Secure Energy for Prosperity

Investing in a Resource-Constrained World (Part II)

Several commenters touched on water:

There are several water hoarding plays, such as PICO, which is buying land in Nevada and Arizona I believe. Boenning Scattergood publishes excellent research on the water sector, and some of it is freely available. They had a recent good call on Ameron.

I agree with Rogers, however, that when a crisis hits, you'll be lucky if they just hang you. And from both a moral and environmental perspective, this is in NO way a 'socially conscious' investment. On the contrary, free water rights for landowners is resulting in overuse of groundwater around the country and the world. Go look at the situation in Atlanta right now. There has been an ongoing fight between Georgia and Florida over river flows and groundwater for decades. It affected the oyster harvesters in Florida for a while, but now Atlanta is paying the price - you can't fill up your swimming pool there this summer due to water shortages.

One commenter mentioned water ETFs - these are a fools game, created purely for marketing purposes, with no coherent holdings. Many of them hold hoarding plays like PICO, as well as GE and Siemens, which are big in water but water is a small percentage of their business.

Basinwater (BWTR) is a black hole of bad governance and a money-losing product -- although it addresses an interesting market, which is the removal mercury and other contaminants from groundwater. Increased government regulations of such toxins will expand the market here for better capitalized competitors.

The opportunities abroad will be significant. Epure does water treatment in China -- worth taking a look at.