The Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy - (Page Cover2) The Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy A Letter to Our Readers A Sincerely, wind turbine resembles a windmill as much as the Space Shuttle resembles an oxcart. The payloads and payoffs are centuries apart. The science and engineering that go into the construction of today’s wind farms and the channeling of electricity from them are as remarkable as any achievement in our modern economy. Only a generation ago, wind power was often portrayed as an inefficient throwback. Today it’s considered a next- generation solution, not only in the developed world but in emerging economies as well. A measure of the promise of wind power as “modern energy” – and the necessity to develop it – comes from the attention paid renewables at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. A report from the event’s organizers argued for annual investments of $515 billion in clean energy over the next 20 years, more than triple the current pace. The political will to tackle such a challenge is emerging: the European Union approved a major initiative on climate change and renewable energy in December. Barack Obama has made energy issues a priority of his new administration. But what of the economics? A two-thirds fall in the cost of a barrel of oil and the precarious state of the world’s credit markets make the necessarily long-term bets on modern energy harder to justify today than a year ago. Undoubtedly there is an important role to be played by private-sector investors in developing wind power as the answer to the world’s hydrocarbon dependence. For the moment, however, private money is unlikely to budge until the best intentions of the public sector are made concrete in the form of subsidies and incentives. We are optimistic that the world will get this right. As this guide illustrates, plenty of brilliant minds are at work on wind power. The answers the modern energy industry has delivered to date are encouraging. John Hitchcock Editor & Publisher – Special Projects Institutional Investor Editor & Publisher Special Projects John Hitchcock News Editor Special Projects Marilen Cawad Art Director Special Projects Francis Klaess Writers Eric Marx Palanga Solano Copy Editor Charles Thurston The information in this guide is intended only for use by financial professionals and is not meant to substitute for their own detailed knowledge of market conditions. An Institutional Investor Guide, published with the March 2009 issue of Institutional Investor Guides
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