Investment Themes for the Next Decade
A Bull Market Decade for Commodities
By Chris Nelder
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
Instead of the customary next-year outlook, I am closing out the decade that John Perry Barlow so aptly termed “The Uh-ohs” with a two-part article outlining my view of energy for the next decade.
I will begin with the big themes [...]

As my regular readers know, I’ve spent much of this year contemplating big themes, like thelong-term picture for energy, energy and monetary policy, black swans and the human penchant for valuing the present more than the future, the problems of complex systems like the energy-food-water nexus, sustainability, and the relationship between climate change and peak oil.
As this year draws to a [...]

An article yesterday in the UK’s Independent newspaper by Robert Fisk claimed that “In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.” It set off an immediate firestorm of response and attacks on Fisk’s credibility (one [...]

The Transformation of Transportation
For Energy and Capital last week, I surveyed the explosion of high speed rail around the world, and prescribed some stiff medicine for the U.S.
‘Boondoggle‘, ‘Loss-making whim‘, ‘Monument to bad territorial planning’. . .
Such are the arguments of high speed rail critics, as the United States finally gets on board the passenger [...]

Will the U.S. Choose the Path to Profit, or the Freeway to Failure?
For Green Chip Stocks last week, I separated the policies on climate and energy that work from the ones that don’t, and found the U.S. lagging far behind the rest of the world.
With the Copenhagen summit on climate change less than three months [...]

Peak Oil Update
World Will Soon Face an Oil Supply Crunch
By Chris Nelder
Friday, September 18th, 2009
Everyone who follows the peak oil story has by now seen some of the editorials that blanketed the press over the last few weeks, attempting to debunk it and disparage its adherents. I responded to the worst of them three weeks [...]

New Solar Technology Could Be the Cheapest in the World
For Green Chip Stocks last week, I reviewed the latest announcements from thin-film solar manufacturer Nanosolar on their groundbreaking technology and its potential to print the cheapest solar cells in the world.
There was a very exciting announcement in the world of energy this week, and I’ve [...]

The Energy Revolution Needs China’s Resource Investments
For last week’s Energy and Capital, I reviewed China’s buying spree of natural resources, and argued that we may need them for the energy revolution more desperately than anyone now imagines.
If we want an example of good long-term resource planning, we might want to look to China.
While the first [...]

For Green Chip Stocks this week, I respond to the most recent salvos of peak oil deniers including Michael Lynch, Daniel Yergin and Raymond Learsy.
See also a few selected responses from other writers.
Debunking the Peak Oil Debunkers: Lynch, Yergin, Learsy and the Worry-Nots
We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double [...]

For my Energy and Capital piece last week, I took a hard look at what “sustainable” really means, and questioned the sustainability of realistic energy solutions. Perhaps human nature, not technology, is the real challenge that we face.
Hard Questions and Sustainable Solutions
Human Nature, Not Technology, Is The Challenge
By Chris Nelder
Friday, August 21st, 2009
The more I probe the [...]