Dear Loyal Readers,

We are exploring different options at generating revenue particularly during the effects of the Covid-19 shutdown.

I’d like to keep on maintaining this website at at least the current level of 1-3 articles a month, and to do that, I’ve set up a Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/tomkonrad, which will allow you to support my work for $5 or $10 a month.

I’m still working out exactly what benefits to offer Patrons… I’ll start with giving you a preview of articles before they are shown on the website, plus I’ll respond directly questions from Patrons who sign up at the $10/month level (I’ve been doing that for free recently in the comments, but I plan to limit my responses to Patrons in the future.)  If you have other suggestions, become a Patron, and let me know what you would like to see!

Thanks for your support!

Tom Konrad

https://www.patreon.com/tomkonrad

The post Patreon appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

On Monday, it came to my attention that AltEnergyStocks.com’s email list was not functioning properly, and and our morning emails had not gone out for over a week.  We have fixed the problem, email subscribers received an email containing all the articles we’d published since the the system stopped working.  Since this may have inundated many of our subscribers, I’d like to provide a quick summary of each of the articles to help you pick and choose the ones you’d like to go back and read:

• EVs, Batteries and Tales From The Valley of Death  John Petersen worries about Tesla’s (TSLA) chance of crossing the Valley of Death as it launches it’s “first credible commercial product.”
• Capstone Turbine Ramps Revenue, Earnings Not So Much Debra Fiakas questions Capstone Turbine (CPST) management’s ability to turn rapidly growing revenues into profits.
• Are IPOs good for early-stage companies and advanced biofuels? Jim Lane looks at how biofuel IPOs have fared, and compares the results to raising private money.
• Natural Gas Liquids are Following Natural Gas Off a Fracking Cliff Tom Konrad looks at how natural gas developers’ shift from “lean” to “rich” natural gas plays will affect the market for natural gas liquids (ethane, propane, butane, etc.)
• Rentech Retrenches Debra Fiakas CFA looks at Rentech (RTK) and wonders if the company can make its renewables business pay.
• Waterfurnace 7 Series vs. Climatemaster Trilogy Geothermal Heat Pumps: The Best of the Best Tom Konrad compares two new variable speed geothermal heat pumps from Waterfurnace (WFIFF) and Climatemaster (LXU).  A comment made him revisit this analysis, and write an even more in-depth look at how well these impressive machines perform.
• Musings From The EV Black Knight John Petersen embraces the epithet “The EV Black Knight” and lists the reasons he’s skeptical about EVs.
• Voices from VODville: Lessons learned in the journey towards advanced biofuels Jim Lane draws lessons from how biofuels companies have negotiated the Valley of Death.
• How to Play the Solar Revival Tom Konrad uses a report from GTM Research as the basis for tips on which solar stocks to buy and when.
• 11 Clean Energy Stocks for 2012: July Update Tom Konrad looks at what’s happened to his eleven annual stock picks in the last month, and what the events mean.
• Alterra Power: Cash to Invest Tom Konrad notes that Alterra power has a much stronger balance sheet than many other renewable IPPs, but its valuation does not reflect this.
• Special Report on Drought and Biofuels Jim Lane looks at how the drought in much of the US will affect biofuels companies.
• Where’s Western Wind Energy’s Cash Grant? Tom Konrad investigates the fate of Western Wind’s delayed 1603 Cash Grant.  A reduced grant has since been awarded (as he predicted), and the company is arguing the case in Wahington for the whole grant to be reinstated.

Also in this email:

• An Actively Managed Green ETF: HECO Tom Konrad looks at the case for active management in a green ETF, and looks at past performance (really!) for the recently launched Huntington EcoLogical Strategy ETF (NYSE:HECO.)

Sorry for any inconvenience the delayed emails caused readers.

Tom Konrad, CFA
Editor, AltEnergyStocks.com

The post A Note to Email Subscribers appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

Due to an ever-increasing flood of comment spam, AltEnergyStocks.com has changed how the comments work.  If you would like to comment in the future, you will need to register with an email address, or OpenID.  Most likely you are familiar with this procedure from other blogs.  After you’ve first registered, you will be able to sign in and comment.

One other change is that comments will now appear immediately, and you will no longer have to wait for us to manually approve your comments. 

Feel free to test this procedure in the comments on this entry.  If you have any problems, please let us know by email.  Our contact information is available on the Contact page.

The post New Authentication for Comments appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

Tom Konrad, Ph.D.

I’ve been writing for AltEnergyStocks for over two years now, but it has not always been about stock market investing.  Often, it is about my other passion, energy policy and economics.  While this can inform stock market investing, I have come to believe that many people who come to a site called AltEnergyStocks, are probably more interested in investing-focused fare.

Because of this, I’ve been writing less about policy and economics than I would if I were writing for a more policy- or economics-focused blog.  Since I’m not about to give up my either my interest in policy or my interest in investing, I thought it was time for each to have its own place.

