Investing in Renewable Energy by Jeff Siegel

Author:Jeff Siegel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-01-15T22:36:05+00:00

Energy Intelligence

According to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, electricity demand is projected to grow 19 percent nationwide over the next decade, but transmission capacity is expected to grow by only 6 percent.27 And while increasing transmission is certainly one way to reduce strain on overworked grids, improving overall efficiency is proving to be an even more attractive solution for the short term.

It’s not surprising, then, that investment in this category grew from $192 million in 2004 to $476 million in 2006.28 According to Clean Edge, one of the top research and publishing firms in the clean energy sector, energy intelligence was the second most heavily venture-invested sustainable industry in 2006. Clean Edge also noted that “with energy efficiency and demand response high on the list of many utilities as a ‘new’ source of power, energy-intelligence companies may be the new darlings of energy tech.”29 We couldn’t agree more. In fact, we suspect that demand management will be one of the hottest investment opportunities over the next couple of years.

Demand management is really about utilizing strategies that enable the maximization of efficiency and the reduction of loads to avoid or postpone the construction of new power plants.30 And in 2007, we saw this sector pick up a lot of investor attention after two companies, Comverge, Inc. (NASDAQ: COMV) and EnerNoc, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENOC), went public.

Comverge and EnerNoc provide demand-response and energy-management systems. When they went public, alternative-energy investors jumped all over them. Of course, as the following list shows, it didn’t hurt that both were landing deal after deal following their IPOs:

• May 3, 2007—Comverge announced 126 Megawatt Clean Energy Program with Nevada Power.

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