President Obama is hoping that Midwest rural areas will return the favor, and provide much needed wind-generated power to densely populated cities and towns up and down both coasts of the country…

Wind turbines are huge, and not well suited to more densely populated areas. They are a natural fit in the vast open plains of the nation’s heartland, where the wind almost never stops blowing. But there’s a problem… it’s just not the one you might think.

Here’s why wind-generated power is still going to be the driving force for change in the way we use energy, and one of the biggest obstacles it has right now to getting us to where we need to be.

A Banner Year For The Wind Power Industry

2008 was a banner year for the wind power industry:

• Previous installation records were blown away, with over 8,500 megawatts (MW) of new generating power installed in the United States alone. That’s enough to light over 2 million homes.
• Wind power installations represented 42% of all the new power generation capacity added in 2008.
• The 44 million tons of carbon emissions avoided equates to taking 7 million cars and trucks off the highways.

As a result of the current recession, the wind energy installation outlook for 2009 will be somewhat muted compared to last year, with about 5,000 MW expected to be installed. But despite the downturn, the industry is still in expansion mode.

And that’s a good thing.

A lot of the stuff is engineered and made right here: domestic “made in the USA” components now make up about 50% of the average system, up from 30% in 2005. And like any other burgeoning sector, when business is booming, companies expand and hire people.

In just the last two years, wind turbine, tower and component manufacturers announced new facilities, added or expanded 70 facilities, 55 of them in 2008 alone.

It’s creates lots of jobs as well. Today 85,000 people are employed in the wind industry. That’s a 70% increase from just one year ago. It’s all good news… well almost all of it.

Where Wind-Generated Power Is Needed The Most

You see, while plenty of wind farms dot the ranchlands of the Midwest, the bulk of the wind-generated power produced is needed in the dense urban areas on the east and west coasts.

And there’s the big problem: the existing power grids won’t cut it.

Just consider: 3,000 utilities generate power and send it to 500 transmission owners. They control over 164,000 miles of transmission lines divided into three major interconnection regions: East, West, and Texas.

As an electrical engineer, I may be one of the few who can appreciate the technology, but it’s truly amazing that it all plays together.

They’re fragmented, low power grids that aren’t capable of transmitting the hundreds of thousands of megawatts that will be needed thousands of miles away from the wind farms.

The bottom line is that in order for the estimated 300,000 MW of proposed wind-generated power to get to where its needed, $60 billion will need to be spent on grid upgrades and interconnects by 2030.

The Biggest Problem Facing Wind-Generated Power

But even assuming the $60 billion was available to be spent on this type of alternative energyright now, not a dime of it would be used to build wind-generated power transmission lines.

The problem? Red tape with a capital R:

• Regulations that aren’t designed for power transmission between states.
• Rules that burden the local ratepayers unfairly with the construction costs instead of distant beneficiaries.
• Approval times measured in years, not months.

Here’s an example of how ridiculous it gets: American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) is a public utility holding company in the business of generation, transmission and distribution of power at both the retail and wholesale level.

As part of an expansion of its network, the company erected a transmission line between West Virginia and Virginia. The construction time was two years. The approvals took 14.

Susan Tomasky, AEP Transmission President, explains the problem: “There are lots of people with authority to make pieces of the decision, and no single entity that can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

Clearly what’s needed is federal permitting to locate cross-country transmission lines. The federal government has been doing it with natural gas pipelines since the 1960’s.

Looking To The Future Of Wind Turbines

So what are the chances of the fed’s saving us, and getting it done in the near future?

Better than you might think: Jeff Bingaman – Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee – has a proposal that will require comprehensive plans for grid interconnections.

More importantly, it will greatly expand the FERC’s powers to locate big new transmission lines at the federal level (bypassing the myriad of local regulations) and the authority to properly allocate their costs.

And firms like AEP and ITC Holdings Corp. (NYSE: ITC), another power generation and transmission company, are both eager to invest and build lines from the Midwest to cities in the east.