The new place for my policy articles will be my new Clean Energy Wonk blog.  When those articles will usefully inform my stock market articles, I will continue to link to them from here, and vice versa.

My first original article for Clean Policy Wonk has now been published.  It is an in-depth look at what Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and Energy Internal Rate of Return (EIRR) can tell us about how to make the transition away from fossil fuels.  

If you’d like to continue to read my wonkish policy and economics articles, please look for them there.  Otherwise, you’ll still see the occasional link to them in investing articles here.

Quick Polls:

The post The Launch of Clean Energy Wonk appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA

I first met David Gold when he agreed (at the last minute) to sit on a lunchtime panel about Financing Renewable Energy I organized for the Colorado CFA Society in April. When he emailed an announcement in September that he was starting Green Gold Blog, I immediately signed up, because I expected he’d have something interesting to say.  

I also know that what’s relevant for Venture Capitalists is often relevant for public investors.  For instance, doesn’t his recent article on VC cleantech investment trends have some almost eerie similarities to my article about why small investors by solar stocks? And both have similar lessons for investors: there’s probably a lot of opportunity that others are not looking at because they either don’t have the right background or perspective to see the opportunities.

I put together a quick graph showing the Venture Capital (VC) investment numbers from David’s article, and compared them with the numbers of public companies on our corresponding stock lists.

The parallel is very tight except in Geothermal and Energy Efficiency.  And I think the parallels would be a lot closer if not for the fact that I and AltEnergyStocks’ Editor Charles Morand share an interest in Geothermal, and it’s fair to say that I’m obsessed with Energy Efficiency as an investment theme.  In other words, the length of our geothermal and energy efficiency stocks lists probably has more to do with our interests than the number of companies out there.

The question David and I are both asking is this: Does the size of current investment in Cleantech/Green Energy sectors relate more to the size of the opportunity, or more to the predilections of the investors?

I hope readers find David’s articles as engaging and provocative as I do, and that you look forward with me to more.  We expect to publish something from David about twice a month going forward.

DISCLOSURE: None.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here and in the comments are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

The post Welcome David Gold appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

Results from our survey of readers.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our reader survey last week.  Our randomly selected winner has been notified by email, and the book has been mailed.  

Most valuable to us were the comments, and we appreciate the overwhelming encouragement from the vast majority of commenters.  But we’re realistic enough to know we can always improve the reader experience.

What You Said

Here are a few ideas I plan to act on:

• Tom, the stocks that you cover range from solid established companies, to pie in the sky speculative ones. I think it’s important to make those distinctions clear to your readers, like J P does.
• Tom could tell us even more often when he sells a stock or changes his opinion of one he has endorsed here in the past. (For this, readers should follow us on Twitter. I don’t always have time to post an article, but I’ll try to put some more alerts on Twitter.)
• A request – please do not start to charge for this service. (We don’t have any plans to charge.  Rather, we are looking for ideas to attract more readers and advertisers.)
• More info about stocks to avoid and why. (See Thursday’s article on shorting the least green large companies.)

And here are a few things we’re discussing as a team:

• More support for entry level investors (maybe a glossary of terms, or a quick guide to how and where to look for relevant company information, etc)
• it […] would be useful to have sector by sector analyses or a section on the technology behind each sector
• Being a beginning level investor, I sometimes am overwhelmed with the wealth of knowledge here. Sometimes a bit more simplification or layman’s terms would help. 
• Maybe a chart showing RE/EE stock performance over long periods.

We will not be able to implement all these quickly, but we hope you like what you see as we make changes over time.

Topics and Authors

We also understand from your comments that some readers would prefer if particular writers covered a wider range of topics, or feel that those writers have little useful left to say on a particular subject.  We hope that the author’s name in italics at the beginning of the article, along with the title of the article, will allow readers sufficient information to skip such topics and/or authors altogether.

Demographics

We asked several questions about you, and we’re pleased to know you’re a well educated, financially savvy group.  You’re also somewhat more mature than the standard internet crowd; I was surprised that we didn’t get any responses from readers under 21.  That’s perhaps a bit early to start worrying about stock market investments, but I thought we might have a few young readers because they almost universally understand the need to tackle climate change.

AltEnergyStocks.com readers are also very well educated, with a majority having at least a college education.  A good 10% of our readers also have investment management credentials, either a securities license or one of the well-recognized investment professional designations.

I consider it a mark of distinction that both individual investors and professional money managers find the site useful, including the 10% who manage over $1 million, with a few in the tens and hundreds of millions.  

A few respondents claimed to manage over $500 million, but I threw these in with the "no response" answers because 1) they all claimed to only manage money for themselves and 2) they actually gave us their contact information.  This seemed more characteristic of a reader with a sense of humor than a reader who might make it onto a "rich" list.

The other responses above $50M all came from people who manage money professionally.

