Written by Marc Courtenay

Thursday, 09 October 2008

Like you, I watched the presidential debate on Tuesday evening from Nashville, TN. There were many obvious similarities in their messages, but one seemed to be as glaring and as "green" as possible.

We are on the threshold of a 4-12 year period of time when perhaps trillions of dollars will be invested around the world on alternative forms of energy, sustainable forms, that will address in a humongous way the critical energy shortage issues and the global warming crisis.

Kelvin Schulle wrote an interesting brief article at Seeking Alpha that focused on the presidential debate and what it revealed concerning this subject and the many topics that were debated on Tuesday evening:

"But one thing that appears in most of the topics is renewable energy. I believe no matter who wins the election, renewable energy, especially solar energy will be a booming sector, investors may want to invest sooner than later. Let us take a look at what happened last night debate.

1. When it comes to energy policy, John McCain continuously supports nuclear, plus solar and wind energy. While Obama prefers solar and wind over other forms of renewables. Obama said the only solution to energy crisis is to develop renewable energy like solar and wind, as more drilling simply adds to the US's addiction to crude and increases green house emissions.
2. When it comes to how to deal with Russia, again Obama believes petrol dollars strengthened Russia, and developing renewables will change this scenario, hence put more pressure on Russia.
3. When it comes to Iran, according to Obama, the renewable energy policy can also change the way we deal with Iran. If the US uses solar energy and imports less oil from Iran, Iran will have less dollar to support terrorism.

Based on recent polls, Obama is leading McCain nation wide. The solar and wind energy sectors are most likely to benefit from new president no matter who we pick in November. Investors may want to invest now while the sector is beaten down during this market turmoil. Several names are attractive and these companies have great management teams.

First one is Energy Conversion Devices (Nasdaq:ENER). This company has a strong growth record. Mark Morelli, president and CEO noted in a recent meeting, "We are in the final stages of site selection for a new 120 MW solar-cell manufacturing facility. We are also pleased to announce that we are accelerating the growth of our nameplate capacity to 420 MWs in fiscal year 2010 and to 720 MWs in fiscal 2011. The earning of this quarter will be exceeding expectation based on the CEO in the last conference call."

The second one is First Solar (Nasdaq:FSLR). It is the No.1[solar energy company] in this sector in terms of sales and market cap. It is way under valued at this price, and the stock is expected to rise quickly when we approach elections in less than 4 weeks. [Perhaps the same could be said for Suntech Power (NYSE:STP) which is having a nice rally today, Thursday, as we write this].

Finally we should keep in mind that the solar tax credit bill has been passed and signed by President Bush, so it is official now. This created a base for the solar sector for the next 8 years to come."