D1 Oils - Charts, News and Discussion

Financial Times article
> Renewable energy begins to pick up speed as an investment
> By Fiona Harvey and Kate Burgess
>
> Worrying about the environment is not the prerogative of a fringe of
> ageing hippies it once was. It has become one of the hot topics of the
> capital markets.
> More than $70bn (£36bn) of new money was invested globally in clean or
> renewable energy or clean technology last year, says Michael Liebreich
> at New Energy Finance, a specialist research firm. That was a 43 per
> cent increase on the year before, he says.
> He reckons there are more than 1,246 private equity funds targeting
> environmental projects: "All the biggest private equity houses are
> looking at this space."
> The latest to launch a fund was Hg Capital, which reported last week
> it had raised EUR330m (£222m) for a fund investing in renewable power
> in Europe.
> Conventional asset managers and hedge fund managers are joining the
> fray. According to the UK Social Investment Forum more than EUR780bn
> had been invested in socially responsible investments and funds and
> the bulk of SRI funds use environmental criteria to pick stocks.
> Standard Life Investments and Merrill Lynch Investment Managers have
> both highlighted the environment as an important investment theme for
> 2007 as environmental issues become more integrated into mainstream
> asset management and corporate behaviour.
> "Investors are seeing potential for profits, from the trading of
> pollution permits to investing in new technologies and approaches
> designed to cope with increasing scarcity of resources such as oil and
> water," says Standard Life.
> As the investment case for renewable energy strengthens, more
> companies are being drawn to list on the public markets.
> So far 50 companies focused on renewable energy have floated on Aim
> and more are expected in the next year or so.
> Wind power and ethanol turned out to be the best bets for investors
> last year in the burgeoning market for renewable energy.
> The highest performing renewable energy stock on Aim, by a large
> margin, was Clipper Windpower, the developer of wind farms in the US.
> Clipper, whose chairman is the former Conservative minister Lord
> Moynihan, more than doubled in value during the year, continuing the
> strong performance since the company listed in September 2005.
> Shares in Clipper jumped more than 75 per cent in July when the
> company announced a deal with BP to develop jointly five wind farms in
> the US.
> Wind is the most mature of all renewable energy technologies and
> companies with good wind sites can make substantial profits as
> electricity prices have remained high.
> Turbine design has advanced to allow much more power to be generated
> than was possible in the past, up to 3MW or even 5MW in the case of
> the biggest models. In addition, most developed country governments,
> including the UK and the US, offer a subsidy for wind power
> generation.
> The mixture of government support, high energy prices, carbon trading
> and concerns about the security of energy supplies have all combined
> in the past two years to make renewable energy an attractive sector.
> High energy prices have changed the economics of renewable energy, as
> has carbon trading, initiated by the European Union in January 2005,
> which puts an extra cost on fossil-fuel power generation, making
> renewable energy more economical.
> More than £500m of wind turbines were commissioned in the UK in 2006,
> according to the British Wind Energy Association.
> But investors ought to be wary of the potential problems associated
> with wind power.
> Shane Woodroffe, director of renewable energy at Fortis Bank, notes
> there are estimated to be more wind farms in planning in the UK, or
> about 2GW to 4GW of generating capacity, than there are wind farms
> already operating.
> That reflects the difficulty of gaining planning permission from local
> authorities. Companies must also get permission for any additional
> networks of large pylons that must be set up to connect remote wind
> farms to the electricity grid.
> Many of the UK's windiest sites, and those where planning permission
> is relatively easy to obtain, have been taken.
> Potentially more damaging to investors is that the Department of Trade
> and Industry is to review its subsidy regime in 2007 and may reduce
> the money available for onshore wind farms.
> The Carbon Trust, one of the government's chief advisers, has called
> for other less mature technologies, such as offshore wind farms and
> tidal and wave energy, to be favoured in future.
> Complicating matters further is a global shortage of wind turbines,
> caused by greatly increased global demand and high steel prices.
> David Fitzsimmons, chief executive of Novera Energy, one of the UK's
> biggest pure play renewable companies, says he expects consolidation
> to take place this year. "We're taking this forward from being a
> cottage industry," he says. "I think the interest will be in
> [companies with] existing assets rather than developing new assets."
> Ethanol companies such as Renova Energy and GTL Resources also fared
> well in 2006. They are cashing in on the ethanol boom in the US.
> However, there are potential dangers for these companies too. The crux
> of their business model is to exploit the lower price of ethanol
> compared with petrol.
> Yet those economics are changing as a bad grain harvest in many places
> has pushed up the price of their raw materials, while the oil price
> has come off its recent highs.
> Investors putting their faith in other biofuels will have seen mixed
> results. D1 Oils, a company founded and chaired by entrepreneur Karl
> Watkin, plans to make biodiesel from the jatropha plant, which it
> believes it can grow in countries such as India.
> The company's shares have almost halved since April. It said this
> summer it was in early discussions about a buy-out but instead is
> raising nearly £50m by means of a share placing.
> In the meantime, a series of problems at its Teesside factory has
> beset the indebted Biofuels Corporation, which warned last month it
> would have to seek more funding next April in order to continue as a
> going concern.
> Emissions trading specialists have sprung up to take advantage of the
> new markets in carbon dioxide brought into being by the Kyoto protocol
> and the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme.
> These have also experienced divergent fortunes. Climate Exchange was
> one of the best performers of "clean energy" companies on Aim, but
> Trading Emissions lost value during the year. Yet the UK is likely to
> remain the centre for emissions trading for the foreseeable future,
> according to Paul Newman, London managing director at Icap Energy (see
> profile below).
> One of the renewable energy technologies to have received most hype in
> the past few years is the fuel cell. These devices, which generate
> electricity from hydrogen or ethanol, have been around for decades.
> However, the technology to make them has not yet been proven and it
> remains several years from widespread commercial application.
> In April this year, the fuel cell specialist ITM Power was one of the
> relative heavyweights among renewable energy companies because it had
> found a way to make it cheaper to produce some of the important
> components in hydrogen fuel cells.
> However, as it became clear this technology would take years to come
> to market, the company's value fell from £140m to £125m.
> Renewable energy in general is poised to receive more investment in
> 2007, according to Mr Woodroffe of Fortis. "I'd say this will be one
> of the big growth markets, definitely."
> Venture capitalists are also taking a keen interest. Mark Kerr, a
> director at 3i, which last month invested EUR30m in Electrawinds of
> Belgium, says: "The economics of renewable energy are more compelling
> than the economics of traditional power generation opportunities from
> a venture capital perspective, because traditional power is a mature
> industry but renewable has huge opportunities for growing companies."
> He said he also expectedto see consolidation in the renewable
> industry, whichis characterised by a large number of small companies
> and a few big energy companies that dabble in renewable energy.
>