| Nick Hodge:
In uranium specifically? I mean, nothing goes straight up. The spot price of uranium, in fact, has gone back below $30 a pound.
So that probably has done something to temper the euphoria in uranium, but it seems healthy. The stocks seem healthy. The interest in the sector seems healthy and then, more broadly, you're starting to see more support. Nuclear got a nod in the infrastructure bill. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has specifically mentioned support for small modular reactors. And so we're starting to see real political backing behind it as well. And that's on the democratic side, which we haven't seen in a long time.
We of course know about Section 232 and the uranium reserve that's coming, but that's all just specific to uranium.
If you look at lithium carbonate prices, if you look at spodumene prices, and if you look at lithium stocks, look at Orocobre (TSX: ORL)(OTC: OROCF), for example, which I and my readers have shares of from Advantage Lithium...
The cleantech space in general is doing very well.
If I look at battery stocks or I look at electric vehicle stocks, all continuing to do well.
We saw the launching of an ETF the other week from BlackRock, two in fact, that saw some of the biggest inflows ever into ETFs in their ESG funds. And ESG has been around for a bit now. I'm not sure why we decided to call it ESG, it stands for environmental, social and corporate governance. That's a term that has just gained traction in the past couple of years. When I first started investing in the clean tech space, which was nearly 15 years ago now, it was always called, triple-bottom-line investing, right?
Where you do good for yourself and the shareholders and the environment. And so the ESG moniker is relatively new, but anyway, it's all the rage now as evidenced by record fund inflows to funds that are created to cater to people who want to invest in ESG.
But the problem with that — as is often the problem with the ETFs — is that buying these BlackRock funds doesn't really get you pure play ESG companies, right? They hold a basket of, for the most part, tech companies that may or may not have some corporate initiatives dedicated to the environment and good social and corporate governance.
So if you're interested in that sort of investing — ESG investing, cleantech investing, renewable energy investing, investing in things that are clean and sustainable and good for the people of the world and the environment that we live in — you can do so by picking individual stocks.
That’s something that I actually started my career on all those years ago: picking individual cleantech stocks back in 2007 when solar stocks were all the rage. And I say this all the time, you used to be able to turn to the back page of the Wall Street Journal, and it would be Yingli Solar and JA Solar were some of the highest volume traders of the day for months.
And so I've seen the cycle before and I have a decent idea of what to look out for. 've also evaluated a lot of the sectors — solar, wind, geothermal, wave, energy efficiency, smart grid, all the components.
What I see now is virtual power plants emerging as one of the best solutions because we've known for a long time, and this phrase has been around for a decade as well, that there is not a silver bullet solution to the energy and climate crises.
It's an all-of-the-above approach, or a buckshot approach, where you need all the different sources of power, all the clean sources of power, the smart grid to tie them together, the batteries to store them on and the technology to link it all together and distribute it on an as needed basis, even though it's a non-centralized system.
And so all that is here right now. I just made a new video about it that you can check out below.
(Click to See a Virtual Power Plant in Action)
Tesla, for example, has built a virtual power plant in Australia. And Elon Musk says that the virtual power plant opportunity is growing faster than the electric vehicle opportunity.
And so it’s definitely something to take a look at as ESG makes headlines, as the Biden Administration gets behind it, and as that trend seems to be firmly intact.
Because the last time we saw a transition like this, something like 60,000% profits were made.
Tesla, for example, has built a virtual power plant in Australia. And Elon Musk says that the virtual power plant opportunity is growing faster than the electric vehicle opportunity.
And so it’s definitely something to take a look at as ESG makes headlines, as the Biden Administration gets behind it, and as that trend seems to be firmly intact.
Because the last time we saw a transition like this, something like 60,000% profits were made.
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