Not many markets are going to need to raise a trillion dollars in the next 30 years, but the power industry will in order to build the infrastructure of the 21st century. If I were going to build something today, it would be high-efficiency power components for tomorrow. See the Financial Times for the story (sorry, subscription required). Here are several key excerpts:
Private investors and governments will have to invest $10,000bn in the world's power sector in the next 30 years, according to a study from the International Energy Agency to be released early next month....Fatih Birol, the agency's chief economist and author of the report, said: "The myths were destroyed. When you talk about investment you think of oil and natural gas. But in the next three decades the most investment will have to go to electricity."
Indeed, electricity makes up more than 50 per cent of the overall investment needed in energy, with oil and gas making up the second largest need and coal occupying a small slice.
Now, one of the findings in the report is that seven companies currently own more than 60 percent of electricity production capacity. That's a market ripe for entrepreneurial activity, tearing off local production and creating self-supporting micro-grids that have the larger grid as a fall back and normally sell power to the grid because of over production in the "local loop."
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at October 20, 2003 09:33 AM | TrackBack