Last month I was attending a luncheon, having a beer and engaging in polite conversation with those around me, when some smart-ass started in on me about how "alternative energy can't compete with coal and oil" and how "organic foods are just a scam."

Now, I can always combat these types of comments with hard evidence and real numbers. But what's the point?

It took me a while to realize it, mostly because I can be a bit hot-headed at times, but no matter what I say, those who are hostile towards anything related to "green" markets aren't looking to be swayed.

They're just looking to cloud the facts.

For energy and food consumers, this can be extremely frustrating. Let's face it: Few have the time to spend their days researching this stuff like we do.

But imagine how this affects investor confidence!

To give you an example of what I'm talking about, I could give you a laundry list of reasons why plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) could not only break our addition to foreign oil, but also enable consumers to spend less on transportation while cutting off funding to anti-western terrorist organizations.

But all it takes is that one asshole to shoot out a press release about how a temporary delay on some lithium-ion batteries is "proving" the weakness of the PHEV industry, and every bully blowhard on television, and every message board analyst jumps on the anti-PHEV bandwagon.

Although I have to say, as frustrating as it is to deal with this kind of blatant hostility and misinformation, it's the covert stuff that really gets my blood boiling.

Washing away the green

Greenwashing, which can best be described as the actions taken by corporations, governments, organizations or individuals to portray themselves as environmentally responsible in an effort to hide their environmental shortcomings, is something that every investor needs to be familiar with.

Why?

For the simple reason that greenwashing, in its attempts to confuse the public, also manipulates the information investors use to make important decisions.

For example, if you're an energy investor, and you're looking to put some of your money into clean energy, you have to first decide what makes energy clean.

The nuclear industry will be very quick to tell you how nuclear energy can help curb carbon emissions. And many even try to include nuclear in the long list of "clean energy" options.

But how clean is it really?

Sure, nuclear won't give you the same carbon emissions problem as coal. But ask the Japanese how they felt back in July when a radioactive leak from a nuclear power plant in Japan was 50 percent bigger than initially reported.

According to Tokyo Electric Power, about 400 barrels of low-level radioactive waste at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant were knocked over, and the lids had come off 40 of them after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit the coast on July 16.

Folks, this isn't clean, and it sure as hell ain't safe!

Though the pro-nuclear PR machine will try to convince you otherwise.

In fact, if you go to the World Nuclear Association's website, you'll find a section boasting the title, "A Superb Record of Nuclear Safety" in big, bold letters.

Here's an excerpt from that page . . .

Today, nuclear power plants have a superb safety record--both for plant workers and the public. In the transport of nuclear material, highly engineered containers--capable of withstanding enormous impact--are the industrial norm. More than 20,000 containers of spent fuel and high-level waste have been shipped safely over a total distance exceeding 30 million kilometres.

Wow. It's sure great to know that the transport of nuclear material is done using highly engineered containers that are capable of withstanding enormous impact.

I definitely know that the solar, wind and geothermal industries don't transport their nuclear material in these types of containers.

Of course, with solar, wind and geothermal . . . THERE IS NO NUCLEAR WASTE!

And radiation?

Well, the World Nuclear Association assures its readers that radiation is released naturally from the ground and atmosphere in all places on earth.

Are they really using this as an argument?

Better yet, they also seem to be pretty excited about the fact that "modern civilization produces huge quantities of industrial waste requiring careful treatment and disposal." But " . . . nuclear waste is comparatively tiny in amount and highly manageable." In fact, "The spent fuel produced yearly from all the world's reactors would fit inside a two-storey structure built on a basketball court."

Are you sold?

If you are, go ahead and let them put that mutant factory in your backyard!

Listen, nuclear power can't be considered clean, simply because it produces lethal radioactive waste that, no matter where you contain it, move it or store it, will be extremely dangerous for thousands of years.

And scientists still haven't found a permanent solution to get rid of this stuff safely.

It's just one temporary solution after the next.

And nuclear power can't be considered safe either. Not when all the towns surrounding a reactor need an evacuation plan.

Do we need such an evacuation plan for solar panels?

You know the answer to that one.

The auto industry's quite good at greenwashing too. Especially when it comes to the hybrid market.

Let's face it: green sells, and Toyota continues to make a killing with its Prius.

They're all over this!

In fact, one of the company's latest full-page newspaper ads shows an open road, a blue sky and huge green fields. There's also a line that reads: "Can we make a car that has zero emissions?"

Of course they can!

But they're not!

As I've said in these pages before, PHEVs exist. They work, they're safe, they're practical and they get the job done.

