Beijing’s support for its solar panel makers. About the only thing that everyone agrees on is that some talks did happen, and that China took the interesting step of letting an industry association rather than government officials handle its side of the negotiations. But after that, no...

Jim Lane Lies, Truth, and Disbelief via BigStock Photo Are you missing out on great investment returns – is the Dow really headed for 20,000? Is the advanced biofuels rally for real? Why are investors sitting on the sidelines in the Valley of Disbelief? This year in the United States, despite awesome returns in the stock market and miserable bond yields, the Investment Company Institute estimates that $85.4 billion in new investment has poured into bonds by contrast, only $73.2 billion into stocks. Seth Masters, CIO of...

Doug Young China’s increasingly contentious trade relations with Europe suffered another setback late last week, when the EU threatened to fine Chinese airlines that were refusing to comply with a new controversial program to reduce greenhouse gases. China responded with its own threat by saying it won’t accept the EU’s planned carbon tax, raising the prospect of a dangerous new trade war. This latest in a recent series of trade conflicts between China and both Europe and the US is developing into a troublesome pattern that could spin out of control, endangering the nascent global economic...

Doug Young Geely recently signaled its committment to EVs by forming a joint venture with Kandi Technologies, the maker of the Coco EV above.  Photo by Tom Harrison. After making increasing noises about its intent to develop electric vehicles (EVs), domestic automaker Geely (HKEx: 175) is getting serious about the effort by moving one of its top executives into a new role overseeing its EV sales. Meantime, rival EV maker BYD (HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594, OTC:BYDDF) has gotten its own new boost in the space with...