Category Archives: Green Alpha Advisors
Green Alpha Advisors’ mission is to deliver shareholder value earned in the critical and necessary process of balancing the world economy and Earth’s environment. Driven by the transition to eco-efficiency required to provide economic, energy and environmental security, Green Alpha Advisors is a conduit of capital into companies representing the Next Economy™. Next Economy companies are market leaders responding to the challenges presented by a warming, increasingly populous, carbon-and-resource-constrained world. Through technology and innovation, carefully selected portfolios of these companies deliver strategic growth through opportunities in transportation, communications, commerce, infrastructure, materials, energy, agriculture and water. Articles l Homepage
2013: Green Economy Inflection Point?
There are a few truths that make the fundamental case that investing in the emerging next economy is the clearest path to long term competitive portfolio performance. First, innovation – meaning improving economic output without increasing material or capital inputs – always wins. This is simply how capitalism works, money chasing the best ideas, and [...]
Climate Denailists: You Have Won Nothing
Yesterday (August 1st2012), in separate but strikingly similar events, those who deny that climate change is real and say climate science is a conspiracy were told that they could declare victory. First, the U.S. Senate, during its first hearing on global warming in almost three years, was informed by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) that global [...]
Why We Need More Energy in the Economy
Preface: As per my usual, this post is more or less a narrative, and is definitely not math-centric. But, still, nothing quite conveys the stark reality of a thing like its governing equation. So, two of those found their way in here, but both are short and explained in English. With that, let’s look at [...]
Why Tariffs on Chinese Solar Hurt Everyone
The United States Department of Commerce yesterday, and of all things at the behest of a German-owned company, SolarWorld AG, imposed extreme tariffs on China-made solar panels and modules of between 31% and 250%, making them much less affordable for U.S. consumers. Commerce took the additional extraordinary step of making the tariffs retroactive for 90 [...]
Green Alpha® Next Economy Index’s 2011 Peformance
In 2011, after three years of operations, our flagship portfolio, the Green Alpha® Next Economy Index (or GANEX) saw its first year of losses and benchmark underperformance. Our portfolios have experienced volatility from the beginning, and as we have now seen, volatility can and does move prices rapidly in both directions, both up and down. [...]
Is the Chevy Volt a Failure? $GM
We’re within a year of the launch of GM’s flagship electric vehicle (EV), the Chevy Volt, and we’re already seeing detractors call it a failure (e.g. “Revenge of the Internal Combustion Engine“) and begin using it as evidence that the entire EV premise won’t work. This outcome was predictable, not because EVs are conceptually flawed, [...]
The Demand Side of Solar
Solar energy’s critics love to discuss reasons photovoltaic (PV) solar energy is a bad investment. Some go so far as to say that solar power does not even work, others talk about an oversupply of PV modules on the world market, and tell us that this “glut” proves solar will fail as an industry and [...]
Koch Brothers: Time to Practice What You Preach
The famous Tea Party backers and right-wing libertarian ideologues the Koch brothers, owners of Koch Industries, a huge fossil-fuel conglomerate, directly and through their network of think tanks and “grass roots” organizations, espouse an “America loving” set of policies that loves free markets and hates regulation. And their words at times almost sound convincing, and [...]
Why There is No Apocalypse Happening in the Solar Industry
The hysteria around recent solar industry announcements that in general profit margins are narrowing are, as usual with all things solar recently, completely overblown. “Is This A Death Spiral for Solar Companies?” might be my favorite histrionic headline. Yes, narrowing margins are making life difficult for smaller, higher cost producers. But this is and has [...]