So why is it that Toyota is dragging its feet on getting these PHEVs into production? Or better yet, why do they continue to work against higher CAFE standards and California's law that would require cars to emit less CO₂ ?

Of course, their most recent case of greenwashing, which really does rival the fantastic job Detroit's been doing for years with its faux-hybrids, is the company's Lexus LS 600h L hybrid. This $104,765 machine will give you a whopping 21 mpg.

That's a full two miles per gallon more than the conventional LS 460 L. And that one costs about $33,000 less.

What a joke!

Listen: you know I'm all for keeping it green. But it's got to be on the up and up.

In other words, don't piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining.

Bottom line is: we're here to make money in green markets. And no amount of greenwashing is going to trick us.

At Green Chip Stocks, we question everything. Because when it comes to making money, you simply can't leave it up to unethical PR scumbags to guide you to the green.

To a new way of life, and a new source of wealth . . .

Jeff Siegel

"Energy stocks... The only way a human is going to make any money."

-- Matt Simmons, Peak Oil's first and most vocal proponent,
and founder of the country's last pure play energy investment banking firm.

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Liked your article. Have been a strong proponent of more research and development into wind power and solar generation for some time (hard not to be). My oil, coal and nuclear power generation friends, however, always point out the weak spot in wind and solar - storage. Until that problem is solved we can rant all we want about dirty energy production, but we won't see real gains in wind and solar use.

People commenting here aren't following renewable energy very well. in re battery-run cars: a car charged up on coal-fired electricity will put out much less co2 than a car going on oil -- the inefficiency of the ICE is so great (see reports of David Sandalow of the Brookings Institution) Also see "Who killed the electric car?". In re intermittency -- some modes of solar do have storage, are utterly non toxic, and use only 12 gal H2O/MWh (Ausra's Concentrating Solar Power, read up in Buisnessweek and in US NEws&World Report), also PHEV's are forseen as the storage devices for future RE in combination with "smart grid" technolgies (see "Tackling Climate Change by American Solar Energy Society", download the report at http://www.ases.org/climatechange)
I would add that many who say "reneewable energy can't do..." seem never to give real reasons why. Is there a lack of resource? a lack of transmission lines which uutility planners are now planning? The critics seem only to be repeating a mantra.

They would be called green where power is made by hydro but other than here in Central Washington State , a few counties in California and the TVA system all power is made from fossil fuel which does not solve the problem. Until the GREEN community is reined in and more dams are constructed, even small ones there is no solution. Our power is less than 3 cents a kwh so an electric car would be feasible and practical.

Low Level Waste could just be a pair of overshoes in a bin bag.

Hardly a deadly occurence.

Your fears ar unfounded and on the level of being scared of "witchcraft"

Willi

After reading this tirade, I start to question the validity of your thinking and writings. I worked in automobile product development for almost 35 years. Your bashing of the auto industry just displays your ignorance of that industry and of how the markets in general work. (or should work in a free market). Selling fuel efficient vehicles when gasoline is cheap is like pushing on a rope. It takes several years to develop a new vehicle (and longer to develop new technology) and it costs billions of dollars. When government policy keeps the price of fuel so low, no businessman in their right mind would invest billions to develop a product (i.e. a highly fuel efficient vehicle/technology) that will most likely have little or no demand. If you want to fix the problem, just tax the price of fuel (like Europe does) and the customer and then the auto industry will respond in kind. Now that the price of oil is near $100/bbl, and the price of fuel is going up, consumers will start making the tough decisions on the type of vehicle they want (i.e. more fuel efficient) and the auto industry will repond. No need for bureaucratic CAFE standards, and certainly no need for bashing from the likes of yourselves.

Very good article. I find (from my acquaintances) that mostly republican conservative don't beleive in anything that is green.

Why is this?

By the way, what do you consider a good geothermal company?

RP

1)In the USA and many other parts of the world, if they don't use nuclear, they will burn coal.

2) Toyota says the reason they can't make PHEVs is battery technology.

3) The reason Toyota doesn't work for higher CAFE standards is because they don't want to put the big 3 in Detroit out of business. They are Japanese. They understand the Americans can get worked up about these types of things. Remember that 15 to 20 years ago, two caucasian unemployed auto workers in Michigan killed a Chinese person thinking he was Japanese.

nuclear power is only example you can pick on.2 7 years is needed to recycle the cars and by then fuel cells will be ready. 3. all crs will be green and terriosts countries will still have just as much money as oil is a global commoidity.

I think you may want to do an article about plug in hybrids some time.

I did a tiny amount of research and came to the conclusion it wasn't too practical.

My reasoning went like this.

Amount of Lithium needed per car (100 lbs - my guess).

