THE Alternative Energy (general) Thread pt 2(merged)

[Graeme]

Oil Spill Winners: Alternative Energy ETFs

As the nation's anger grows over the leak in the Gulf, some speculate that the Obama administration will use this opportunity to push an alternative energy agenda. There is no question that alternative energy has become a hot area for investment, despite its dismal returns recently. In analyzing the different options for investments in alternative energy, investors can dig into the many ETFs now being offered, in order to see which stocks each is holding.

Looking at ETFChannel.com's ETF Finder, there are fourteen ETFs in the "Alternative Energy" category. The largest combined holding amongst these fourteen ETFs is First Solar(NASDAQ: FSLR), which is owned by seven of the fourteen ETFs, for a combined investment of almost $55 million.

Below are six of these ETFs and their largest positions:

forbes

[Pops]

I ran across this article yesterday (and posted it in the Ron Paul thread) but thinking about it I decided it needs it's own thread.

For a couple of years it's been plain to me that investors moved from tanking real estate to commodities inducing the big runups in '07 and '08 in everything from food to metals - and oil. This guy puts the story together well (sorry for the long snip but the story is worth a read):

Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation

It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people – mostly children – couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."

...
For over a century, farmers in wealthy countries have been able to engage in a process where they protect themselves against risk. Farmer Giles can agree in January to sell his crop to a trader in August at a fixed price. If he has a great summer, he'll lose some cash, but if there's a lousy summer or the global price collapses, he'll do well from the deal. When this process was tightly regulated and only companies with a direct interest in the field could get involved, it worked.

Then, through the 1990s, Goldman Sachs and others lobbied hard and the regulations were abolished. Suddenly, these contracts were turned into "derivatives" that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with agriculture. A market in "food speculation" was born.

...
Here's how it happened. In 2006, financial speculators like Goldmans pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market. They reckoned food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked, so they switched their funds there. Suddenly, the world's frightened investors stampeded on to this ground.

So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for derivatives based on food massively rose – which meant the all-rolled-into-one price shot up, and the starvation began. The bubble only burst in March 2008 when the situation got so bad in the US that the speculators had to slash their spending to cover their losses back home.

We all knew, thanks to Enron, that deregulated energy markets can be manipulated to the detriment of consumers and now we know gambling on derivatives can stampeded investors. But the thing that I started thinking about this morning was in fact a thread JD wrote years ago on how price signals will create fuel substitution.

When you look at a plot of inflation adjusted oil prices like this from forecastcharts.com however, it becomes obvious that since deregulation in the '90s and the surge in derivatives based on energy, there is no clear price signal to allow innovators the confidence to explore alternative fuels and systems:



I read "The Quants" recently, a book about the math geek/derivative-inventing Wall Streeters who wrote software to take advantage of the inherent fluctuations in market prices - and who in borrowing huge amounts to place their bets, precipitated a large portion of the damage of the '07 crash. I'm not smart enough to know if the bill grinding through congress will put any meaningful limits to the gambling pits of the Mercantile exchange but it sure seems like it should.


So my question is, how are the innovators to have the confidence to innovate with a price signal full of noise from profiteers?

.
HEY AMERICA, WELCOME TO THE RESULTS OF DEREGULATION
Who let the oil market be manipulated?

[efarmer]

The CFMA stealth legislation of 2000 (Phil Gramm championed, Bill Clinton signed) was a follow up to the tag team repeal of Glass-Steagall via many of the the same players. I often wonder how Gramm would have behaved since he was strongly rumored to be John McCain's probable Treasury Secretary if he was elected President. This little gem made the dark market a reality and spawned the black hole where the subprime weasels were transformed into the transitory sublime and were fed and furbished to return for more subprime raw material.

Derivatives that are allowed to operate in stealth markets without any oversight or clearing house demands to cover margins on their bets are where free markets go to die out of sight and find transformation into new life forms at the hands of the cockaroaches of high finance.

[patience]

Can't remember the novel now, but I read about this sort of speculation causing terrible consequences (wheat price volatility that bankrupted whole states full of farmers) back before 1900. This sort of thing has caused rebellions in the past, IIRC. We need rid of the thieving vermin who do this, but I have no idea how to do that. Like rats, you trap one of them, and 10 take his place.

