On my morning drive today, I caught a KUT piece centering around a satellite radio ad that invites everyday citizens to become wildcatters and invest in speculative oil wells. Immediately it made me think about how this might help my friend Andy who is carrying on his family's business of developing West Texas oil projects, but he turns around and gives or invests that money to advance sustainability.

 

The KUT reporter invited energy expert Michael Webber to comment about the broad topic of energy speculation. Despite the fact that one of the hats Webber wears is Co-Director of the ATI Clean Energy Incubator, both he and the reporter both missed the opportunity to tie in the business case for investing in renewable energy.

 

Webber mentions the risks as well as the boom and bust nature of oil speculation and the oil markets, yet when asked what he recommended to potential investors I was nearly falling off the edge of my seat hoping he would mention the less risky, less polluting and more guaranteed returns of investing in wind or solar. No such luck. He said something about seeing the projects, as if Jane or Joe investor would know what s/he was looking at anyway.

 

Also interesting to me was that not once in the piece does Webber or the reporter mention the international phenomenon of crowdfunding, which has gained traction in recent years. Certainly there are legitimate and innovative business models such as Solar Mosaic  which tie together this crowd funding and renewable energy making solar investments (beyond the ones you can put on your rooftops) available to interested investors.

 

Here's to a future of smart, low-risk, positive investing that will also help keep us from choking on fossil fuel emissions.

 

(image via Popular Mechanics http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/solar-wind/4338280)