Covanta Accelerating Zero-Waste-to-Landfill
Last week Covanta (CVA: NYSE) opened a new materials processing facility in Indianapolis, increasing waste handling capacity by 500%. The waste handler has been in operation in the community for three decades, collecting and processing over 2,100 tons of solid waste every day to steam energy in a waste-to-energy incinerator. Citizen Thermal Energy buys the steam to heat the buildings of its commercial customers.
The new materials processing facility increases Covanta’s waste handling capacity. The company is targeting manufacturers in the Indianapolis area that are still sending wastes to landfills. Covanta wants to collect more waste as well as attract waste types unique to manufacturers that need...
Waste Management: Biogas with a Dividend
by Debra Fiakas CFA The biogas industry has attracted a number of new entrants. Blue Sphere (BLSP: OTCQB) described in the recent post “Turning Potato Peels to Power” and RDX Technologies (RDX: TO, described here) are both newcomers to the biogas power generation. Both companies show much promise and will likely grow dramatically over the next few years. Shareholders are counting on the stock prices to follow. Investors who are less interested in the big growth play and more interested in stability and current income are not left out. There are larger, more...
List of Waste-to-Energy Stocks
Waste-to-energy stocks are publicly traded companies whose business involves using municipal or other waste as a feedstock to create fuel or electricity. Organic matter and plastics in a waste stream can be converted to fuel and/or electricity chemically, by means of pyrolysis, biologically such as in anaerobic digestion, or by incineration. Alternatively, energy from waste can be captured from natural processes, such as in the collection of methane gas from landfills.
This list was last updated on 6/23/2021
Active Energy Group PLC (AEG.L)
Attis Industries, Inc. (ATIS)
Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. (BW)
BioHiTech Global, Inc. (BHTG)
Blue Sphere (BLSP)
Capstone Microturbine (CPST)
China Recycling Energy Corp....
Another Look at the Algonquin Power Income Fund
Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA The Algonquin Power Income Fund (AGQNF.PK) has been one of my star performers in an excellent year. Is it still a good investment at these prices? Since I recommended the Algonquin Power Income Fund (AGQNF.PK/APF-UN.TO) in January as a renewable energy income stock for 2009, the company is up 69%, in addition to the C$0.02 monthly dividend, worth approximately another 8% through August on the US$1.82 purchase price, making it the second-best performing of my ten picks (after Cree, Inc (CREE).) However, since the major basis for my recommendation at the time was the...
Fiberight: A Deep-Dive Into Trash To Find Cash
by Jim Lane. Biofuels Digest
This week Fiberight secured $70 million for a municipal solid waste center that should be in operation by this May. The high-tech facility will convert 180,000 tons of trash each year from more than 100 Maine towns into biofuel at a 144,000-square-foot steel frame facility that began construction last July.
We visually profile the technology and company in our Multi-Slide Guide here.
The underlying facility is what’s known as a Dirty MRF, or materials recovery facility. That’s where the receiving happens and the sortation begins — and the process of recovering value back from the waste stream begins.
The bottom line...
Earnings Roundup: Metals Prices Boost Covanta and Umicore
By Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
You don’t have to own mining companies to benefit from rising metals prices.
This is a roundup of first quarter earnings notes shared with my Patreon supporters over the last week. Waste to energy operator Covanta and specialty metals recycler Umicore are both benefiting from skyrocketing metals prices.
Just as renewable energy and energy efficiency stocks have long shown that investors don’t have to own fossil fuel companies to benefit from rising prices of fossil fuels, recyclers like Covanta and Umicore are showing that you don’t have to own environmentally damaging mining companies to benefit from rising...
Covanta: The Big Player In Waste-to-Energy
by Debra Fiakas CFA Covanta Holding Corp. (CVA: NYSE) is among the largest waste-to-energy developers and producers in the U.S. The company couples waste collection services for local government and industry with power generation for local municipal or commercial customers. Covanta’s waste handling and ‘mass-burn’ process also allows for metal recovery and sales. The company operates forty-six waste-to-energy facilities mostly in North America supported by eighteen waste transfer stations and four ash landfills. Covanta is a big player in the waste-to-energy industry, but what kind of yield does it's stock offer investors? Covanta’s management team...
The Light On Blue Sphere’s Horizon
by Debra Fiakas CFA The stakes were high at the beginning of its fiscal year 2015, as Blue Sphere, Inc. (BLSP: OTC/QB), a developer of waste-to-energy projects, was facing deadlines to fulfill its contractual commitments to the sellers of its two ‘front burner’ waste-to-energy projects in North Carolina and Rhode Island. In the four intervening months it appears Blue Sphere has won all bets. Blue Sphere had purchased a biogas project from original owner Orbit Energy and had received an equipment financing commitment from Caterpillar. Unfortunately, an equity financing source withdrew its interest as...