[patience]

A quote here taken from near the last of today's Cafe' Americain:

"As Andrew Jackson said of the Federal Reserve Bank of his day:

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out."
Jackson had government officials secretly investigating the bankers, to obtain the evidence of their schemes and frauds. But the cowardly President, and craven and corrupt Congress, do not appear to even have the courage and the will to audit it, to force it to answer questions truthfully and with the appropriate oversight, and make itself accountable, even in the face of conflicts of interest and the appropriation of billions in funds under false pretenses, which they gave to their cronies on Wall Street. Such are the times."

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
It's a long article, but well worth the read. We desperately need Andy Jackson back.

[Pops]

Thanks for the replies, I had to do chores, here is my conclusion ...

Referring back to this chart again, you can see the clear spikes in the early and late '70 caused by the embargoes - now those were clear signals. They had a clear cause which clearly caused economic pain and just as clearly they led to increases in efficiency in everything from autos to water heaters to windows. Even more, they made a big impression on the way people looked at energy - unfortunately that impression has since faded.

After deregulation in the '90s notice how the volatility has increased markedly as speculators (who never plan to take delivery, only take profit) cause ever larger swings. Additionally this volatility without obvious cause reinforced the idea in the public's mind that there is no problem with oil supplies per say, only oil companies manipulating the price to gouge consumers.

This is a disincentive for investment of the type that actually produces something besides profit because it add uncertainty and risk. If an investor can't be reasonably certain of future prices (or even have confidence the current price actually reflects fundamentals) he sure won't put his money on the line. T. Boone Pickens' big wind/nat. gas plan is an example of just such an outcome.


This is another epiphany for me. We have talked a lot about the possibility of not having the resources or capital to make a transition away from FF because of the impact increasing energy prices could have on the economy and investment climate but this puts an entirely new, additional layer of uncertainty on top of the already murky situation.

No investor of the good sort - the kind who actually benefits society, will lay down his chips if the odds are constantly changing.

[Pops]

Thanks for that patience, I'll read it.

[americandream]

Investors are continuously seeking safe havens with high returns. Real estate derivatives and derivatives linked to other tangibles will always be subject to further assetisation. It's neither evil nor good. It's what investors do.

The CFMA stealth legislation of 2000 (Phil Gramm championed, Bill Clinton signed) was a follow up to the tag team repeal of Glass-Steagall via many of the the same players. I often wonder how Gramm would have behaved since he was strongly rumored to be John McCain's probable Treasury Secretary if he was elected President. This little gem made the dark market a reality and spawned the black hole where the subprime weasels were transformed into the transitory sublime and were fed and furbished to return for more subprime raw material.

Derivatives that are allowed to operate in stealth markets without any oversight or clearing house demands to cover margins on their bets are where free markets go to die out of sight and find transformation into new life forms at the hands of the cockaroaches of high finance.

[efarmer]

My post was not an attack on derivatives or investors but instead was aimed at the creation of dark markets wherein the transactions are undefined risks on the publicly traded portions of businesses, and indeed are fostered by the reputation of those institutions to attract dark market partners because their public history and credit ratings make them desired wager mates for the secret bets.

Government rarely manages and values as well as the markets do themselves, but in the case of dark markets neither the market or government has any vision to do so, and the lack of even a clearinghouse removes the ability to determine the margin placed to cover risk (if any is placed) to define even quantum exposures of a dark market player.


Investors are continuously seeking safe havens with high returns, and are continuously accepting good returns from fairly safe markets that have enough visible criteria to attract them in the first place. When the top public market forces are allowed to establish a dark market via peer royalty attributes it is inevitable that the lucrative nature of such conditions will shift profit into a system between dark market royals and the free markets will become colonies to provide the royals with resources for their private wagers and fortunes.

It is after all, still good to be King(s).

[Graeme]

The Future Is Closer Than You Think for Some Forms of Alternative Energy

For skeptics, alternative energy has long been more hype than genuine promise. Yet several alternative-energy technologies are approaching inflection points in their development, and the day when they could have a profound impact on the global energy landscape could come far sooner than is commonly assumed, says a new report from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The report, released today and titled "What's Next for Alternative Energy?," examines the state of seven of the most significant alternative-energy technologies -- advanced biofuels, electric vehicles (EVs), concentrated solar power (CSP), solar photovoltaic (PV), onshore wind, offshore wind, and clean coal through carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) -- and assesses each one's prospects in terms of three issues:

*Can it achieve cost competitiveness with conventional energy by 2020 and be economically viable without subsidies?