Number of plug in hybrid cars needed to make much of a dent in US oil consumption: 50 million - again, I made it up.

100 lbs * 50 million = 5 billion lbs of lithium.

Checking a few sources via google, I found that this represented a large fraction of all lithium currently known to exist - but without mines and smelters up and running to produce it.

I didn't get this from any propoganda arm of any company. I made it up all myself. How did I do? I'd like to know.

James

Thank you for this, I would like to see more articles in this vein. It's hard to tell what it hype and what is not. If we don't invest in Green wisely, the correct things will not grow and flourish.
If I could , I would put all my eggs in sustainable fuels. I have future generations to think of.

Your article on greenwashing is excellent but please consider the maintenance costs of operating a family car that is a hybrid. These autos are extremely complicated in the operation of switching between electric and gas operation as well as using the electric motor to charge the batteries while underway. Hybrids are not the answer either. We must move rapidly to all electric autos using lithium ion batteries similar to the Tesla roadster. This is a simple one engine car(electric motor only) with no complicated switching circuits. Maintence is minimal and cheap. We need to put it in production quickly and get the price down to a reasonable level and make not only a roadster but also a nice four door sedan for America.

Your anti-nuclear views are simple minded and misguided. I work in nuclear power. I am not opposed to the "green revolution."
In a best case future, renewables like solar and wind and geo-thermal may be able to provide 10% of our energy demand. Nuclear already proviedes 20% of our electric production. Coal is about 50%. You will not live to see the retirement of either one of these non-renewable, old technologies. Get real. And don't forget that solar panels contribute to hazardous waste, too. All these sources of power will have a role in our future. So don't be negative or simple minded. It detracts from your credibility. DC

.

Whilst i welcome a revolution in clean renewable energy, do you really believe that 100% of our energy in the near future will come from solar and wind. It would be great to see a few solar panels on every household's roof but until that day when solar energy becomes economically viable, nuclear should be very much considered to fill the gap between fossil fuels and alternative energy. As i said im not opposed to green energy, but lets get real, while coal is still cheap, power companies will burn it. So wats the big spaz attack about nuclear energy. it is safe and while it takes many thosands of years to break down, a one way trip to the bottom of a cement lined mine shaft quite easilly contains the problem. And hey, i would much rather that than atmosphere polluting power plants that we have at the moment

Dear Jeff:

Thanks for the great site. No nonsense.

Now, nuclear is not a continuing option for a number of different reasons.

After Tchernobyle blew and dumped radioactive wastes all over Bavaria where I reside, when my wife was pregant with my daughter, I took a much closer look at the problem.

Measuring radioactivity outdoors, I noticed that immediately after the dump, areas exposed to sunshine revealed much higher radioactivity "decay" rates than shadowy areas not exposed.

However, the "decay" rates reversed over the next few months, indicating that sunlight
provided a low energy impulse
that transmuted radioactive wastes.

Further experimenting with phototropic deuterium oxide decay, I also discovered that free neutrons actually transmute to hydrogen, an anolamy to the Rutherford Bohr standard model.

Conventional physicists wisdom has it that one can only transmute wastes via linear accellerator collision, and even then, mixed wieght waste particles tend to miss each other.

However, working from a "non-source-free" paradigm based on the older Lullian Bullular model of the atom, I have experimented and patent applied for a number of low energy input electro-photo-tropic and sono-electro-phototropic systems which are now in testing in Europe.

That problem may be solved, and radioactive waste transmutation promises to be a big industry because it is far more cost effective and safe to transmute
on site at the reactor, than to hide and bury at enormous costs.

Wastes usually break down to toxic magnesium and copper hydrates which only need heat
treament to remove the toxic properties.

That technology will clean the nuclear industry. And we have another technology for decontaminating reactors scheduled for demolition prior to demolition, making the demolition much cheaper.

Now, we have established that free neutrons do transmute, and transmute so that the new u.d.u. core quark string actually pops into a hydrogen atom. The big anolamy to the standard model other than gravity itself, for the standard model has nothing in it which accounts for every atom in the universe emitting gravity.

However, from observing the force emission difference between free neutrons, and hydrogen atoms after transmutation, and upgrading the Lullian Bullular standard model to q.e.d., and getting past the major counter-indicator of a quantum e.p.r. effect, we have uncovered the quantum e.p.r. effect as the
quantum mechanism which transmutes constant, nucleon spin generated positrons and electrons, the electro-magnetic states of matter, to non-optical g-electro-weak photons( reverse coupling sequence) and positron-electron-neutrino Beta photinos, the mass functions of gravity which are related to light.

That knowledge enabled me to design and optimize a system for re-transforming these gravitational state functions back to separate currents of positrons and electricity at a 2 to one basis.

