Top Ten Greentech IPO Candidates from Greentech Media

Here's a list of ten potential greentech IPOs coming in late 2010 through 2012:

Bloom Energy has a great story, revenue from the sales of its Bloom Boxes and marquee customers including Cypress, Google, FedEx and San Francisco's SFO Airport. The company's Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) are an alternative to diesel gen-sets in the off-grid world and to the electric grid in the developed world. The fuel cells run on natural gas which, in the view of some, makes the value proposition fragile. But a strong team, veteran investors and a big narrative make this a firm to watch, profitability and value proposition notwithstanding.

Bridgelux has emerged from the pack of LED start-ups with a solid product roadmap...  Read more

India: An Emerging Market for Solar Energy

From a technological point of view, India is an excellent place for the development of solar energy. It gets plenty of sunshine for most parts of the year, with the summer temperatures well in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit in most parts of the country. To the northwest, India has the Thar Desert that has been identified as a feasible spot for the development of solar power, since the area is mostly an arid land and gets plenty of sunlight.

Apart from the solar power generation potential at a large scale, there is plenty of scope for household solar harvesting. This is primarily owing to two reasons – the amount of sunshine received by homes and the presence of flat roofs almost throughout the country. Flat roofs can help tap the solar energy much more efficiently and help homes generate their own power. The per capita energy consumption of India is about 15 times less than the US, which means the household solar energy harvesting can easily power an Indian home. Rooftop solar energy generation is particularly important for a country like India where there is land scarcity and acquisition of huge lands for the development of projects can be a slow and tedious process riddled with bureaucracy.  Read more...

New US Proxy Rules Access a "Win-Win "Says CalPERS

Controversial new rules to facilitate shareholder nominations of directors at US companies have been welcomed by pension funds and corporate governance activists.


The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday approved rules to give shareholders who own 3% of a company’s stock for at least three years the right to have their board nominee included in companies’ proxy materials. The process was prohibitively expensive prior to the ruling.

The long-debated and controversial issue went through in a 3-2 vote. “I have great faith in the collective wisdom of shareholders to determine which competing candidates will best fulfil the responsibilities of serving as a director,” said SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro.

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What GM & Tesla's IPOs Say About Innovation & Expectations

Electric vehicle startup Tesla Motors’ $226 million IPO in June marked the first debut by a car maker on Wall Street since Ford Motor began public trading more than half a century ago. Now two months later, century-old Detroit automaker General Motors, having emerged from government-managed bankruptcy, is gearing up for an IPO of its own and is widely expected to file its prospectus with financial regulators this week for a planned IPO in the fall (shortly before its plug-in Chevy Volt goes on sale).

Despite the fact that GM earned $1.5 billion in its latest second quarter earnings — its biggest profit in six years – and Tesla isn’t expected to turn a profit at least until 2013, the bar for success will be much, much higher for GM than it was for Tesla, say analysts. Read More

Profiting From Corporate Social Responsibility

From the Motley Fool:  Corporate social responsibility is one of the key things a smart investor looks for in a company, Travis Hoium writes. Last year, the best-ranked companies for CSR outperformed the rest of the stock market by 26%, Hoium notes. "As much as I like hugging trees and singing Kumbaya, it doesn't matter much if it doesn't enhance your bottom line," he writes. "Yet even as subjective as CSR may be, there's evidence that it can have a positive impact on your portfolio."
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Mohawk Industries Sustainability Report: Targets 25% Cuts in Energy, Water Use

Mohawk Industries targets 25 percent reductions in energy use, water use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and waste to landfill by 2020, according to the company’s inaugural annual Sustainability report. Read More

Social Funds and BP: How Embarassing...

If you are a shareholder in a so-called socially responsible or sustainable mutual fund, you may also be an owner of BP, the company responsible for the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

When BP's oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20, the company was a major holding of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which calls itself an index of "the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide"... Read more

Range Fuels Begins Biofuels Production in Georgia

Following a delay of nearly two years, cellulosic biofuel company Range Fuels announced that it has finally begun production at its facility in rural Georgia.

The company is producing cellulosic methanol from the initial phase of its first commercial plant near Soperton, Georgia, using non-food biomass... Read more

Blackstone Invests $300 Million in One of India’s Leading Solar PV Companies

US private equity firm Blackstone has decided to invest $300 million in one of the leading solar PV companies in India, Moser Baer (Private) Limited.

Moser Baer (NSE: MOSERBAER) has a diversified portfolio ranging from manufacturing of computer peripherals to fabrications of solar panels. While their computer hardware business is very well established, the company is looking to expand its solar panel fabrication capabilities.
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Private Investment in Green Business Tops $1.6T Since 2007

ST. AUGUSTINE, FL — Private enterprise is investing hundreds of billions every year to grow the green economy, totaling $1,646,719,228,993 in investments since 2007.

That very precise number is the finding of the the latest Green Transition Scoreboard, developed and released yesterday by Ethical Markets. The $1.6 trillion dollars invested in the last three years includes more than $400 billion since the last update, just eight months ago... Read more

Wind Turbines Slated for New York

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey hopes to have five wind towers, each more than 280 feet tall, operating on the west side of New York Harbor within three years, while the Department of Veterans Affairs considers wind turbines on or near its hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn, reports The New York Times. Read More

DailyTech - Duke University Report Claims Solar Energy is Now Cheaper Than Nuclear Power

Duke University has reported that solar energy costs are now cheaper than nuclear energy costs after a "historic crossover" in North Carolina.
The paper on this topic was written by John O. Blackburn, professor of economics at Duke University in North Carolina, and Sam Cunningham, a graduate student at Duke. The paper is titled "Solar and Nuclear Costs - The Historic Crossover," and shows that change in costs on both solar and nuclear energy has finally forced them to meet, and then solar stole the show by becoming the new low-in-price renewable energy resource. Read More