Goldilocks wanted everything just right and kept moving around until she was perfectly comfortable. T. Boone Pickens doesn’t have the luxury of time, and he doesn’t believe the nation does either. He talks openly about how his plan is not the end game. In fact, he refers to his plan as merely a bridge to long-term solutions, which he says he won’t live long enough to see.
Having to become perfectly comfortable is a very demanding master. It also costs you a ton of opportunity and money. How? Because it demands that you be on time.Work with me here and I’ll show you what I mean.
Ever wish you had seen desktop computing coming before Microsoft was its own nation? Ever lament not noticing the Internet coming so long ago you’d think Al Gore stole the credit from you personally? Nearly twenty years ago one of my first mentors taught me, “If you are in the right place at the right time, you are too late. You need to be in the right place BEFORE the right time.” Well, in the words of Bill Engvall, “Here’s your sign.” In this case, it is not the sign that you said something stupid but the sign that might be stupid to ignore: the economics of green.
Business Pundit Blog makes the argument powerfully and quickly. SEFI, the Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative (supported by the UN) launched its annual Global Trends Report. Among their findings: –New investment in sustainable energy has grown 60% since last year, up to $108.4 billion from 92.6 billion in 2007.
–Total investment worldwide in sustainable energy: $204.9 billion
–43% of investment is going into wind; 24% to solar, and 17% to biofuels.
–In 2008, most investors come from the EU, followed by the United States, then China.
According to the report, global renewable energy is only at 5.4% of total capacity.
Translation: 94.6% of the opportunity has yet to be claimed. It is an economic land rush for energy. For some investors, there will be fears that they will invest in the wrong technology and be left, well, in the dust. Others will see the opportunity for niche-ownership. No one solution or even one technology will own all non-oil investment opportunities. It will likely be a class of of many technologies, many collection and distribution systems, that cater to a wide variety of user needs from municipal to commercial to residential.
Fifteen years ago, the average person had no idea how to evaluate whether a company called an ISP with a 10:1 ratio modem bank was the sign of a strong company, a weak company or a heck of a lot of attention at the drive-thru window. People learned the lingo, got behind some early deals and a lot of people made a lot of money. Did the technology evolve? Sure. Are many of those companies gone now? Yes. Many were acquired and their shareholders hit great paydays. The same may prove true for alternative energy. It may be less important which technology you pick than it is that you get involved with a solid company and get started. Whether you have the next Microsoft (long-term opportunity) or Broadcast.com (better know when to sell or else), the next Mark Cuban, the next Bill Gates, the next T. Boone Pickens, may well come from some small little company huddled in an unimpressive warehouse but just about to bust out like a rocket.
So I ask you: Are we in the right place before the right time?
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