Thus, we have opened the door to direct gravitational power generation without having to use hydroelectric dams.

That is part of the good news from Europe.

All the Best in your continued "green energy efforts".

Kent Otho Doering

I found your article to be right on the money, and future money will be in green technology.
As lame as Jimmy Carter was made out to be I remember a speech he gave where he said our dependence on oil is a national security issue. He then gave tax breaks for energy conservation and technology.
Oil man Reagan came into power and killed it all. He couldn't wait to tear a solar panel off the white house.
We could've been leaders in this field.
I doubt we woud be in this Middle East quagmire had we took Carter serious.

I have yet another view and it is for solar, however I think it is a conflict of interest to have the electric companies in control of solar. They are afraid it will set the people free, where they like to have them under their thumb, paying electric bills every month. They faintly promote solar, I called to see about having solar installed, they did everything possible to get me to do away with my gas hot water, as I wanted to eliminate my electric bill which is way higher than the gas. They told me it is impossible to totally eliminate an electric company, as if you do they won't be able to buy back your energy. I would like to see more comments about this from other solar prone people. They need to keep the electric companies out of the picture, so solar will have an equal playing ground, and will get a bigger boost from those who want to develop solar, and away from those who stiffle the technology due to greed.

Sure Jeff, plug-in hybrids are a great idea, especially with diesel engines. These vehicles have about the same efficiency as fuel cells. But, you guys have yet to tell me where all the additional electricity is going to come from to feed tens of millions of these vehicles. I'm a scientist working in this field,not associated with any energy group, and I can tell you that the power is not going to come from millions af acres of wind farms, solar panels at 10% efficiency, tidal power, etc. It's going to come from coal (hopefully clean) and nuclear power plants. We probably can't even build them fast enough. It has to be massive, and it has to be quick or peak oil is going to cripple us one way or the other. Sure, there's money to be made, but as investors in ethanol plants can testify, you'd better be observent and fleet of foot. I would like to see you guys propose something on this problem that makes sense.

A dedicated reader

Jeff: Good article. Tell it like it is.Especially like the phrase 'bully blowhards' and think i know exactly where they are to be found.Another example of disingenuous greenwashing? Check "Friends of Science" an alberta group that works to deny co2 as afactor in climate change while purporting to be as they say a 'friend'. ( of big oil and keeping oil profits to themselves and their friends, while tearing up the beauty of the Rockies inexorably)
Keep up the good expose work . What about micronuclear? james , calgary

You have no idea what you are talking about regarding Nuclear energy. I suggest you read Smelling Land by David S. Scott.

To put the whole Climate Change issue into perspective vis-a-vis the Peak Oil Crisis, everyone needs to ask themselves, their associates, all sitting elected officials and those seeking office, especially the office of President of the United States, "What is more threatening in both the long and short terms, a beneficial 1 degree F rise in average world temperatures over the past 100 years, or a 1 percent decline in world oil production over the last 100 weeks - with steepening declines forecast? Furthermore, can our economy better deal with declining fuel inventories in an environment of persistent warming, or in an environment of declining average temperatures over the next several decades, the most likely scenario given the highly reliable solar inertial motion (SIM) model forecasts of climate change?”

The world is going nuclear whether you believe it or not and I am a subscriber to your newsletter. Coal still kills people but who cares. The sun is more harmful than anything man made, the earth itself can be more harmful than anything man made. Here is the kicker I believe in alternative energy in anything but fossil fuel but only your ideas wont deal with the massive problems.

Loved your frankness and down to earth delivery.

Man did you hit the proverbial nail dead square on the head! Why is it we have known for years the impending problem with oil and it's limited supply and yet have done basically nothing to address the problem. We have the technology via solar, wind, geothermal and even fuel cells. Yet we wait for greedy corporate America to come to the rescue. Hopefully we as a nation will wake up soon.

Dear mr. Siegel

I guess you are right on PHEVs, but how 'green' they will be if coal is to be burnt to generate the electricity for loading them?

And do you really believe that sun farms can produce the electricity to load them at night, when the cars are in the garage?

What you told about the Japanese earthquake overturning some barrels with used handkerchiefs etc., is a shame. These barrels could be overturned because they are totally unimportant.

And, yes, I would welcome a nuclear plant in my backyard - not literally of course, but just around the corner, okay - because modern nuclear plants as those in Japan áre safe, much safer than coal plants. You ar just misinformed on this subject.

And no, there is no evidence at all that radiation from nuclear installations has ever caused any mutations in man, not even the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions either.

So you should stop trying selling solar energy by bashing nuclear.

Yours truly,
Arie