Alternative Energy

Investing in Alternative Energy Stocks

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:35:00 +0000

Alternative energy stock portfolios are a great part of a modern investor's financial plan, due to the fac that there is so much upward potential. These make excellent long term growth investment vehicles, and the money put into them by you, the investor, serves to further the cause of implementing the alternative energy power sources that we need as we sail into the 21st century and beyond.

Analysts predict that by 2013, the alternative energy industry will be a $13 billion dollar industry in today's dollars. This figure bespeaks an enormous return on investment. Indeed, if you were to invest in a start-up alternative energy company, you might find yourself having invested in the next Microsoft in terms of return on investment. People are fed up with the rising costs of gasoline—while this alone is not sufficient understanding of the need for developing alternative energy sources, it is a factor which can act as a market maker—meaning for you that investments in alternative energy companies makes a lot of financial sense.

However, this does not mean that you don't first want to do some careful research into alternative energy stocks, perhaps with the help of a financial planner. “A few alternative-energy companies are going after the right markets but that doesn't mean you should go buy every name in the sector. Investors need to be cautious about chasing the stocks,” says Sanjay Shrestha, who is an analyst at First Albany Capital. And if you are an investor, then you know that the problem in this sector is that nearly every single one of the major players in the alternative energy for profit game are start-ups or in the very early stages of growth. This means for you that they have relatively minuscule (even if rapidly growing) sales, and no expected profitability in the near term or history of earnings for you to be able to research. This can lead to some bubbling, as with what happened to the dot-com industry at the turn of the 21st century. Bubbling in the stock market is not a good thing for investors.

Ananlysts and financial planners can play a crucial role in helping you get it right with alternative energy investing. “We don't play around in the tiny cap stocks that have technology and not much revenue—the 'hope' stocks. We invest in companies with clear cash-generation plans in place,” are the words of Ben walker, who is a senior portfolio manager at the Gartmore Global Utilities fund out of London.

Still, the outlook is very positive overall—and healthy. “It is good to see that the number of renewable energy funds and the amount of money flowing into these funds is increasing,” according to chief executive of UK alternative elecricity supplier Good Energy Juliet Davenport. “The renewable generation market is at an important stage in its development; it needs the continued support of the consumer, investor and government to ensure that it reaches its potential and really starts to make a difference to climate change.”

How to Seek Grants for Alternative Energy R & D

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:34:00 +0000

If you are someone who wishes to begin researching and developing alternative energy technologies and you would want to be set up as a not-for-profit organization or entity, you will want to look into getting government grants, on both the state and the federal levels. Government grants for alternative energy research and development have been highly touted by politicians on local, state, and federal levels in recent years, all the way up to the President himself. This is due to the fact that we now recognize as a society that we need to seek out and develop alternative energy sources to those of the fossil fuels that we presently depend upon, as these fuels are not only slowly but surely running out (at least cheap access to digging them up is running out), but also damaging to the environment and air quality.

There is a fairly vast array of government grant programs available for you to check into. The great and most important thing to keep in mind about a government grant is that it's essentially free money. It is not a loan, you don't pay any interest, and you don't ever have to give the money back. However, qualifying for these grants, as you might imagine with something involving the government and free money, has quite a lot of restrictions attached to it. Not only is qualification based on purpose and need in the eyes and opinions of government bureaucrats, but just because you qualify does not mean that you necessarily get the grant. As Marshall McLuen put it, “the medium is the message”. The fact of the matter is that it is typically easier to apply for and qualify to receive a business loan—but then, that would not be free money, that would be something you owed to someone, and with interest on top.

There are professional grant writers who know how to write proposals in such a way that they get around the heavy load of restrictions set up by the government, and you might need to resort to one of these. Even governments employ professional grant writers to seek money from other branches of the government, such as a country government needing funding from the state or the federal government. These people also keep abreast of what government grants are still or newly available and what ones have been removed from the table. It's an intricate web, so one must not get tangled up in when seeking needed financial backing for alternative energy research and development. In fact, it is so complex that in the last decade or so the ranks of profession writers, as both individuals and as entire companies, have swelled. It is a profitable business—and this can make it fraught with illegal actions and controversial claims.

Nevertheless, each year there are many thousands of grants awarded throughout the United States for the purpose of helping the public. And again, with the government endorsement of grant money to be given to alternative energy researchers, you could very well get what you seek.

Government Grants for Alternative Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:32:00 +0000

In his State of the Union Address for 2007, President George W. Bush called for a 22% increase in federal grants for research and development of alternative energy. However, in a speech he gave soon after, he said to those assembled, I recognize that there has been some interesting mixed signals when it comes to funding.

