Alternative Energy Bubble in Play

Starting to ramp up. This book is right on target and is selling nicely. KPCB is all over this space. Going to make the Internet bubble look small in comparison. It will really heat up in the next couple of years. The collapse of the bubble will likely happen when there is demand destruction (likely when China hits a rough patch) in the conventional energy space and prices drop for a period (before resuming their upward march). Unfortunately, most of the money invested is going to be wasted (as in rerouted to the early entrants).

Comments

[fairhavenhorn]

There will be a bubble but it may burst sooner rather than later. At the same time that you have the bubble in technologies that try to avoid disruption by finding cheap energy sources, you have the disruptive technologies that are attacking the high energy intensity economic structure. As the prices keep climbing these disruptive technologies find it easier to overcome the change resistance barriers. Once they get started, you see the power growth laws take effect, and change hits much faster than expected.

Unfortunately it's much harder to find and pick the winning disruptive technologies. They live in the reduce, repair, renovate, and replace part of the economic cycle. The reduce, repair, and renovate disruptive technologies are often new product lines rather than new companies. The suscessful replacement technologies are tough to identify early.