Use of Your Information

A few readers were concerned about how we might use the mailing and email addresses we collected.  Our intent was only to use those for the contest, and to follow up with readers on their comments as necessary.  One reader suggested that we only collect emails, and ask the winner of the book for a mailing address after we had determined the winner.  This is a good suggestion, and we intend to follow that procedure in the future.

Once again, thanks for your time.  We’re still getting a few responses trickling in even though PollDaddy said they’d only give us 100 responses, so please give it a try if you’d like to give us some feedback or add your numbers to the statistical stew.

Tom Konrad, and the AltEnergyStocks.com Team

The post Who You Are appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

In order to improve AltEnergyStocks.com, we’re trying to get to know our readers better. We’ve put together a short survey, and in order to make it worth your time to tell us about yourself and how we can improve the site, we’re offering an incentive.  One respondent will win a copy of Investment Opportunities for a Low Carbon World, of which Charles has reviewed the Wind and Solar and Efficiency and Geothermal chapters so far.

Please take a few minutes to complete our short reader survey.

Thanks!

The AltEnergyStocks.com Team

Note: This contest will end when we reach our 100-response monthly quota on PollDaddy, which we expect to happen sometime on 9/20/09.  If you didn’t get a chance to respond, we encourage you to leave your ideas for site improvement in the comments section, or you can return when our monthly quota is reset on 9/26/09.  Thanks to all of you who have responded; the winner will be announced soon.

The post Getting to Know AltEnergyStocks.com Readers appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

As most of you noticed, John L. Petersen recently joined AltEnergyStocks.com as a Contributing Editor. John brings a wealth of experience from years working as a corporate lawyer with growth-focused companies. His expertise in energy storage technologies has made him one of the best bloggers on this topic there is. We were thrilled to see how engaged you all got with his articles on long-range EVs and lithium-ion batteries, and we look forward to more top-quality material by John and insightful comments by you! For those who missed it, here is John’s bio:

John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works as a partner in the law firm of Fefer Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process, beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981. From January 2004 through January 2008, he was securities counsel for and a director of Axion Power International, Inc. a small public company involved in advanced lead-acid battery research and development.

The post Welcoming John L. Petersen To AltEnergyStocks.com appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

I’m pleased to announce some significant changes on AltEnergyStocks.com: we have a new stocks page up as well as stock category pages and company pages. Our new stocks page is a gateway to the new site changes. In addition to our list of stocks, we’ve added links to the major stock categories at the top of the stocks page to let you navigate to specific categories you’re interested in. Our new solar page is an example of our stock category pages. The solar page contains a list of solar stocks and an abbreviated stock quote for those companies. If you click on a company name in the solar stock list, you will be taken to a page specifically for that company. The solar page also contains solar news headlines pertaining to the solar industry and solar investing. The full list of stock categories can be found on our main stocks page – the more popular stock categories can be found in the top navigation of our site which appears on every page. The Ascent Solar is an example of a company page. Here you will find a more detailed stock quote for the company and news headlines for Ascent Solar. We’ve also given our Cleantech News page a new look and made the headlines easier to scan. On this page, you’ll find the news healines pertaining to cleantech as a whole. If you’ve not signed up by RSS or email to our Cleantech News, this is a great way for the headlines in the cleantech world to be brought to you – you’ll find a subscription link at the bottom of the headlines. Over time, we will be expanding the features of these pages and improving upon their usefulness. As alway, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.

The post Site Changes at AltEnergyStocks.com: New Stocks Page, Stock Category Pages and Company Pages appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.

I spent most of May studying for the third CFA Exam, and did little writing.  I now feel prepared for the exam (which is this Saturday.) I expect to be posting regularly again the following week.  Until then, here are a few items I would have mentioned if I had not been focusing on studying.

• An Article: BC Business writer Jeannie Mitchell interviewed me early this spring for an in-depth article looking at Canadian Cleantech firms, published here. I own stock in three of the companies profiled: Xantrex (TSX:XTX or XARXF.PK), VRB Power (TSE:VRB.V or VRBPF.PK), and Carmanah Technologies (CMHXF.pk or TSE:CMH).
• A Presentation: I’ve uploaded my presentation from the NREL seminar.  It’s available here.
• A Favor: I’m looking for a CFA Institute member from Colorado to sponsor me to join the CFA Institute as a regular member (this is separate from passing the exams.)  Since you’ll need to say that my work has direct application to investment management, I thought a reader would be a good person to ask. My email is available on the AltEnergyStocks About page (sorry no direct email link… too much spam) or you can call me at 303 748 0209.

I’m looking forward to getting back to writing next week.  Thanks to Charles (who just entered the CFA program himself.) for all his great posts in May.  I expect I’ll be filling in for him this November.

Tom Konrad

The post Canadian AltE Stocks; Presentation Up; A Favor to Ask appeared first on Alternative Energy Stocks.