Even if all goes according to plan – which isn’t ever the case in Washington – these lines wouldn’t be in service until 2020 or so. Clearly a more streamlined approach is needed. The refreshing news is that it appears politicians are actually working on the problem.

We’ll be watching and reporting on it here and in my Energy and Infrastructure newsletter soon to be published by the Oxford Club.

Next week, I’ll be traveling with my colleagues to Vancouver, British Columbia, and speaking at the Oxford Club’s Victoria Chapter Meeting. I’ll return here the following week.

Source: Wind-Generated Power: Why Midwest Wind Power Isn’t Blowing East

Source: Investment News Briefs Thursday, July 9, 2009

Eugene S. Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University, and the director of the school’s “climate science initiative,” says the research study concluded that U.S. wind strength has potentially declined by 15% to 30% during the past 30 years – an average decline of as much as 1% a year.

While conducting the study – which will appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research – researchers reviewed wind data taken at airports around the United States, and then based their findings on two sets of figures: One set from 1973-2000, and the other from 1973-2005.

The study concluded that three factors could be contributing to the declines in U.S. wind strength: Land-use changes, a changing climate and changes in the kind of instruments used to measure the wind, Takle told MarketWatch.com.

“If there have been trees growing or new buildings constructed near airports, it could impact the speed of winds on airports,” Takle said. However, it is also “[basic] meteorology that the wind is driven by differences in temperature between the poles and the equator, and those differences have been narrowed by climate change.”

Tough Timing

The findings come at time when the United States is making a serious push to increase the amount of electricity that’s generated by wind turbines grouped into so-called wind-power “farms.” Attempts to harness the wind are part of a broader national – or even global – commitment to “green” energy sources as a way of reducing dependence on oil and other fossil fuels for power generation.

Other power sources include solar, geothermal, hydroelectric and nuclear for commercial electricity production, while automakers are looking at new types of batteries and such innovations as power-storing “fuel cells” as alternatives to the conventional internal combustion engines that power most of the world’s cars and trucks.

The objectives are twofold. By decreasing the U.S. reliance on foreign oil, the country is hedging against the time when global supplies of the “black gold” begin to dry up, an eventuality that will propel the prices of crude and gasoline skyward. Diversifying away from oil and, perhaps, even coal is also a way of reversing – or at least slowing – environmentally ruinous (and politically controversial) global warming.

President Barack Obama is attempting to use the ongoing financial crisis to create a sense of urgency about America’s energy future, a challenge that no prior administration has yet been able to meet.

About one-third of President Obama’s $800 billion-plus stimulus packagewill go to infrastructure, with $30 billion allocated for U.S. roads and highways and another $10 billion earmarked for railways and mass-transit systems.

President Obama has also proposed spending $150 billion “over the next 10 years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.” The administration also proposes to increase the amount of electricity that comes from renewable resources from 10% in 2012 to 25% by 2025,Wall Street 24/7 reported in early January.

Creating the power is only part of the problem. Delivering it will be a challenge, too, especially given the country’s aging power grid. Upgrading that aging equipment is expected to cost more than $880 billion, according to a November 2008 report from the Brattle Group.

An Energy Boon For Entrepreneur T. Boone?

In many cases, those federal outlays will serve only as seed capital. It will likely fall to innovators in the U.S. private sector to really energize the alternative-power market.

One key player is legendary oilman and venture capitalist T. Boone Pickens, who has unveiled a plan to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil through the power of alternatives such as wind and natural gas, Money Morning reported last July.

“We’re paying $700 billion a year for foreign oil. It’s breaking us as a nation,” Pickens said at the time. Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon “said in 1970 that we were importing 20% of our oil and that by 1980 it would be 0%. That didn’t happen. It went to 42% in 1991 with the Gulf War. It’s just under 70% now. Where do you think we’re going to be in 10 years when our economy is busted and we’re importing 80% of our oil?”

Pickens wants to create what he calls a “bridge to the future” that will help cut slash the U.S. reliance on imported foreign oil by focusing on two specific alternatives:

• Cars that burn natural gas instead of gasoline.
• And electricity generated by wind power.

