Neutral is rarely considered an optimal condition, save for scuba buoyancy and, increasingly, with respect to carbon exposure. An eclectic roster of entities have announced aspirations to achieve carbon neutrality, including HSBC, Google, Super Bowl XLI, Silverjet and the 2008 presidential campaigns of John Edwards and Hilary Clinton.

As these initiatives have attracted positive recognition in the marketplace, more entities have caught on to the reputational benefits accruing from neutrality. This has, in turn, created a virtuous cycle or a “race to the top”. Or has it? A growing chorus of stakeholders has begun to question the net benefit of carbon offsets.

In an attempt to distill truth from fiction, F&C Investments has put out this excellent Guide to Carbon Offsetting. This four-pager is well worth the read for the carbon curious, committed and skeptical.

I was part of a panel discussion that addressed strategies for responsible international investing at last week’s Green Mountain Summit on Investor Responsibility. Since the focus of the panel was on the challenges and opportunities of both the research and product side of the equation, I thought that an informal overview of current retail mutual fund offerings available to U.S. investors would be a valuable framing exercise.

As sources for the overview I used the U.S. Social Investment Forum (SIF) directory, Morningstar’s socially responsible investing fund screener and the web sites of fund sponsors. I excluded alternate share classes when they existed and focused on funds available to U.S. investors that had global or international exposures, regardless of whether or not the exposure was explicitly part of the funds’ investment objective.

The results of this exercise are summarized below. I found just 14 funds for responsible investors that had global/international exposure, 10 of which had explicit mandates for such exposure. I included three funds that are not branded as socially responsible investing (SRI) funds, but would appeal to responsible investors because of their emphasis on environmental factors.

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While wind power has become the most economically competitive renewable energy source globally, future US growth faces a hurdle in the form of a supply chain bottleneck for turbines.

Market share for turbines has become increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few producers, putting pressure on domestic wind developers and creating an opportunity for more vertically integrated foreign utilities to acquire US assets. Throw in the fickle production tax credit for wind power with its two-year lifespan, and the US outlook for more wind power does indeed look shaky.

On the positive side, more and more states are increasing their renewable portfolio standards, the price of oil continues to rise, demand for energy is expected to grow and energy independence from foreign producers is still an attractive proposition to law makers.

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If you’re looking for the article to read about the state of affairs in the alternative energy space, covering the present as well as near- and long-term projections, this is it.

The article touches on all the major alternative energy sources- Wind, Geothermal, Biofuels, etc.- and most importantly, it goes into the economics of each source. How cost effective is solar power these days? How many cents per kilowatt hour does it take to produce biomass in a plant? How much does cost matter when it comes to going mainstream? This article is a guide to these kinds of questions.

The New Math of Alternative Energy

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