Green energy: high hopes, low profits

As valuations soar ahead of returns, there’s a whiff of dotcom fever in the renewable energy sector – and the flood of green fund launches has as good as confirmed this.

As valuations soar ahead of returns, there's a whiff of dotcom fever in the renewable energy sector and the flood of green fund launches this summer has as good as confirmed this. "There is clearly a bubble forming in the eco-energy market," Matteo Novelli of Star Innovation at CFD Capital Management tells Reuters, "and there could be a hefty correction at some point". F&C's Global Climate Opportunities Fund and the Schroder Global Climate Change Fund both launch this month at a time when the Power Shares Global Clean Energy ETF is trading on a frothy p/e of 40. "I have serious concerns about what I have seen," says Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Asset Management in the Financial Times. "Anything that is green and called ethical is this year's fashion fad, but there is a chance of it being next year's tank top."

Many of the companies that clean energy funds have invested in are, in reality, appalling businesses. Take Volatalia, a renewable energy specialist listed on the over-the-counter market in Paris since 2006. It has a market cap of e67.5m, but generated revenues last year of just e17,000 that's revenues, not profits. Clean energy utility EDF Energies Nouvelles, meanwhile, is on a p/e of 90 times. High hopes, and not a lot to show for them just like the dotcom boom. Yet still the money pours in. According to New York-based Lux Research, venture capital investment in clean energy rose from $623m in 2005 to $1.5bn last year; the amount raised in IPOs rose to $4.1bn in 2006 from $1.6bn in 2005. "When you see venture capital more than double and IPO values double from one year to the next, that's the sign of a bubble in the making," said the company's president, Matthew Nordan, in the International Herald Tribune.

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