There’s a smooth and elegant logic to his strategy: By constructing electric-generating wind-power farms, the United States can free up natural gas supplies that currently generate 22% of the nation’s electricity. That natural gas can then be used to power cleaner-burning cars and trucks, thereby reducing our dependence on imported oil while also reducing the damage to the environment. This will also buy time for the development of other, even-greener, alternative sources of energy.

Pickens’ Wind Power Project

According to Pickens, wind power could eventually fulfill as much as 20% of the United States’ energy needs. Calling the Great Plains region of the United States the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” Pickens last summer launched plans for a $10 billion alternative energy project in the Texas panhandle that has the potential to one day become the world’s largest wind-power farm.

Picken’s Mesa Power LLP plans to purchase 667 wind turbines from U.S. industrial giant General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE). Each turbine can produce 1.5 megawatts of electricity – enough to provide the ongoing power needs of 360 to 600 U.S. homes, according to Money Morningcalculations based on statistics provided by Oregon Power Solutions Inc., a Baker City, OR consulting firm.

The first phase of the Pickens project, already under construction, will produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough energy to power 300,000 homes. GE will begin delivering the turbines in 2010, and current plans call for the project to start producing power in 2011.

Ultimately, Mesa Power plans to have enough turbines to produce 4,000 megawatts of energy. Overall, the “Pampa Wind Mill” project is expected to cost $10 billion and be completed in 2014.

Pickens has launched a “Pickens Plan” Web site, which is urges the country’s “energy army” to lobby Congress for funding and a commitment to green-energy projects.

Other Players Showing Interest

An Irish company – its interest in the U.S. alternative energy market piqued by the green-technology money included in the Obama administration’s stimulus package – on Monday acquired three Illinois wind farms located within 100 miles of Chicago, The Chicago Tribunereported.

Plans call for the Dublin-based Mainstream Renewable Power to invest $1.69 billion over four years to develop the wind farms. The purchase price was not disclosed.

“The U.S. market is of strategic importance to Mainstream, and the scale of the opportunity is strongly reflected in President Obama’s economic stimulus package, which includes $56 billion in grants and tax breaks for U.S. clean energy projects over the next 10 years and a budget of $15 billion a year to fund renewable energy programs,” Mainstream co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Eddie O’Connor said in a statement. “The administration’s goal of generating 25% of the nation’s electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025 will help revitalize the U.S. economy and protect consumers.”

The farms have the potential to generate 787 megawatts of electricity by 2013, The Tribune said. The most advanced is the 120-megawatt Shady Oaks project in Lee County. When finished next year, it should be able to generate enough electricity to power about 30,000 homes, Mainstream said.

The other two wind-power farms are the 467-megawatt Green River project, also in Lee County, and a 200-megawatt project set for Boone County. Construction on the Green River project will begin next year, while the Boone County project is still in is development stages.

This is Mainstream’s second North American deal in three months; it earlier announced a Canadian wind farm project. It has also announced plans to build a wind farm in Chile.

Founded a year ago, Mainstream was created to build and operate wind-energy, solar-thermal and ocean-current power plants in partnerships with government agencies, electric utilities, developers and investors in North and South America, Europe, and South Africa. Barclays Capital (NYSE ADR: BCS) has a 14.6% stake in Mainstream.

Going Global

As Mainstream’s proposed forays into South America, Europe and Africa demonstrate, the push to harness the wind isn’t limited to the United States.

As of the end of last year, worldwide wind-powered generators were capable of generating 121.2 gigawatts (GW) of electricity. Wind power produces about 1.5% of the world’s electricity and its use is surging: The amount of electricity generated by wind power doubled between 2005 and 2008 alone.

Several countries have already embraced wind power in a major way: As of last year, it accounted for 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 11% in both Spain and Portugal and an estimated 7% in both Germany and Ireland. As of this May, 80 nations around the world were using wind power on a commercial basis.

