Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Should You Invest In Solar Energy

Should You Invest In Solar Energy
I've been hesitant to invest in the subject of my lifework. Turns out this was wise.

However, what about now? Financial advisors generally remain negative. My philosophy has been to only invest when a promising stock is at a trough. Here are two stocks this past year:

SOLRX is a solar energy index and TAN is the Guggenheim Solar ETF (exchange-traded fund). TAN gets more attractive with this chart:

TAN sells today for 19 and was up to 250 in 2008.

"Harris Roen had a useful article in RENEWABLEENERGYWORLD.COM" yesterday:

Energy Trends that Matter for Investors


We read so much about China being the energy glutton, and, indeed, just to the right you see that China is #1 in 2013, while the USA is #2. However, it turns out that per person, we use twice the energy of Europe and four times that of China.

The average annual growth for the renewables to the year 2040 follows:

Note that solar photovoltaic and solar thermal dominate. Another attractive reason why this might be a good a time as any to take these solar stocks more seriously. Note the puniness of wind energy and bullishness of geothermal.

A kind of negative is that the renewables will increase, but the following chart seems to think that nothing much will change in the composition for the next thirty years:

In fact, FOSSIL FUEL use is projected to INCREASE! I thought for the sake of global warming we would be phasing out fossil fuels. Apparently not so. These graphics were prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

Mind you, you should not completely accept everything you read. One of the comments to this article I quote:

"Warning: EIA always understimate RE in favour of oil and nuclear ! DO NOT believe it! These estimates are fake! Totally biased! Please read "Global Cooling" and you'll open your eyes! None sane can believe at such an oil production anymore. Shame on you Harris."

Tomorrow I present a case for global warming.

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Tropical Cyclone Narelle northwest of Australia is now up to 85 MPH, but will increase to Category 4 status. Not sure if any populated area will be impacted:

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