Byron King says energy is the single most important topic for the incoming U.S. president to deal with. Capital costs for energy projects are soaring, and the future of fossil fuels is uncertain given the ongoing climate change debate. Meanwhile, renewable energy is fast growing, but incapable of coming close to meeting demand in the foreseeable future. Byron says America has some tough decisions ahead, and if they get it wrong, nothing else will matter…

The Canadian markets showed signs of life for a second straight session as gold and oil plays once again caught the fancy of investors during Thursday trading.

Have you ever heard of the efficient market hypothesis? The basis of the hypothesis is that stocks trade based on all known information. In other words, there is never news that the market hasn’t already priced in. The implication is that the market is never inefficient.

Billionaire Texas financier T. Boone Pickens‘ BP Capital commodity fund dropped in value by 34% in July, according to figures obtained by the New York Post.

Fortunately for Pickens, he has a plan to move away from volatile oil. It’s called the Pickens Plan. It involves converting US cars to run on natural gas instead of petroleum and devleoping a massive wind farm in Texas.

Floyd Brown at Investment U says Pickens has a history of being in the right place and the right time and profiting handsomely. Floyd has picked four stocks to help you follow Pickens’ lead into natural gas and wind energy…

Energy expert Dave Gonigam has serious reservations about T. Boone Pickens‘ energy plan.

When the Pickens Plan was first announced, Dave expressed concerns in The Daily Reckoning’s Desidooru Saloon blog about its finer details.

The problem is the Pickens Plan isn’t quite as free market as it claims. Take the proposed $5-billion sale of general bond funds to help finance alternative energy schemes in California. This is more like a back-door subsidy for Pickens’ natural gas agenda. More from Dave below…

Wind power should account for 20% of U.S. energy needs within a decade – compared with virtually nothing now – as the country’s energy needs are increasingly taken care of by sources of alternative energy, former Texas oilman-turned-wind-power-entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens told Congress last week.

The spot price of uranium has likely seen its low at a recent $57 and uranium stocks are cheap and unloved.

This sets up a great contrarian investment play, says Russell McDougal in Investor’s Daily Edge.

Russell says uranium stocks are oversold. But there are extraordinarily strong global fundamentals behind the uranium market.

If you are looking to take positions in tomorrow’s bull market… uranium stocks more than qualify.

The Pickens Plan, billionaire energy investor T. Boone Pickens‘ plan to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, has been getting a tonne of attention since Pickens launched the initiative at the beginning of the month.

And so it should.

First off, Pickens, a qualified geologist, knows a thing or two about oil and energy. In 1956 he founded Mesa Power. The company grew into the largest independent exploration companies in the US.

Coal. It’s dirty, and burning it generates massive amounts of CO2, which causes global warming. It’s also the America’s main source for power generation.

So what can be done, asks Greg Gunner Guenthner. Are there ways to make it cleaner? Carbon capture technology is a possibility, but it’s years away from being usable.

Oil is another massive polluter, and gets more expensive by the day. Looks like the only option is to invest in sustainable energy – the sooner the better.

T. Boone Pickens says the US is addicted to foreign oil. He also says the US is the Saudi Arabia of wind power, which is catchy but meaningless. Wind abundant in many parts of the world. Oil isn’t.

Pickens’ new energy plan – the Pickens Plan – dovetails nicely, of course, with his plan to build a massive wind farm in Texas.

Everything in Pickens’ plan favors his own BP Capital Management, says Dave Gonigam in Desidooru Saloon.