Where the mixed signals were coming from concerned the fact that at the same time the President was calling on more government backing for alternative energy research and development, the NREL—the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of Golden, Colardo—was laying off workers and contractors left and right. Apparently, the Laboratory got the hint, because soon after the State of the Union Address, everyone was re-hired. The second speech of the President's was actually given at the NREL. There is almost unanimous public support for the federal backing through research grants, tax breaks, and other financial incentives of research and development of alternative energy sources.

The NREL is the nation's leading component of the National Bioenergy Center, a “virtual” center that has no central bricks and mortar office. The NREL's raison d'etre is the advancing of the US Department of Energy's and the United States' alternative energy objectives. The laboratory's field researchers and staff scientists, in the words of Laboratory Director Dan Arvizu, “support critical market objectives to accelerate research from scientific innovations to market-viable alternative energy solutions. At the core of this strategic direction are NREL's research and technology development areas. These areas span from understanding renewable resources for energy, to the conversion of these resources to renewable electricity and fuels, and ultimately to the use of renewable electricity and fuels in homes, commercial buildings, and vehicles.” The federally-backed Laboratory directly helps along the United States' objectives for discovering renewable alternative fuels for powering our economy and our lifestyles.

The NREL is set up to have several areas of expertise in alternative energy research and development. It spearheads research and development efforts into renewable sources of electricity; these would include such things as solar power, wind power, biomass power, and geothermal power. It also spearheads research and development of renewable fuels for powering our vehicles such as biomass and biodiesel fuels and hydrogen fuel cells. Then, it seeks to develop plans for integrated system enginnering; this includes bringing alternative energy into play within buildings, electrical grids and delivery systems, and transportation infrastructures. The Laboratory is also set up for strategic development and analysis of alternative energy objectives through the forces of economics, market analysis and planning, and alternative energy investment portfolios structurings.

The NREL is additionally equipped with a Technology Transfer Office. This Office supports laboratory scientists and engineers in the practical application of and ability to make a living from their expertise and the technologies they develop. NREL's research and development staff and its facilities are recognized for their remarkable prowess by private industry, which is reflected in the hundreds of collaborative projects and licensed technologies that the Laboratory now has with both public and private partners.

Geothermal Power as Alternative Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:31:00 +0000

We should be doing everything possible to develop geothermal energy technologies. This is a largely untapped area of tremendous alternative energy potential, as it simply taps the energy being naturally produced by the Earth herself. Vast amounts of power are present below the surface crust on which we move and have our being. All we need do is tap into it and harness it.

At the Earths' core, the temperature is 60 times greater than that of water being boiled. The tremendous heat creates pressures that exert themselves only a couple of miles below us, and these pressures contain huge amounts of energy. Superheated fluids in the form of magma, which we see the power and energy of whenever there is a volcanic eruption, await our tapping. These fluids also trickle to the surface as steam and emerge from vents. We can create our own vents, and we can create out own containment chambers for the magma and convert all of this energy into electricity to light and heat our homes. In the creation of a geothermal power plant, a well would be dug where there is a good source of magma or heated fluid. Piping would be fitted down into the source, and the fluids forced to the surface to produce the needed steam. The steam would turn a turbine engine, which would generate the electricity.

There are criticisms of geothermal energy tapping which prevent its being implemented on the large scale which it should be. Critics say that study and research to find a resourceful area is too costly and takes up too much time. Then there is more great expense needed to build a geothermal power plant, and there is no promise of the plant turning a profit. Some geothermal sites, once tapped, might be found to not produce a large enough amount of steam for the power plant to be viable or reliable. And we hear from the environmentalists who worry that bringing up magma can bring up potentially harmful materials along with it.

However, the great benefits of geothermal energy would subsume these criticisms if only we would explore it more. The fact that geothermal energy is merely the energy of the Earth herself means it does not produce any pollutants. Geothermal energy is extremely efficient—the efforts needed to channel it are minimal after a site is found and a plant is set up. Geothermal plants, furthermore, do not need to be as large as electrical plants, giant dams, or atomic energy facilities—the environment would thus be less disrupted. And, needless to say, it is an alternative form of energy—using it would mean we become that much less dependent on oil and coal. Perhaps most importantly of all—we are never, ever going to run out of geothermal energy, and it is not a commodity that would continuously become more expensive in terms of real dollars as time passes, since it is ubiquitous. Geothermal energy would be, in the end, very cheap, after investigation and power plant building costs are recouped.

Developing Nuclear Power as Alternative Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Many researchers believe that harnessing the power of the atom in fission reactions is the most significant alternative energy resource that we have, for the fact of the immense power that it can generate.

