Energy stocks are the next great growth opportunity
Energy powers everything. Obvious, right? We all know we need gasoline to drive our cars, and that gas prices are hitting historic levels. Consider that U.S. auto demand continues to rise modestly each year to the point the country now has 256 million vehicles on the roads, up 25 million from 2000. Now consider that China had just a few million vehicles in 2000 and now has 34 million. By 2020, the central government there expects 200 million cars to be on its roads! More cars need more energy.
But beyond the obvious, consider other ways in which energy demand is surging. American usage of the Internet uses more energy than all the cars and trucks do in the country. Every Google search you perform is like driving a car three inches. The number of people in the world with access to the Internet has tripled since 2000, but it still reaches just 28% of the world’s population. More Internet access needs more energy.
The United Nations projects that the world’s population will increase by nearly 50% by 2075, to over nine billion. Converting calories to fuel energy equivalents, it takes twice as much energy (fuels) to produce the number of calories cow’s milk returns to a person, five times as much as a chicken egg and over 25 times the energy from beef. More people means more food, more food needs more energy.
That means the energy the world can pull from the ground, generate or convert becomes ever more valuable. And it isn’t just fossil fuels growing in importance, but energy efficiency efforts, such as highly conductive transmission wires, swap-in fuels such as liquid natural gas and ethanol, and alternative energy such as wind, which is cheaper than peak demand natural gas in many locales.
Visit these links for more information on energy investing:
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A Rant on Energy Policy
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Exciting Developments in Car Technology
We're seeing many exciting new car technologies that offer major growth potential.
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