Not surprisingly, China is making a big push to commercialize wind power and by last year was already the world’s sixth-largest user of wind-generated electricity. The country’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines - Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. Ltd. – went public last year, raising nearly $250 million. It has about 33% of China’s wind-power-equipment market, according to KGI Securities Co. Ltd., a Taiwan investment-banking and brokerage firm.

“As China’s wind power sector takes off, we think Goldwind is well positioned to become a major beneficiary, thanks to its strong brand and first mover advantage,” KGI wrote in a research report.

Not a Complete Answer

Although wind power has substantial promise, it’s not an infallible energy solution, and has some serious limitations – as the U.S. wind-power study shows. For one thing, although an estimated 72 terawatts of wind power on Earth can be potentially commercially viable – an amount that’s six times the estimated 15 terawatts of total power usage on earth – not all the wind energy flowing past any given point can be recovered.

Accoridng to a science axiom known as Betz’s Law – named for the German physicist,  Albert Betz, who discovered the rule in 1919 - no turbine can capture more than 59.3% of the potential energy in wind.

And there are other challenges, some of which are caused by the natural lay of the land in a given location. In the United States, for instance, where there are now concerns about diminishing wind strength, some coastal areas may retain wind strength because of the greater temperature differences between the land and the ocean.

Given the growing importance of wind power, more study will be required.

Concludes the study: “Given the importance of the wind-energy industry to meeting federal and state mandates for increased use of renewable energy supplies and the impact of changing wind regimes on a variety of other industries and physical processes, further research on wind climate variability and evolution is required.”

Source: U.S. Ramping Up Wind Power Programs Even As Concerns Surface About Possible Declines In U.S. Wind Strength

This from David:

The World’s Largest “Air” Force…

Mention “Air Force One” to someone here in the U.S. and visions of a Boeing 747-400 with the Presidential Seal on the side quickly come to mind.

But now there’s another new meaning associated with the phrase, and it’s good news for the guy that gets to ride in the jet.

In 2008 America became the global force in wind-generated electricity. President Obama can take heart in the fact that his pledge to cut imports of foreign oil is already underway, at least in the wind power arena.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council, last year America’s installed capacity of wind generator capacity totaled 25 gigawatts, edging out Germany, the previous leader.

The U.S. added 8.4 gigawatts of capacity in 2008 alone, more than any other country. Global capacity grew at 29% last year to a total of 120 gigawatts. Even with all this torrid growth, wind power provides a paltry 1% to the global energy supply, leaving lots of room for growth.

Most folks think the world’s desire to “Go Green” is the reason wind Power is gaining so much popularity and wind farms are popping up all over the place, like daffodils in the spring.

But they would be wrong. The real reason is simple: it’s the old concept of supply and demand. And without a huge ramp up in supply of alternative, clean (green) sources of energy like wind and solar provide, the world will be facing a huge energy gap in as little as fifteen years.

It’s all good news to wind turbine manufacturers, like General Electric (NYSE: GE) and Vestas Wind Systems (CPH: VWS), the world’s largest manufacturers of wind generators.

It stands to benefit companies like Americas Wind Energy Corporation (Nasdaq: AWNE), a large manufacturer and distributor of wind turbines to wind farm developers in North America.

The biggest roadblock to another banner year for wind this year is the clogged credit markets. Wind farms require lots of capital to construct, but without a properly functioning credit market, these big machines will stall, regardless of how hard the alternative energy winds are blowing.

Source: Americas Wind Energy Corporation (Nasdaq: AWNE): Stock of the Day

This from Rude Awakening:

Now that the Obama Administration is about to descend upon Washington DC, the nation’s list of “Top Priorities” will receive a makeover. I will leave it to political pundits to evaluate the pros and cons of the makeover. My beat is investing. So I will be looking for opportunity in those industries that seem most likely to prosper during the early days of the Obama Administration. Clean Energy and Infrastructure are two leading candidates…which is why Trinity Industries (NYSE:TRN) is one very promising stock.

Trinity is a multi-industry company. It has divisions that sell products and services to the construction, transportation, industrial and energy sectors of the economy. Trinity’s five principal business units include its Railcar, Railcar Leasing and Management Services, Inland Barge, Construction Products and Energy Equipment groups.

