quotedcleantech

On the front page of this month’s issue, we report on FTSE 100 oil services business Petrofac’s decision to expand its activities into the burgeoning carbon capture and storage market.

As a proponent of cleantech investing I am, of course, very keen that political and economic leaders do what they can to increase the proportion of energy used by societies that comes from renewable sources. But I have often wondered about exactly how much of our energy supply could be derived from clean sources.

The argument is frequently made that electricity grids in modern economies are not currently designed to cope with significant proportions of electricity coming from intermittent sources of energy. Generally it is agreed that energy from base load sources, such as coal and oil-fired power stations as well as nuclear power (which we at Quoted Cleantech regard as a clean energy), should form 75-80% of supply; although it is also accepted that the introduction of smarter electricity grids should enable this percentage to be reduced.

As we report on the front and back pages of this month’s Quoted Cleantech, February proved to be another tough month for cleantech shares. Doubtless, the impact of Germany’s decision in January to reduce its feed-in tariff for solar electricity by another 15% (not 10% as analysts had been expecting) continued to drive down solar stocks, but wider economic concerns are also playing their part in discouraging investors from the cleantech sector.

Early last month I attended an investors’ event in London, where offshore wind energy specialist SeaEnergy was presenting. Although the presentation from SeaEnergy’s impressive chairman Steve Remp was largely well received, the investor audience at this particular event included a few voices that appeared to have a problem with clean energy, and wind energy in particular.