*Can it overcome barriers to rapid adoption once cost competitive?

*Can it reach penetration levels by 2025 that disrupt the status quo?

Among the report's key findings:

*Advanced biofuels, CSP, and solar PV will see accelerating adoption and growth and are on track to change the global energy mix far earlier than is often assumed. Their costs are falling rapidly, and they are on the path to becoming cost competitive within the next five to ten years, if not sooner.

*Onshore wind power will see steady adoption and continued growth. It is already cost competitive with conventional energy sources in some instances, and its costs will continue to fall. Without breakthrough declines in energy storage costs, however, the inherent challenges posed by the intermittent nature of onshore wind and solar PV will limit their ultimate penetration.

*EVs will also see steady adoption, becoming economically attractive for lead segments by 2020. But broader adoption will require significant declines in battery costs. Major infrastructure and other hurdles will also have to be overcome.

*In contrast to onshore wind, offshore wind will struggle to move beyond purely subsidy-driven growth. Offshore wind's overall adoption will be slow except in a few countries willing to continue heavy subsidies.

*Clean coal through CCS will have very slow adoption and won't be viable for the next decade or two. The technology is vital for cutting carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. But it will develop slowly for a number of reasons, including slow progress toward demonstrating large-scale viability and moving down the cost curve.

marketwire

[Graeme]

Expert group report finds alternative fuels could replace fossil fuels in Europe by 2050

Alternative fuels have the potential gradually to replace fossil energy sources and make transport sustainable by 2050, according to a report presented to the European Commission last week by the stakeholder expert group on future transport fuels. The EU will need an oil-free and largely CO2-free energy supply for transport by 2050 due to the need to reduce its impact on the environment and concerns about the security of energy supply.


Expected demand from all transport modes could be met through a combination of electricity (batteries or hydrogen/fuel cells) and biofuels as main options, synthetic fuels (increasingly from renewable resources) as a bridging option, methane (natural gas and biomethane) as complementary fuel, and LPG as supplement, the report finds.

The Commission is currently revising existing policies and the report will feed into the initiative on clean transport systems, to be launched later this year. The initiative intends to develop a consistent long-term strategy for fully meeting the energy demands of the transport sector from alternative and sustainable sources by 2050.

greencarcongress

[vision-master]

Hogwash, it's the same old cave-man mentality of fire used in combustion to create energy - Sounds like another TPB controling energy scheme to me.

Nothing new here, now run along folks. .

The time of the energy dark ages is just about over.

[eXpat]

A reminder from an old thread, several years later, and still alternative energy (solar in this case) is not competitive:
Grand dream loses sheen in glare of daylight

L.A. community colleges' green energy plan proves wildly impractical. The blunders cost taxpayers $10 million.
Larry Eisenberg had a vision. "Amazing," he called it. "Spectacular."

The Los Angeles Community College District would become a paragon of clean energy. By generating solar, wind and geothermal power, the district would supply all its electricity needs. Not only would the nine colleges sever ties to the grid, saving millions of dollars a year, they would make money by selling surplus power. Thanks to state and federal subsidies, construction of the green energy projects would cost nothing upfront.
As head of a $5.7-billion, taxpayer-funded program to rebuild the college campuses, Eisenberg commanded attention. But his plan for energy independence was seriously flawed.

He overestimated how much power the colleges could generate. He underestimated the cost. And he poured millions of dollars into designs for projects that proved so impractical or unpopular they were never built.

These and other blunders cost nearly $10 million that could have paid for new classrooms, laboratories and other college facilities, a Times investigation found.

The problems with Eisenberg's energy vision were fundamental. For starters, there simply wasn't room on the campuses for all the generating equipment required to become self-sufficient. Some of the colleges wouldn't come close to that goal even if solar panels, wind turbines and other devices were wedged into every available space.

Going off the grid did not make economic sense either. Given the cost of alternative energy technology, it would be more expensive for the district to generate all its own electricity than to continue paying utilities for power.

Weather and geology also refused to cooperate.

Three solar power arrays had to be scrapped because the intended locations were atop seismic faults.

