Happy 2014

We just buried 2013 and now 2014 is the new born.   It is the cycle of life.   My hopes for 2014 are pretty simple.   I just want to see Bloom Energy and its Officers, Directors, and major shareholders brought to justice by the FTC, the state of Delaware, the State of California, and some good private lawyers. 

My new year’s resolution is to be much more positive about the President of the USA and his Secretary of Energy but only if they actually set forth an honest and real energy policy and don’t rehash the thermodynamic lies of the past.  The freshman honeymoon for Dr. Moniz is over and he better do something now that actually obeys the second law of thermo or else he will follow the Chu Chu train on the bridge to nowhere.

My prognostication for green energy stocks for 2014 is that KIOR will be no more by the time 2015 comes around.  The hyped hydrogen stocks like BLDP, HYGS, PLUG, QTWW, and FCEL will drop by 40% as a group by year end.   The solar players like SPWR and FSLR will drop by 20%.  And finally the car company that defies gravity TSLA will be a $100 stock by December 31, 2014.   I will report in a year how wrong or right my dart throwing was.

My guess on what China will do to remove particulates and acid gases from their air is that they will start to spend a good deal of money on bag houses and scrubbers to remove the worst offenders in their dirty air and that the country as a whole will emit at least 5% more CO2 in 2014 than they did in 2013.  They simply will continue to use more energy but will begin to produce some shale natural gas and will only increase oil imports by 400,000 barrels a day.

The US will continue to increase shale oil and gas production and we will reduce our imports by another 250,000 barrels a day.  Europe will still be the dog of economic growth and they will simply continue to go sideways.

The big news in Green for 2014 will be that the quantity of cellulosic derived liquid transport fuel produced in the USA will quadruple from less than 1 million gallons in 2013 to over 4 million gallons but will still be the size of a pimple on an elephants behind.  PV power production will start to be meaningful and concentrated solar boondoggles like Brightsource in Ivanpah will not be repeated as it is simply too complex and expensive to compete with PV.  The cost of PV panels might increase slightly in 2014.   In 2013 the price of PV panels did increase from January to December by approximately 10% as the PV industry reached rock bottom a year ago.

We will see some major waste of money in grid energy storage but some glimmer of hope may start to shine through using battery chemistry other than lithium ion for grid energy storage.   By year end we may see systems that store several megawatt hours and can dispatch 2 or 3 mw become available.  These storage system will still be expensive and will need subsidy but will be less expensive that lithium ion storage.  

On the lighting front LED lights will gain significant market share.  Televisions will see some move to Ultra HD at the high end.  OLED will be too expensive and will only gain a very small niche market.   The mainstay of TVs will still be 2D LED lit LCDs at 1080p and 120 Hz.   More than this is simply a waste of money.  The price of a 60 inch LED 1080p 120Hz non smart TV will drop by another 10 to 15% in 2014.

On plug in hybrid or pure battery vehicles the US will sell 96,000 in 2013 (mainly plug in Hybrids) and will sell 140,000 in 2014 also mainly plug in hybrids.   Sales of the Nissan Leaf and Chev Volt in 2014 will be at the same level as 2013.  The Tesla will see 35,000 sales in the USA and new plug in models from Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, and other high end manufacturers will begin to take some market share.   There will be 10 fires in Teslas in 2014.

My guess for gasoline price here in the US is that it will be a couple of percent lower than in 2013.   All in all the US will emit a little more CO2 in 2014 than in 2013 perhaps an added 0.5%.  

Hope you all have a happy 2014 and that you do your part to be little greener.  It is the year of the horse so trade in your car and buy a new Mustang.  I don’t think the Green Machine will win a Nobel Prize in 2014 but Al Gore may be stripped of his ill gotten one.