I’ll get to the windmill angle shortly. But first, I want to explain that each of Trinity’s business units has its own story. And this helps put the windmill tower business in perspective.

Trinity’s Railcar group has a long history of building and repairing railway cars and components. These include auto carrier cars, boxcars, gondolas, hopper cars, intermodal cars, specialty cars and tank cars. So Trinity has long experience in fabricating metal for tough outdoor jobs like railway equipment.

And Trinity’s Construction Products group has a long history producing concrete, aggregates and asphalt, as well as highway products like the beams and girders used in highway bridge construction. Thus, the Construction group has solid experience serving customers in the construction and foundation industry.

But the business group that we want to focus on is the Energy Equipment Group (EEG). The EEG manufactures large tank systems (such as propane tanks), tank containers, tank heads for pressure vessels and structural wind towers.

So the EEG capitalizes on Trinity’s long experience in building robust metal systems like rail cars and pressure tanks. And the EEG utilizes the corporate experience in the foundation and construction work that the Construction group has.

Trinity’s Energy Equipment Group produces wind towers through a wholly owned subsidiary called Trinity Structural Towers Inc. Quite simply, TSTI fabricates tubular towers, and I mean BIG tubular towers.

These tubular towers are the large poles on which the windmill turbines sit. They can be 20 or more feet in diameter at the base, and 250 or more feet high. Some of the poles even have an elevator inside, so the maintenance people can get to the top. And some of the towers are so big that you could land a helicopter on the topside platform. Is that big enough for you?

These massive towers have to be able to withstand the utmost in stress. First, there’s the windmill turbine and blades that can weigh up to 100 tons – the weight of a fully-fueled Boeing 757. And then this assembly has to handle the stress of high winds, heavy rainstorms and lightning strikes. The towers will spend the next 40 or 60 or 80 years exposed to the elements. The turbine blades at the top can be over 200 feet long and rotate at speeds of over 20 revolutions per minute. That’s a full revolution of the blade set every three seconds. And that’s one heck of a lot of stress. So only the strongest tower systems can hold up.

Just the tower foundations alone can go 50 or more feet into the Earth. And because soil and bedrock conditions change over any large area, almost every windmill tower requires its own unique engineering, excavation and construction plan.

So TSTI offers an array of services related to design, fabrication, construction, installation, testing, operation and maintenance of windmill towers and generating systems. In this respect, TSTI provides steel turbine components, concrete and aggregates, product transportation and specialized coatings that relate to wind tower design and construction. (Just the effort to transport these large tower components to the site is a logistical business in and of itself.)

TSTI operates some massive production facilities. Indeed, the TSTI plants are among the largest production facilities in North America for fabricating tubular wind towers. TSTI can fabricate to the detailed design of a turbine manufacturer like GE (NYSE:GE), Vestas or Gamesa. Or TSTI can work with customers to design and fabricate towers that meet unique criteria for both the turbine and project location.

TSTI subjects its towers to strict quality tests similar to those used for building high-pressure tanks and railway tank cars. And Trinity adds value with its extensive corporate experience (from railway cars and barges) in coating structures exposed to every conceivable weather condition. This is critical for the future maintenance and safety of the tower. After all, the tower holds up the turbine and generator. And a steady generator is the key to the overall reliability of the power system — not just of the windmill itself, but for feeding power into the overall electric grid.

Trinity is currently producing towers to support turbines as large as 2.5 megawatts, enough electricity to power about 1,750 homes ( or two average-sized Wal Mart -NYSE:WMT-stores). The next generation of turbines will be rated at 3 megawatts or more, and Trinity will have towers for those, as well.

Wind power currently produces a fraction of 1% of the U.S. total electrical supply. But there are plans and policies afoot to increase U.S. electric power output to more than 20% of the total supply within the next 20 years. The only way to do this is by setting big turbines onto big tubular towers. No, make that lots of big turbines onto lots of big tubular towers.

