Players in the solar field - both photovoltaic and concentrating - are optimistic that they will achieve parity with coal, currently the lowest cost generating source, within eight years.  They believe two factors will make that happen.   First, the full social costs of coal including primarily a cost for carbon dioxide emissions will come into play.  Secondly costs for solar generation will continue to decline.  But according to a representative of Abengoa, a very large and sophisticated player in solar, the point at which the costs will meet will be …

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Phillips, the European electrical company, is betting large that the ultimate lighting product will be L.E.D.s, not C.F.L.s, a topic I have discussed before.  “Philips is betting the store on the L.E.D. bulbs, which it expects to represent 20 percent of its professional lighting revenue in two years.” But the cost problem has not yet been solved.  L.E.D.s are now mostly found in commercial and industrial operations where experts can judge the long-term ROI, not in residential sites.   Apparently Phillips thinks it can solve this problem within …

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General Electric has demonstrated a new, low cost technology for producing LED lighting.   If it proves successful and competitive in quality, it could have significant impacts on the speed at which LED’s will come to dominate future lighting technologies and at which the vast efficiency improvements of LED’s will reduce the consumption of electricity.  It also might allow G.E. to dominate the LED field and possibly hurt the competitive position of CREE, Inc.  Since CREE stock sells at a high multiple of estimated 2009 earnings, which estimates are coming down, …

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2008 Thus Far: A Preview of Coming Attractions

My concern has been that at some point shortages of oil will cause a falling-stocks, rising-oil phenomenon that will crush my oil related stocks along with the whole market. 2008 has started like that. Oil was up 6.34% as of 2/29 (per the ETF symbol OIL) but stocks were down 8.5% (in terms of the S&P 500 ETF symbol SPY). For oil-related stocks, the falling stock market trumped the rising oil market, as I have expected. IYE, a broad-based oil-stock ETF, was down …

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One of my investment themes is that LED’s will be the dominant lighting technology of the future.  Since LED’s are based on silicon chips and since chip-based products have such a strong history of rapid quality improvement and cost reduction, I think LED’s will become better and better and will cost less and less over time.  Their energy efficiency is already the best and their longevity is also a proven quality. 

One  corollary of the eventual triumph of LED’s is that compact fluorescents are a passing fad.    The problems of CFL’s include …

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