Nuclear power plants are very “clean-burning” and their efficiency is rather staggering. Nuclear power is generated at 80% efficiency, meaning that the energy produced by the fission reactions is almost equal to the energy put into producing the fission reactions in the first place. There is not a lot of waste material generated by nuclear fission—although, due to the fact that there is no such thing as creating energy without also creating some measure of waste, there is some. The concerns of people such as environmentalists with regards to using nuclear power as an alternative energy source center around this waste, which is radioactive gases which have to be contained.

The radiation from these gases lasts for an extraordinarily long time, so it can never be released once contained and stored. However, the volume of this waste gas produced by the nuclear power plants is small in comparison to how much NOx (nitrous oxide—that is, air pollution) is caused by one day's worth of rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles. While the radiation is certainly the more deadly by far of the two waste materials, the radiation is also by far the easier of the two to contain and store. In spite of the concerns of the environmentalists, nuclear power is actually environmentally friendly alternative energy, and the risk of the contained radiation getting out is actually quite low. With a relatively low volume of waste material produced, it should not be a difficult thing at all for storage and disposal solutions for the long term to be developed as technology advances.

The splitting of an atom releases energy in the forms of both heat and light. Atomic power plants control the fission reactions so that they don't result in the devastating explosions that are brought forth in atomic and hydrogen bombs. There is no chance of an atomic power plant exploding like a nuclear bomb, as the specialized conditions and the pure Plutonium used to unleash an atomic bomb's vicious force simply don't exist inside a nuclear power plant. The risk of a “meltdown” is very low. Although this latter event has happened a couple of times, when one considers that there are over 430 nuclear reactors spread out across 33 nations, and that nuclear reactors have been in use since the early 1950s, these are rare occurrences, and the events of that nature which have taken place were the fault of outdated materials which should have been properly kept up. Indeed, if nuclear energy could become a more widely accepted form of alternative energy, there would be little question of their upkeep being maintained. Currently, six states in America generate more than half of all their electrical energy needs through nuclear power, and the media are not filled with gruesome horror stories of the power plants constantly having problems.

Consultants on Alternative Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:23:00 +0000

The alternative energy consultants tell us that the transition from the petroleum-driven economy and society will not be a smooth one, on the whole. The amount of new technologies and infrastructures that need to be developed and built is staggering—even as Germany achieves powering 10% of the entire nation through the use of wind turbines and solar arrays, even as corporation after corporation is springing up, helped by various governments' tax breaks and rebate incentives, to drive forward the alternative energy mission. We have lain dormant on alternative energy on the grand scale for so long that we now have to scramble to play catch-up as access to cheap oil lurks ever closer to being a thing of the past.

Consultants on alternative energy also tell us that we need multilateral, international efforts in concert with one another in the direction of getting away from the heavy—almost total—dependence on fossil fuels. They are poised to become too expensive, burning them is polluting the atmosphere, and digging for them is disrupting the natural environment. We have about 30 years left of reasonably cheap oil and gas—and consultants say that within 20 years beyond that point, we had better be at least 90% independent of them. Unfortunately, at the present time the world is mostly not acting as if this is the case. The thirst for oil is growing, not slaking, and it is growing faster now than it did even in the 1970s.

One of the major problems of transition, the consultants point out, is that higher oil and gas prices stimulate the economy (This flies in the face of what many energy so-called “experts” and many members of the public believe, but the fact is that oil and gas are found and manufactured and transported by huge corporations who employ multitudes of staff workers and contractors; and from their huge profits their stocks remain lucrative on Wall Street.). Alternative, or “green” energy has to become more marketplace friendly, more profitable to investors and would-be employers. Wall Street does not like change; so there is resistance to this much-needed economic transition. It is because of this that many consultants are saying that we need an international, governments-backed initiative put into place; we are told that we cannot expect the new economy to spring forth overnight, all clean and polished and perfected, from the black ashes of the fossil fuel economy phoenix.

It is most imperative that the wealthy, big-production nations such as the US, Japan, Western Europe, and others be the ones to spearhead the effort to get off of the fossil fuel dependence. Smaller, poorer nations are very simply never going to achieve the level of energy production through coal and oil that these nations have—for by the time they would be ready to, the cheap access to the fossil fuels will be gone, and they will never be able to sustain their newly-risen civilizations at that time as we have been able to do. The time for transition from black to green is now.

Biofuels as Alternative Sources of Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:18:00 +0000

Biofuels are produced by converting organic matter into fuel for powering our society. These biofuels are an alternative energy source to the fossil fuels that we currently depend upon. The biofuels umbrella includes under its aegis ethanol and derivatives of plants such as sugar cane, as well aS vegetable and corn oils. However, not all ethanol products are designed to be used as a kind of gasoline. The International Energy Agency (IEA) tells us that ethanol could comprise up to 10 percent of the world's usable gasoline by 2025, and up to 30 percent by 2050. Today, the percentage figure is two percent.

