Any of you invest in renewable energy stocks? I can see it taking off in the next 5 years. I would like ideas for companies that invest in more than just solar/wind though.
I think you’re late to a party that ended up being lame regardless. Might want to explore what margins and competition is like in that space.
What do you know about the future of the industry that the market doesn’t?
It’s hard for me to think renewables will ever be wildly profitable, like some tech products for example. The pace of adoption of solar, wind, or others, depends on economics relative to non renewable sources. So, I would think that adoption of renewables would be gradual and the marginal unit would be priced with very low profit. So even if scale of renewables might increase significantly, I don’t know if this translates to similar increases in profits.
wind is already cheaper btw. solar is exponentially getting cheaper and is getting there. storage of it is the main issue. im already invested in 1 co that is cheap and wildly profitable that deals in this space. cheap cuz china trade war news is killing them and they are doign the whole supply change which is affected their profits and rev growth. but they are still remarkably profitable, cheap, and growing, irrespective.
What ohai said. Most renewable products are commoditized and low tech and produced in a competitive backdrop. The analysis saying these products are cheaper than old tech are typically deeply flawed and industry grids know this. When you go renewable you have several problems 1) you typically need to build up to 2x excess capacity to deal with fluctuations in availability of the medium (wind/solar). For instance Europe was fighting rolling blackouts for awhile during an exceptionally cloudy spell. So on top of building up to 2x of wind or solar you often have some sort of old tech turbines on instant backup. Problem 2) is that in line with what is mentioned earlier, you get surges that often push grids to the breaking point, Germany has struggled with this in particular. These surges can threaten grid infrastructure and usually require more upgrades across the grid and can be prohibitive in 3rd world countries. Lastly, you wind up with having to put in massive battery banks for energy storage overnight, etc. Between these three, if you do an honest cost / benefit, renewables are far from being as cost effective because most of these bull crap blog pop-sci analysis are done on a GW-GW basis when in reality they aren’t capturing the needs for latent capacity, grid build up and storage.
That and the industry is too competitive and with limited margin likely over the future. It’s simply not a differentiated product.