Monday, December 19, 2011

Seeking Alpha and the New Storage Companies

Mr. John Peterson, the always entertaining and sometimes combative contributor to Seeking Alpha on energy topics, has an interesting post this weekend. He notes that the companies he has picked in the energy storage space have generally had a very poor year. "December 31, 2010, .......18 of the pure-play energy storage device manufacturers had a combined market value of $5.9 billion. At last Friday's close, the 12 survivors had a combined value of $2.4 billion."

The specifics are not particularly interesting (unless you have a horse in the race)---he might have lousy judgment, the specific companies might be swamped by the general market---but there is a jarring generality: Isn't this the area in which we all expect great strides to be made? Isn't this the area that will transform energy usage in the next decades? None of the new ideas--electric transport, wind and solar energy capture, geothermal energy-- make any sense without the ability to store energy with more efficiency than we can manage today. If these new storage companies are not thriving, what does that tell us? Are we not seeing the potential they offer? Or are we seeing the truth? Do these companies actually have little to offer the future?

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