Poor performance for cleantech stocks this year may continue in 2013 despite some silver linings during 2012, a leading analyst and a panel of VCs recently warned.
Kevin Genieser, Managing Director and Global Head of Clean Technology Banking at Morgan Stanley, said that cleantech equities had underperformed this year despite a bright start to 2012 with three IPOs in the sector. Keep reading →
The major investment banks remain heavily engaged in the energy markets, hedging fuel prices and even producing energy for their own or their clients’ benefit. But Brad Hintz, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. research analyst who tracks the investment banking and securities industries, told Breaking Energy that the big banks are also positioning themselves for potential regulatory changes which will force the launch of a national carbon-trading market.
“Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays are all major energy traders,” Hintz observed. “They are the banking giants in that space, and they – along with the commodities exchanges – provide the risk management services needed to balance demand and supply in the global energy markets.” Keep reading →
Global investment in sustainable and cleantech businesses has softened during the last couple of years, and there are multiple reasons for the trend. In the US, an investment banker says, one of the key reasons is that government subsidies are scaring away capital. But the banker has detected a growth area that could become a significant driver for clean-tech and sustainability deals.
Most of the major investment banks don’t have stand-alone sustainability practices. But there’s a fair number of middle-market banking firms focused on clean tech and sustainability. Keep reading →
No-one could accuse AMEE of having modest goals.
Since 2007, the East London-based clean-technology company has been accumulating energy and environmental information from governments, companies and non-governmental organizations around the world with the goal of becoming the leading global source of data that can be used to calculate corporate carbon footprints or supply-chain energy consumption. Keep reading →
It is the best of times for renewable energy project developers and it is the worst of times for renewable energy project developers, and the difference lies in a single contract.
The existence of a signed power purchase agreement (PPA) between the developer of a renewable energy generation project and an established utility marks the divide between a premium-valuation market for renewable assets and a deeply discounted valuation in an overcrowded market. Keep reading →
An 11th hour withdrawal from a long-anticipated initial public offering could be a potentially damaging blow for a cleantech startup trying to raise additional capital from the public markets.
But BrightSource, the concentrating solar power startup with 9 GW of projects in the pipeline, has not ruled out another attempt at a public launch. Keep reading →
Long-term shifts in electric sector demand from coal to natural gas are under way and will drive gas prices higher than expected this year and to $4 per million Btu in 2013, says a veteran analyst.
Record gas use by electric utilities, combined with production cuts from drillers stung by recent low prices, have combined to start an upward pricing trend, says Teri Viswanath of BNP Paribas Commodity Markets Strategy Group, in a May 11 market commentary. Keep reading →
The burgeoning US market for leased residential solar systems got some extra help on Thursday with the launch of a new fund to increase financing options for solar installers and their customers.
The fund, named MySolar, was created by Clean Power Finance, an online marketplace for solar financing; MS Solar Solutions Corp, a unit of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, and Main Street Power Company, a developer of solar systems and provider of power-purchase agreements. Keep reading →
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on February 17, 2012 in New York City. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 46 points to close at its highest level since May 2008.
Growing awareness of the ways data, technology and the power of investors can transform industries has lent new purpose to the Wall Street green movement and broadened the sector’s appeal to areas the original environmental investors might never have recognized. Keep reading →
Will financial system regulatory reforms make energy price hedging costly – or impossible?
That was the question experts grappled with – and disagreed over – at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) meeting in Washington, DC this week. Keep reading →
Jared Anderson
Conway Irwin
Peter Gardett