The Pros Pick Two (Correction:Four) Offbeat Cleantech Stocks for 2014
Tom Konrad CFA Green 2014 image via BigStock Among the dozen stocks picked by my panel of professional green money managers for 2014, most followed three themes: Solar stocks, IT stocks, and income stocks. Two didn’t, and they are included here. This Cash-Rich Water Company Could Produce a Big Dividend The first is a Japanese water utility, picked by Rafael Coven, the Managing Director at the Cleantech Group, and manager of the Cleantech index (^CTIUS) which underlies the Powershares Cleantech ETF (NYSE:PZD.) Coven likes...
Carbon Negative Impacts from Biomass Conversion
By Andrew Grant, Biomass Power Projects, LLC, Lee Enterprises Consulting Canada, New England, and California all have Carbon Credit programs to achieve GHG reduction goals. Several forms of biomass diversion from landfills, farms, and other biomass – dependent GHG sources are already in operation to support significant GHG reductions. Examples of GHG reductions are given, and the carbon impact of the different commercially available biomass to GHG reduction processes are described. The three groups of commercially guaranteed biomass conversion processes are: 1. Power Generation, Steam Generation, and CHP: from the combustion of biomass wastes. This industry, with about 100...
Focus On Clean Power Income Trusts
Last week, Tom brought you a piece on the Algonquin Power Income Fund (AGQNF.PK), in which he opined that shift in investor attention away from capital gains toward yield might eventually provide a catalyst for the prices of yield-focused securities such as income trusts to rise. So-called utility trusts, or income trusts where the underlying corporation is engaged in utility activities such as power generation, are a common feature of the Canadian income trust sector (the mother of all income trust sectors). A sub-set of utility trusts is the clean power utility trust, where the power generation...
The X Factor in Covanta’s Capital Budget
Debra Fiakas, CFA The Waste Hierarchy, with energy from waste highlighted In the last post “Covanta on a Mission to Up-cycle Municipal Waste," I noted that even a group of experts advising Covanta Holding (CVA: NYSE), has some concerns about the wisdom of channeling municipal waste through mass burn facilities like those of Covanta. Recycling and reuse are considered even higher uses for municipal waste that result in net lower toxic emissions and net higher energy savings or energy generation. For example, a report published by...
The Muscle Car Of Energy Efficiency
Tom Konrad CFA Disclosure: I am long TSX:PRI / PENGF. The poster child of energy efficiency has long been changing a light bulb. First, it was swapping out an incandescent for a compact fluorescent, now the swap is to an LED. Changing a light bulb is a small step that anyone can take, and it’s so cost effective that it can pay for itself in months if the bulb is used frequently. This is a good example of household energy efficiency measures: a small action requiring a limited investment that anyone can take that pays back quickly....
Global Resource Corporation: Needed Technology; Unanswered Questions About Management
On July 3, The Energy Blog told us about a process of turning old tires back into valuable oil and gasses. Given the problems of Peak Oil and plastic waste which can mimic almost anything in the environment, I was intrigued, and I had the feeling that other watchers of the alternative energy space would be, too. After a quick review to make sure that the technology was based on sound science (I believe it is, although that is no guarantee that it can be commercialized), and a search for information about their governance policies and a board list...
Blue Sphere’s First Revenue
by Debra Fiakas CFA Blue Sphere (BLSP: OTC) is continuing to make progress in its strategic plans to build and operate biogas power plants. The company is initially targeting the largely untapped supply of organic wastes from food processing and table to meet growing demand for renewable, no– or low-carbon emission energy sources. A year ago, the company’s portfolio consisted of a string of projects all in the planning stage. Management has pushed two food waste-to-energy projects in the U.S.to the construction stage and closed on the first four acquisitions of fully operational agriculture-waste biogas power plants in...
$3 Billion For Cleantech & Alt Energy
Charles Morand The DOE made public earlier today the amount of money that will awarded to clean power projects in lieu of the usual tax breaks: $3 billion. This will allow project proponents to receive a direct cash grant now instead of a Production Tax Credit or an Investment Tax Credit later on. The guidance document notes the following: "Section 1603 of the Act’s tax title, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act, appropriates funds for payments to persons who place in service specified energy property during 2009 or 2010 or after 2010 if construction began...
