How Investors Can Make Money from Obama’s ‘EEcovery’ (EE for Energy Efficiency)
Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com
Now that President Obama has made energy efficiency a combined economic and environmental goal, it’s worth asking Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) how he sees the “EEcovery” (“EE” standing for energy efficiency) playing out and which companies he expects might benefit the most.
In an interview with EnergyTechStocks.com, Nadel said he sees energy efficiency generating roughly around 300,000 green jobs this year and next, with an average of close to 200,000 jobs more per year between 2011 and 2020.
Nadel said that in the near term he expects these new green jobs to be in brick-and-mortar areas such as installing and maintaining insulation, light fixtures, air filtration systems and new appliances. Such measures, he noted, can reduce a business’s energy consumption by 1% to 3%, which “makes a big difference,” especially in a recession.
Based on that, Nadel said he looks for leading insulation manufacturer Owens-Corning (Symbol OC) to do well. He further expects leading lighting products firms Philips (Symbol PHG) and General Electric (Symbol GE) to benefit, as well as energy management systems provider Honeywell International (Symbol HON).
Of course, it should be noted that each of the aforementioned companies is presently being buffeted by economic headwinds. For investors comfortable with taking some risk, two micro-cap pure-play companies appear to be worth a closer look at this time.
The first is Lime Energy (Symbol LIME), which last week reported a 293% increase in fourth-quarter revenue and a significantly smaller per-share loss. It should be noted that, based on the company’s forward-looking statements, Lime’s year-over-year revenue gain in the fourth quarter may be hard to repeat in 2009. Still, the company seems likely to prosper over the next few years, given that its business is providing basic efficiency solutions to commercial and industrial building owners.
The second is EnerLume Energy Management Corp. (Symbol ENLUE), which provides energy efficient lighting products for use in parking garages, retail stores and other commercial as well as industrial buildings. EnerLume is a financial pipsqueak, selling for only about 20 cents a share in trading late last week. But it should be noted that its stock price doubled last Wednesday (granted, from only 10 cents a share).
EnerLume says its product can reduce power costs for lighting by 15%. Given that lighting equals about 40% of a commercial building’s power expense, the company’s stock price conceivably could pop as the EEcovery takes off