However, we have a long way to go to refine and make economic and practical these biofuels that we are researching. A study by Oregon State University proves this. We have yet to develop biofuels that are as energy efficient as gasoline made from petroleum. Energy efficiency is the measure of how much usable energy for our needed purposes is derived from a certain amount of input energy. (Nothing that mankind has ever used has derived more energy from output than from what the needed input was. What has always been important is the conversion—the end-product energy is what is useful for our needs, while the input energy is just the effort it takes to produce the end-product.) The OSU study found corn-derived ethanol to be only 20% energy efficient (gasoline made from petroleum is 75% energy efficient). Biodiesel fuel was recorded at 69% energy efficiency. However, the study did turn up one positive: cellulose-derived ethanol was charted at 85% efficiency, which is even higher than that of the fantastically efficient nuclear energy.

Recently, oil futures have been down on the New York Stock Exchange, as analysts from several different countries are predicting a surge in biofuel availability which would offset the value of oil, dropping crude oil prices on the international market to $40 per barrel or thereabouts. The Chicago Stock Exchange has a grain futures market which is starting to “steal” investment activity away from the oil futures in NY, as investors are definitely expecting better profitability to start coming from biofuels. Indeed, it is predicted by a consensus of analysts that biofuels shall be supplying seven percent of the entire world's transportation fuels by the year 2030. One certain energy markets analyst has said, growth in demand for diesel and gasoline may slow down dramatically, if the government subsidizes firms distributing biofuels and further pushes to promote the use of eco-friendly fuel.

There are several nations which are seriously involved in the development of biofuels.

There is Brazil, which happens to be the world's biggest producer of ethanols derived from sugars. It produces approximately three and a half billion gallons of ethanol per year.

The United States, while being the world's greatest oil-guzzler, is already the second largest producer of biofuels behind Brazil.

The European Union's biodiesel production capacity is now in excess of four million (British) tonnes. 80 percent of the EU's biodiesel fuels are derived from rapeseed oil; soybean oil and a marginal quantity of palm oil comprise the other 20 percent.

Alternative Energy from the Ocean

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:48:00 +0000

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), which had been developed by the French engineer Jacques D'Arsonval in 1881. However, at the time of this writing Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii is home to the only operating experimental OTEC plant on the face of the earth. OTEC is a potential alternative energy sources that need to be funded and explored more than now. A big hurdle to get over with OTEC implementation on the broad practical and useful level of cost. Difficult to get the cost to a reasonable level because of the process now used to drive OTEC. Ocean thermal energy will be very clean burning and not add to air pollution. However, because no longer will need to set up with the technology at this time, OTEC plants would have the ability to disrupt and possibly damage the local environment.

There are three types of OTEC.

"Closed Cycle OTEC" uses a low boiling point liquid such as, for example, propane to act as an intermediate fluid. The OTEC plant pumps the warm sea water into the reaction space and boils the intermediate fluid. This results in the liquid from the steam turbine from pushing the machine, which produces electricity. With steam is then cooled down in the water by placing the cold sea.

"Open Cycle OTEC" is not that different from closed cycling, except in the Open Cycle there is no intermediate fluid. Sea water itself is the driver of the turbine engine in this OTEC format. Warm sea water found on the sea surface is changed to low-pressure vapor under the constraint of a vacuum. The low pressure vapor is released and is focused in the area have the power to encourage the turbine. To create a cool steam and desalinated water for human consumption, the more cold water from the sea is added to the steam generated sufficient electricity.

"Hybrid Cycle OTEC" really only a theory for a while. He tried to explain how we can make maximum use of the heat energy from sea water. Actually there are two sub-theories to the theory of Hybrid Cycling. The first involves the closed cycling to generate electricity. Electricity is in turn used to create the environment required to open vacuum cycling. The second component is the integration of two open cyclings as twice the amount of desalinated, potable water, are made with just one open cycle.

In addition to used to generate electricity, a closed cycle OTEC plant can be utilized for treating chemicals. OTEC plants, both open cycling and close cycling type, can also be used for pumping up cold deep sea water which then can be used for refrigeration and air. In addition, during the moderation period when the sea water is around the factory, which covered that can be used for projects and marine fish such as farming. Not clear enough array of products and services that we can derive from this alternative energy source.

