The Clean Energy Revolution

How to invest in clean energy

Ric Edelman: It's Monday, July 17th. Let's talk pollution. Buildings produce a lot of it. A lot of CO2 boilers that heat those buildings. They burn natural gas or oil. There's a 30 story apartment building in Manhattan, however, where they capture the carbon dioxide and they cool it. They turn it from a gas into a liquid and then they truck it to a concrete factory in Brooklyn. The carbon is then mixed into the cement and sealed into concrete blocks, keeps it out of the atmosphere. They're capturing 60% of the CO2 emissions from that building, cutting the building's overall emissions by 25%. This is the first building to do this, and there's wide expectation that others will follow suit.

Here's another innovation. Scientists have figured out how to remove carbon pollution from the air, turn it into sodium bicarbonate that's baking soda and store it in oceans. This could be three times more efficient than other technology. Now, there's a problem with capturing carbon dioxide from the air. The problem is that it's only a small part of the air, 0.04%.

So there's a new tech in Iceland that can capture four tons of carbon dioxide a year. That's equal to what 800 cars produce. And once they capture it, they can easily turn it into baking soda and release it into the ocean. But isn't that legally defined as dumping, which is banned by international treaty? They're going to have to figure out if dumping baking soda into the ocean is an environmental issue. Solve one problem. Create another. I don't think so.

So let's try this solution for our environment - geothermal energy. We grab the heat from hot springs and geysers. Geothermal is everywhere that tectonic plates have pushed magma close to the earth's surface. By the way, where does that happen? Along the entire Pacific Ocean. There's a huge circle, the Ring of fire, they call it. There's also a lot of geothermal power production in Nevada and California. Hot water is pumped to create steam. The steam rotates a turbine, but geothermal is less than 1% of our nation's energy production.

Now, there are companies trying to find geothermal energy everywhere, even where it's not near the surface. You've heard of fracking that's looking for oil deep in the rocks. Now they are fracking for heat. The hottest rocks are 2 to 5 miles deep. And the Department of Energy thinks we can supply 10% of our energy needs this way. That's a tenfold increase of what we do today. Now, the two biggest obstacles are cost and proof it'll work. It's expensive to dig deep and you don't know what you're going to find. 

In fact, that's an old joke about oil. How do you define an oil well? It's a deep hole in the ground with a liar on top. Will this be the same thing with geothermal? We'll have to find out.

But the race is on to find new sources of clean energy. And there are a lot of ways you can invest in this strategy. ETFs from both Invesco and Global X. From Invesco, there is the MSCI Sustainable Futures ETF. The symbol is ERTH, (Earth) and the Invesco Global Clean Energy ETF. The symbol is PBD. And at Global X, they have the Cleantech ETF, symbol CTEC and the Green Building ETF. The symbol is GRNR. You can learn about all of these at Invesco.com and Global X ETFs.com. Or just ask your financial advisor.

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