Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William Marsh who wrote (71)	4/29/2001 8:47:29 PM
From: Return to Sender	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16955

Good idea for a thread. Should have been here sooner. Here are a couple of additional sources of information on alternative energy stocks. First try the Bull Sector's fuel cell list where news on the companies can be found on a daily basis. They have a few you are missing and visa versa: bullsector.com Also the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Investor: h2fc.com There is plenty of evidence that the automotive industry is working towards viable alternative energy vehicles like the Honda Insight: honda2001.com Keep up the good work! RtS

To: William Marsh who wrote (71)	4/29/2001 11:37:14 PM
From: Krowbar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16955

42 volt electrical systems in cars are coming soon, as well as the change to electrical propulsion, but I don't agree with Huber-Mills that the power plants won't change. As autos convert to more and more electrical use it will become apparent that there is no need for mechanical engines to produce the electricity. Fuel cells are inherently simpler and less polluting, and their cost will come down with mass production. The internal combustion engine's days are numbered. Del

To: William Marsh who wrote (71)	4/30/2001 12:59:25 PM
From: Jerry in Omaha	Respond to of 16955

Bill, Congrats on achieving Hot Subjects status! Thanks to the attention, no doubt, it's nice to see some practical minded persons show on up the thread with real portfolio suggestions and practical alternative energy investment tips. Schemers and dreamers. Welcome, y'all. Before getting to your six points I'd like to invite eyeballs to this Salon article on Amory Lovins: salon.com I once had the good fortune for a short time to travel about the midwest with Amory and am glad he's getting national coverage again. Highlighting the ways capitalism itself can lead the conversion to alternative energies Mr. Lovins presents a viable alternative to the issue I argue re the contamination of economics by politics. You wrote: 1. The need for high quality, high reliability power for info and communications tech is driving a decentralization of power generation. These applications are ready to pay higher prices. 2. A substantial portion of the populace will pay a premium (a limited premium) for green power. 3. Certain areas in the world have abundant sources of wind, solar, geothermal or tidal power and no hydrocarbons. It is very much in there interest to promote and subsidize alternative energies. 1. High reliability needs always have existed and in the past have been provided by governmental regulatory processes leading to, at best, oligopolistic and, at worst, monopolistic energy and communication provision. Attempts at deregulation face ongoing trans-economic market distortions caused by the self serving political influences of powerful interests. Deregulation screw-ups in California are a case in point. The move to distributed power is as much a response to the short sighted failures of regulatory transition politics as it is a response to innovations in technology. 2. Where is the economic rationale in paying premium prices for "green power"? That this is done at all is a tribute to political, not economic, forces. 3. Certain areas of the world have no food either. Is it in the interests of the political elite in those countries to provide for adequate distribution of food? No. And the same political mentality manifested in selfish personal aggrandizement by political leaders will stymie the exploitation of "green power" potential as well. 4. Look at the Huber-Mills Powercosm material. They say that automobiles will be transformed not by fuel cells or any new power plant, but by a conversion of the power train and all functions to electrical rather than mechnical devices. Each wheel, for instance, will be driven by its own electrical motor supplied with energy from a hydrocarbon generator. This process, they say, has started and is inevitable. It allows the cars to be precisely controlled and is a great deal more efficient as well as safer. 5. Third world cities are dying from exhaust fumes generated by 2 stroke engines. 6. Energy costs and taxes are much higher in Europe than the US. I do agree that the US is unlikely to lead in the conversion, though they seem to be leading in technology. 4. The energy to power even the most efficient vehicle has to come from somewhere and until we can crack water at super efficiencies that source is likely to be extracted hydrocarbons. And that benefits who? We may be able to shift from gasoline to hydrogen to distributed power, but only when political forces insure that real economic power currently enjoyed by extractive industries will not, itself, be distributed. 5. See point above about starving people with inadequate food distribution. Choke or starve. What's the difference? 6. And why are energy costs so much higher in Europe? Betcha it's not because of real economic considerations. You make my point: economics has become fungible, in Europe and here, subsumed by power aggregation, not distribution, politics. Bill, don't miss my point. I'm not being pessimistic, just realistic. When economic arguments are paraded around to show why conversions to alternative energy sources make little or no sense, we're just being fed a crock of shit. Just the same when economic arguments are used to justify a re-emergence of nuclear power where so many real costs have been politically externalized as with research subsidies, de-commissioning expenses and deferment of the costs of radioactive waste disposal lasting for thousands of years. Concentration of economic power subverts the distributed political power of a democracy by subsuming the political process itself. Part of the hope of supporters of alternative energy, which I consider myself to be, is that distributed power sources somehow will subvert the concentration of economic power thus restoring effective political power to its distributed sources -- the citizenry. Let's not hold our collective breaths. Jerry in Omaha