And who makes those big tubular towers? Now you know.

Demand for rail cars and barges has fallen in the past year, and this has hurt Trinity’s overall profitability. But Trinity is compensating with a fast-growing backlog of orders for windmill towers. Trinity even pays a dividend of 32 cents per share, or a yield of about 0.9%.

I expect Trinity to be a growing stock, even in a market that will be weighed down by many other negative economic and political issues going forward. By the end of 2009, Trinity could be selling for $46 per share.

Source: Buy Trinity Industries

The European Union has set a target date of 2020 for 20% of its energy to come from renewable sources. The British Wind Energy Association said Britain will contribute 15%, meaning up to 40% of the country’s power will come from wind energy by the target date.

“The richest investment opportunities can be found in the fast-emerging alternative energy sector,” says Mike Burnick in The Offshore A-Letter.

That’s where oilman T. Boone Pickens is putting his money – his company Mesa Power just placed an order for US$2 billion in wind turbines. And there’s much more profit potential in other parts of the alternative energy sector too – especially alternative fuel.

• The market for ALL alternative energy sources grew 40% last year alone to US$77.3 billion and will explode into a US$250 billion industry within 10 years.
• Bio-fuel grew to a US$25.4 billion market last with more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel produced globally – more than double the output of just four years ago.
• The worldwide Bio-fuel industry will continue to enjoy explosive growth for years to come – expanding into a US$81 billion business within the next 10-years!

But you don’t have to wait two decades or even two years to start making serious money from this energy-sector market shock…

Fossil fuels are dead – the future belongs to alternative energy. Vast fortunes will be made in the “great fuel revolution!”

Investing in established wind energy stocks stocks is a great way to profit, says Charles Delvalle in Investor’s Daily Edge:

It seems to me that investing in green stocks is a great thing to do. What you want to do is avoid the companies that have no profits… the ones that are using very experimental technologies that haven’t been proven yet. These companies may do well in the future, but you take a huge risk by putting your money on them now.

If you think investing in clean energy is a bad idea, just take a look at the Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy Fund (GEX) and you’ll see that the sector’s been clearly moving higher. And the PowerShares Global Clean Energy Portfolio (PBD) has been doing the same.

Shares in leading German solar stocks rose substantially on expectations that other big players, including oil groups, are on the prowl in a market that grew to €6.6bn last year and is forecast to top €18bn by 2020.

Germany is by far the world’s biggest solar energy market thanks to its “feed-in” tariffs, which pay a government-guaranteed premium of up to €0.47 a kilowatt hour for power produced by photovoltaic panels. It is expected to continue to grow despite government plans to cut subsidies by 8% or 9% in 2009 and 2010.

“The richest investment opportunities can be found in the fast-emerging alternative energy sector,” says Mike Burnick in The Offshore A-Letter.

“That’s where oilman T. Boone Pickens is putting his money – his company Mesa Power just placed an order for US$2 billion in wind turbines. And there’s much more profit potential in other parts of the alternative energy sector too – especially alternative fuel.

“The market for ALL alternative energy sources grew 40% last year alone to US$77.3 billion and will explode into a US$250 billion industry within 10 years.

“Bio-fuel grew to a US$25.4 billion market last with more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel produced globally – more than double the output of just four years ago. The worldwide Bio-fuel industry will continue to enjoy explosive growth for years to come – expanding into a US$81 billion business within the next 10-years!”

Biofuels can boost incomes and yields for farmers, revitalizing impoverished rural areas when they are introduced in countries with secure land ownership, the International Institute for Environment and Development said.

By raising the price of crops such as corn and palm oil, biofuels can reduce poverty in countries with a high dependency on agriculture, the London-based researcher said in a report with the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

“Despite the highly polarized debate, biofuels are not all good or bad,” lead author Lorenzo Cotula of the IIED wrote in the report. “Biofuels can either help or harm the world’s poor depending on the choice of crop and cropping system, the business model, and the local context and policies.”

