Mark Henwood

Solar Investment: Epic Correction Leads to Depressed Sector with Plenty of Potential

You can visit www.caminoenergy.com/s... and see a complete list of the ETFs available in this space and their returns. The broad based ETFs have all kinds of stuff in them that may or may not be decent strategies in sustainable energy. I seen no reason why these ETF improve a Fama/French type index portfolio and I don't use them.

The sector specific ETFs breakdown into the the "Wind" ETFs and the Solar ETFs. The Wind ETFs also contain non-wind names because there aren't enough pure play wind companies to form an ETF. There are enough to form a Renewable Electricity ETF, but just barely.

On the Solar side the two ETFs are roughly equivalent. That said, with a little more work you can look at the names in the ETF and potentially make a better selection then the ETF's index rules. That is the course I have taken.

On Nov 02 05:12 PM paultaut wrote:

> Agree. The problem, as I see it, is the same as the Junior Gold miners
> face. So buying a basket of solar companies is the route to go, as
> you have done.
>
> Would an ETF like Cleanenergy suffice or do you prefer to use a rifle
> vs shotgun approach?

LDK Solar Has Caught My Attention

add JASO

Morningstar Gets an ETF Clue. Huzzah!

These two ETF providers have definitely overreached with a wind-only ETF. There are only 12 pure play wind companies traded that have reasonable market cap, greater than 50% of their business in wind and met other criteria needed to form an ETF. Until GE, E.ON and the like spin out their wind business investing in these ETFs is like buying congolomerates or utilities.

Solar Rises 10.8%, Renewable Elec & Biofuels Up Also (Week Ending 5/16)

User 190552 - Thanks for catching the oversight. I check SOLF's SEC filings and verified that the analysts' estimates are reported in RMB (CNY). Correcting for this and using Friday's values SolarFun's current year PE is 32.2 and its 09PE is 19.5.

Mesa Power Orders 1,000 MW of Wind Turbines

1000 MW, not bad, equivalent to a CC or two. I'm sure the PTC will enhance the project return so of course it's "necessary". The reality is there are limited choices for new generation at scale and each has issues.

Nuclear - cost, public opposition, siting, waste disposal, incredibly long lead times.

Coal - lots of emissions, siting problems, transmission

Gas fired CC - great technology, cost tied to gas and hence oil, still cranks out CO2

Gas peakers - no big problems since they don't run much, good thing with intermittent stuff like wind and solar


Coal gas - uses coal, costs are huge, still kinda R&D

Wind (grid level) - works, not very costly, needs some transmission but this is getting done in some places like CA. Like utilities can rate base the transmission so why wouldn't they be all for it.

Solar (grid level) - cost and technology still being worked on, siting shouldn't be too bad, some transmission will need to be built, has potential

Solar (inside the meter) - costly but no siting issues so its getting a lot of play, still small quantity-wise in the big scheme. But easy enough to do that SCE is piling on the bandwagon to rate-base a couple of hundred MWs of rooftop solar at some huge cost......smart for their investors.

Biomass - resource constrained, but will get built where there are resources (if not already built)

Hydro - resource constrained and too painful environmentally.

Geothermal - the good stuff is resource constrained, will get build if not already built.

So wind looks good, PTC or not since something has to get built.

And the storage thing, that can be address progressively and later. The US has installed close to 1,000,000 MW (100,000 MW in WECC, 80,000 or so in ERCOT, and the rest in the EI) of capacity, plenty to dispatch around a little wind and solar for a long time.

Only Renewables Gain Once Again (Week Ending 5/2)

The indices are at caminoenergy.com You should review the "Products" tab to see the various items that are available.

A Look at Claymore's Solar Energy ETF

VanEck has a Solar EFT in registration. Since the universe of companies is limited the ETFs will be essentially the same. I hope their offering has a lower cost than Claymore's 65 BP.

Catch a TAN with Claymore's New Solar ETF

There is no mystery in selecting companies to participate in a solar index. I've been tracking a PurePlay(tm) Solar index since mid-2007 and all but one of the companies in the Claymore index are in my index. I exclude MEMC (WFR) because I calculate its exposure to solar is currently just 25% and doesn't meet my criteria as a PurePlay(tm) company. I also include some additional companies but that isn't the point of this post.

I expect the VanEck index to be substantially the same group as Claymore's, maybe with some slightly differences in weights. So the real difference is going to be the expense ratio and I hope investors reward the provider with the lowest cost.

So, is VanEck going to come out lower than the 65 BP Claymore charges?

Walter Nasdeo, Ardour Capital, Discusses Alternative Energy Stocks, Part II

You might take note that VanEck has filed for a solar ETF using an Ardour index.

The Week in Sustainable Energy Stocks (Week Ending 3/7)

We track 13 geothermal stocks including all the names you mentioned. We include Calpine in the geothermal search but we don't consider it to be a sustainable energy company - the last time I looked it had 25,000 MW of gas fired combined cycle generation and about 1,000 MW of geothermal. Two of the companies, Ormat and Geodynamics, are included in our Renewable Electricity index.

The Week in Sustainable Energy Stocks (Week Ending 2/22)

I still compute an ethanol only number - it is off 25.2% YTD versus -17.3% for Biofuels (YTD = 2/29/08). Biofuels consists of 9 ethanol and 7 non-ethanol companies and the non-ethanol companies have provided some diversity as shown in the return numbers.