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Strategies & Market Trends : Heinz Blasnik- Views You Can Use -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NOW who wrote (2545)	6/21/2003 6:35:15 PM
From: LLCF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4905

<Certainly alternative forms of energy will one day shine... > Hmmm, interesting... maybe we should come up with some good names to snarf up during the coming equity melt down??? Start an alternative energy thread? DAK

To: NOW who wrote (2545)	6/22/2003 3:27:48 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4905

Any idea how to invest for the long haul with these themes? well, i don't know if it's the right idea, but i have about 26% of my portfolio spread about 50 or 60 oil and gas companies in my shotgun approach to the sector. i am hesitant to make big bets on this or that subsector in particular because this introduces more variables and assumptions than i can keep track of. so i prefer to gain a general exposure throughout energy. Certainly alternative forms of energy will one day shine... i guess a very basic question to ask, regarding alternative energies, is if they're so great, why aren't they more prevalent? some renewable forms of energy, such as windmills, are worthy technologies that will no doubt have increasing market penetration. i doubt anybody'll be driving their car on them. other technologies, like hydrogen, seem like they may be a complete bust since they require more fossil fuel to produce than they generate in energy. at the recent ASPO conference in Paris, the VP of the French Energy Institute dismissed hydrogen, as did a researcher from Daimler-Chrysler. the main direction autos seem to be headed, from an R&D perspective, is greater fuel efficiency. but the market reality in the US is actually a drop in overall MPG among Ford and GM due to increased use of SUVs instead of sedans. Deffeyes goes through most of the alternative energy candidates in his book "Hubbert's Peak". his basic conclusion is that there's nothing that will be ready for prime time at a price point and scale point to avoid the various economic and geopolitical disruptions resulting from peak oil. an argument made in "The Party's Over" is that we need to move to less fuel-consumptive lifestyles, such as by severely reducing car driving and growing our own food. one problem with this, long term, is that they figure the planet can only support 2 billion people without heavy reliance on hydrocarbons (including all the natural gas used to make fertilizer). and of course right now there are some 6 billion of us... this book (Party's Over) is rather interesting in its exploration of how deeply hydrocarbon-dependent our whole physical geography and economic makeup are. for more of a Hunter S. Thompson-style approach to the energy crisis, some might enjoy Kunstler's site. kunstler.com