“Ethanol stocks were moving higher for a while,” says Charles Delvalle in Investor’s Daily Edge, “but have gone down since the middle of last year (maybe investors are catching on to how ‘not green’ ethanol really is). Geothermal producers are shooting higher. And those who sell wind turbines are making great money on increasing orders.

“By 2030, Morgan Stanley expects green sales across the globe to total over $1 trillion (that’s bigger than the Gross Domestic Product of 169 of the 181 member countries of the International Monetary Fund!). Most people I speak to see green technology as the wave of the future. It’ll only be a matter of time until they think that investing in green companies is a no-brainer.

“In the end, this whole green movement we see today could very well be the start of yet another massive bubble. And considering the riches that were made during the two previous bubbles, catching the green investment mania early on would be a great way to make a lot of coin in the next few years.”

Chris Mayer in The Daily Reckoning reckons it’s time to consider investing in an essential biofuel ingredient: sulfuric acid.

“The biofuel boom has kicked off a big increase in the demand for sulfuric acid. In fact, some 60% of the sulfuric acid ends up in agriculture. The surge in ethanol production is a double whammy on sulfuric acid. First, all that corn needs fertilizers. And second, the ethanol facilities themselves also use sulfuric acid in their own processing. A typical ethanol facility requires 2,000-4,000 tons of sulfuric acid per year.”

“The richest investment opportunities can be found in the fast-emerging alternative energy sector,” says Mike Burnick in The Offshore A-Letter.

“That’s where oilman T. Boone Pickens is putting his money – his company Mesa Power just placed an order for US$2 billion in wind turbines. And there’s much more profit potential in other parts of the alternative energy sector too – especially alternative fuel.

“The market for ALL alternative energy sources grew 40% last year alone to US$77.3 billion and will explode into a US$250 billion industry within 10 years.

“Bio-fuel grew to a US$25.4 billion market last with more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel produced globally – more than double the output of just four years ago. The worldwide Bio-fuel industry will continue to enjoy explosive growth for years to come – expanding into a US$81 billion business within the next 10-years!”

“The days of meeting an unchecked demand for energy through monolithic carbon intensive power stations are coming to an end. Increasingly the emphasis will be on energy efficiency, renewables, cleaned up fossil fuel plant and micro generation,” the company said in a statement accompanying its full-year results, according to Britain’s The Guardian newspaper.

SSE, which currently gets 15% of its energy from nuclear suppliers, said it believed “one more tranche of nuclear power stations will be necessary, but that the deployment of such power stations should be minimised through the maximum exploitation of renewable energy sources.”

“The richest investment opportunities can be found in the fast-emerging alternative energy sector,” says Mike Burnick in The Offshore A-Letter.

“That’s where oilman T. Boone Pickens is putting his money – his company Mesa Power just placed an order for US$2 billion in wind turbines. And there’s much more profit potential in other parts of the alternative energy sector too – especially alternative fuel.

“The market for ALL alternative energy sources grew 40% last year alone to US$77.3 billion and will explode into a US$250 billion industry within 10 years.

“Bio-fuel grew to a US$25.4 billion market last with more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel produced globally – more than double the output of just four years ago. The worldwide Bio-fuel industry will continue to enjoy explosive growth for years to come – expanding into a US$81 billion business within the next 10-years!”

Floyd Brown in Investment U looks at another alternative energy source: the Fischer-Tropsch process, used to create synthetic fuels.

“The process works like this: Coal is broken into its components by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure, using steam and measured amounts of oxygen. This leads to the production of synthetic gas.

“In the United States, a small firm provides technology to produce ultra-clean synthetic fuels and chemicals. It licenses its proprietary derivative process from the Fischer-Tropsch method.

“It converts synthesis gas derived from coal, petroleum coke, biomass, natural gas, or municipal solid waste into liquid hydrocarbon products. This includes ultra clean diesel fuel, jet fuel, naphtha, specialty chemicals and other fuel products. It also manufactures anhydrous ammonia, UAN, nitric acid, carbon dioxide and granular and liquid urea.”

Read on here to find out Floyd’s cashing in on this conventional energy alternative.