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SO rudely interrupted by the financial crisis of the last year, the green energy stock-market bubble is beginning to inflate again.
The Evening Standard CleanTech-10, a basket of 10 stock-market companies in the so-called clean technology market, reveals that share values for businesses operating in what is variously described as the green, alternative, renewables, sustainable or low carbon energy sector are booming again and beating the FTSE 100 index.
An index of the Standard's CleanTech-10 rebased to the start of the original green energy boom in the summer of 2006 finds that the stock prices of the 10 companies almost doubled within a year and stayed at inflated values until last summer despite most being start-up lossmakers with few if any revenues.
The boom looked for all the world like the biotech bonanza of the mid-Nineties, the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century and more recently the soaring values tagged on drilling and mining minnows with few assets.
And then crash. Within six months from last summer's high point, our CleanTech-10 halved in value as support dried up and sentiment moved away from high risk. The basket crashed back below its 2006 valuation.
But then redemption. From lows plumbed in March, the CleanTech-10 has come roaring back, up 25% in three months and back in profit showing a gain of 10% for a notional investor in the portfolio in June 2006. In comparison over the past year, the FTSE 100 fell 31% from last June to March but has risen 16% since then.
Is the renewed boom in sustainables sustainable? It is the same as asking whether we on the cusp of a new FTSE100 bull run. Who knows?
But what is clear is that our CleanTech-10 variously face at least three major problems: financial, technological and meteorological. Most will continue to struggle to raise funds while our portfolio's solar panel maker has warned that business is drying up because customers are not investing. Several firms are also battling with their new technologies - whether it be wind turbines that do not operate properly or wave-energy companies as yet unable to prove their "power buoys" work.
But perhaps a sign of how high-risk this sector is are the companies complaining about the weather: there has not been enough breeze to power wind farms or lack of rain is hitting hydro plants.
It is the greatest irony that such companies set up to take advantage of climate change are themselves being hurt by the changing climate.
The CleanTech-10 is a basket of stock-market-listed companies in the green energy spectrum from wave, solar and wind power to exchanges trading carbon emissions and trading permits. Set up after Alistair Darling's so-called Budget for the Green Economy, these 10 stocks are a bellwether for the clean technology sector.