Plans for large-scale wind power collided with the reality that prevailing winds at nearly all the campuses are too weak to generate much electricity. To date, a single wind turbine has been installed, as a demonstration project. It spins too slowly in average winds to power a 60-watt light bulb.

In the end, Eisenberg's grand plan was scaled down to what was actually doable, which was a fraction of the green energy capacity he had envisioned.

By then, the district had committed at least $4 million to designs for solar and wind energy farms that would never get beyond blueprints.

As one project after another was scratched, an elaborate plan to pay for it all with money from private investors fell apart. But the investment banks that put the deals together had to be paid for their work. The cost: $2.8 million.

At Southwest College, the district spent an additional $1.2 million on a parking lot shaded by solar panels, only to abandon the project with the work half done.

At Valley College, one of the solar arrays that was actually built sat idle for 14 months, thanks to a dispute between a contractor and the district over who was supposed to arrange a hookup to the power grid. The delay cost $1.5 million in potential energy savings, according to the college.
...
Eisenberg talked up the environmental benefits of his plan. But he also insisted that it would cost less than continuing to rely on conventional sources of electricity. Private investors, he explained, would put up almost all the money in order to take advantage of tax breaks, and they would pass the savings on to the district.

In the end, he said, government subsidies would reduce the district's purchase and installation costs as much as 90%.

One thing was for sure: No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-build6-20110306,0,2339677,full.story

[Lore]

We’re quickly coming to the realization, after all our experimentation with other sources of energy, that you can have alternatives for oil, but you just can’t replace it.

[Dezakin]

Plants use diffuse solar energy to live but they are far more effecient then our man made industrialized world.

I do think we need to work on solar and wind energy to provide us with electricity for essential things like trains to move people around in the future. but do not expect alternative energy to allow us to maintain our current lifestyle through terminal decline.

I would say that Germany is a quite industrialised country (see our export rate) and even heavy industry works quite fine with power from solar or wind energy here.

No it doesn't. It works fine with enormous amounts of coal power, and a tidy amount of nuclear power; Much of it imported from France. If Germany wants to adhere to its Kyoto obligations (not bloody likely) they'll have to scrap the plans to build 30 more coal plants and buildout its nuclear infrastructure. Instead they're still trying to phase out nuclear, which means even more begging for power from France. Wow, that's a model I want to emulate.

[americandream]

sweet
i like solar concentrators but I generally have low expectations for solar and wind energy. For one thing, they are both very diffuse forms of energy. It's not very likely we can run our industrialized world on PVs and Windmills.
Plants use diffuse solar energy to live but they are far more effecient then our man made industrialized world.
the EORIE is somtehing else that really needs to be considered when talking about alternative energy.

I do think we need to work on solar and wind energy to provide us with electricity for essential things like trains to move people around in the future. but do not expect alternative energy to allow us to maintain our current lifestyle through terminal decline.

the end of cheap energy means the end of life as we know it. period

Alternative energy will not save capitalism, I thinks you mean.

[Graeme]

Alternative Smart Fuel Apps, Getting Green On The Road

Globally, the market for alternative fuels is doing quite well. In a recent Clean Energy Trends 2012 report the combined global revenue for solar, wind power and biofuels rose 31 per cent over 2010, from $188.1 billion in 2010 to $246.1 billion in 2011. Biofuels revenues reached $83 billion in 2011, up from $56.4 billion in 2010. So it should come as no surprise that there is a bit of gold rush on alternative fuel apps making their way to your smart phone.

Even the US government got involved, in 201o, the US Department of Energy launched an alternative fuel locator app designed to find fueling locations for your alternative fuels vehicle.

In the Android market alone, there are more than 100 alternative fuel smart phone apps that locate and show you where green refueling or charging locations are located. They aren’t the most attractive apps to use, but they get the job done. Happy driving.

forbes

[Graeme]

Apps allow electric cars to charge at cheapest rates

Ford is showing off its MyFord Mobile app this week at a conference. It developed the capability with Microsoft, its partner in the well-regarded Sync in-car connectivity system, for the Focus electric car. The plug-in is going on sale in California, New York and New Jersey dealerships at a price of about $40,000.

"The MyFord Mobile Microsoft value charging technology can help save customers money now and, in the future, lessen the pressure on our infrastructure as more electrified vehicles hit the streets," says Bill Frykman of Ford Connected Services in a statement.

usatoday