Alternative Energy - Build a Windmill

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:43:00 +0000

These days, people have more and more trends in ecological living. Starting with food, plastic bags or the supplier of energy, they all slowly go back to what will be used for decades, even centuries ago. Why? Because we realize that there is no taste like fresh tomatoes just picked from our garden, or the remnants that are not just happen, and will be larger and larger as the days pass, or that all of the energy industry caused so much trouble for our planet, even the weather changed for the worse.

Now, we can do something about all this? Unfortunately, most of the changes that have taken centuries to the planet we are irreversible, but what we can and must do is to ensure that these changes will not cause ecological disaster to the Earth.

We can start using paper bags, and avoiding chemical-filled food, and of course widely used as an alternative energy that we can. There are several alternative energy, and perhaps the most famous is generated by the sun or wind. Let us see why we should build a helicopter and use it as a source of energy (we all know that windmills are the person who turned the wind into mechanical energy and electrical energy).

Starting with the 9 th century, many farmers began to build a helicopter to use for grinding grain, beatings, land or water drainage. Unfortunately, but surely, starting with the industrial revolution, with the windmills replaced steam and internal combustion engines, and people even began to forget how to build a helicopter. That was the beginning of all the changes our planet is facing.

Fortunately, and hopefully not too late, people realize that this is all that evolution happened in the wrong way, and what do they do? They return to the old tendency to use wind energy as a kind of ecological energy.

The sad part is that not all people know how to build a helicopter again. It's also not practical to build a helicopter to many areas filled. However, for rural communities, this will be the best option.

Authorities must make more efforts in getting big founds to develop and implement windmill systems, to provide the majority of people use energy. There are countries such as California, for going green is one of the priorities, and they must be a model for the rest of the world. For example, they have workshops where they teach farmers how to build a helicopter. They also provide credit to enable them to build a helicopter and pay later.

Let's take for example the Netherlands, where you drive for miles and all you see is a field of windmills. They do not look great? This is what we need to see everywhere, in all countries. This is what our planet needs. No more gas, but this is 100% pollution-free high-technology machinery.

For each, to build a helicopter may be a big business, but for the community is not the same. Some people can build a helicopter and a variety of benefits. We must open our eyes to see and think of the green before too late.

You can easily make your own Windmill for very least cost you haven't dreamed ever. Check Earth4Energy

Alternative Energy for the Home

noreply@blogger.com (Typhoon) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:09:00 +0000

The trend toward homes that are powered by alternative energy sources, ranging from wind turbines and solar collection cells to hydrogen fuel cells and biomass gases, is one that must continue in the 21st century and beyond. We need more energy independent, and not have to rely on the supply of fossil fuels from unstable nations who are often hostile to us and our interests. But even beyond this factor, we as individuals need to obtain "off-grid" and also have to stop being so dependent on government lobbying giant oil corporations who, while they are not really involved in any conspiracy disguised, however, have a stranglehold on people when it comes to heating their homes (and if not through oil, then heat usually supplied by the network-driven electricity, another stranglehold).

As Remi Wilkinson, Senior Analyst with Carbon Free, puts it, inevitably, the growth of distributed generation will lead to the restructuring of the retail electricity market and the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. The power providers may have to diversify their business to offset the revenue lost through microgeneration energy at home. She referred to the findings of a group of UK analysts, herself included among them, who call themselves free of carbon emissions. Carbon Free has been studying the growing trend toward alternative sources of energy used by households in England and the West. This trend is being driven by ever more government recommendation and sometimes backing of alternative energy research and development, the rising cost of oil and other fossil fuels, concerns about environmental degradation, and want to be independent energy. Carbon Free concludes that, assuming that energy prices remain at their current level or rise, microgeneration (meeting all of the home energy needs by installing alternative energy technology such as panels solar or wind turbines) will become the power supply to the house what the Internet has become a home communications and data collection, and ultimately this will have profound effects on business of energy supply companies.

Free carbon analysis also show that energy companies have jumped into the game and try to take advantage of microgeneration to their own advantage for opening new markets for themselves. Carbon Free cites the example of electricity companies (in the United Kingdom) reported that they are seriously researching and developing ideas for new geothermal energy facilities, as these companies see geothermal energy production as a very profitable wave of the future. Another conclusion of Carbon Free is that solar energy hot water heating technology is an effective technology for reducing the costs of water heating source in the long term, although it is initially quite expensive to install. However, solar energy still is not profitable for companies as they require too much in the way of specialized plumbing to implement solar energy hot water heating. Finally, carbon free tells us that installing wind turbines is an efficient way to reduce the cost of electricity generated from the same time, be more independent. However, again this is a very expensive to be installed, and companies would do well to begin slashing their prices on these devices or may be losing market share.