Wall Street is getting back into the alternative energy business. The WSJ reports Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have invested $100 million each to finance separate wind farms this month, taking advantage of the Obama administration's $3 billion grant program for renewables. 

The program is a move in the right direction, but ultimately a drop in the bucket that's needed to take renewable energy mainstream, says Gordon Johnson, head of alternative energy research at Hapoalim Securities. "Three billion is not enough for just one sector."

Ultimately the cost of alternative energy -- such as solar panels -- must come down significantly before more consumers let go of fossil fuel-generated energy. (It now costs about $17,000 to install solar panels on a single-family home.) That's why Johnson thinks competition from low-cost manufacturers in China is a good development for the solar sector.

A recent, negative setback for renewables: Caps to Germany's Feed-in Tariff or FIT incentives, which have fueled solar growth in Germany, one of the world's largest solar energy markets. FIT incentives require utilities to pay a set price for solar energy, subsequently making it more attractive for businesses to make green investments. (For now, FIT incentives are not a huge part of America's energy policy.) 

Because of high costs associated with solar power, Johnson says wind energy may be the smarter alternative energy play at the moment. 

Bigger picture though, it's America's aging infrastructure -- decades-old transmission lines -- that may derail our alternative energy growth, Johnson notes. That's a key reason why oil man T. Boone Pickens' wind farm project was derailed.

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While investors have been warming to stocks this summer, the solar sector has gone cold. Gordon Johnson, head of alternative energy research with Hapoalim Securities, says there's good reason to be skeptical.

Jim Cramer thinks FirstSolar is the top choice in the group; Johnson respectively disagrees. Johnson has a 'sell' rating on the stock with a $90 price target. First Solar "has a great management I just think it's overvalued right now and I think the street is a bit aggressive on the EPS estimate," he says. The price advantage that allowed for First Solar's wider margins is shrinking because "polysilicon prices have collapsed," according to Johnson. Plus, that polysilicon material it uses isn't as efficient as the competing photovoltaic crystalline.

And potentially more troubling, is what might be classified as questionable accounting. It's a story Johnson and Barron's have highlighted. The June quarter earnings were bolstered by what Barron's dubbed, "accounting help." Senior Editor Bill Alpert wrote in an August 17th article:

"After banks lent money to the project -- a 53-megawatt solar farm southeast of Berlin -- First Solar gave up its right to convert its own investment into an equity stake, and then decided to recognize sales and profits on the solar panels it supplied the project."

Johnson calls it "false demand" and says the move was contrary to what First Solar originally claimed. Johnson notes that on the first-quarter conference call the company said, "they would not recognize revenue until we find an equity investor." They obviously changed their mind.

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Gordon Johnson, head of alternative energy research at Hapoalim Securities, says the group is lagging, and will continue to struggle into 2010, for several reasons:

• Big government subsidies in China, Spain (since ratcheted down) and the U.S. (just getting started) led to massive overinvestment in the space.
• Polysilicon manufacturers are still profitable even though prices have cratered in the past year, leading to yet more supply and disappointing results for many solar names.
• Natural gas prices have plummeted to a 7-year low and solar demand is more closely correlated to natural gas prices vs. oil, which itself is still about 50% below last year's peak despite a significant rally this spring.

Johnson has been bearish on solar stocks for much of the year and remains negative on most of the big names in the space, as we discuss in greater detail in a forthcoming segment.

Rice paints a "pretty dire picture" of the whole alternative energy industry, with the possible exception of wind, based on the following:

• Global warming patterns have reversed in the past decade, Rice says, citing studies by meteorologist Dr. Judah Cohen, whom BlackRock has on retainer. Ten years is microscopic in geological terms but "you'd better hope global warming is caused by man-made [carbon dioxide] if you're investing in these sectors," he says. "I think that's a huge risk based on some of the evidence that's been coming out."
• Alternative energies are not economical without major government subsidies or a large enough carbon tax. The cap and trade legislation currently being debated is "not enough to do anything," Rice says. "All it does is provide Obama a pass to Copenhagen" where the U.N. is hosting a climate change conference in December.

More government subsidies for alternative energy could be forthcoming but...

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Say you're a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist who wants a one-of-a-kind, show-stopping electric car. What do you do? If you're the very playful Satish Darmaraj, you build your own!

After selling his most recent company, Zimbra, to Yahoo for a cool $350 million, Darmaraj decided to splurge on something electric. He thought about a Tesla, but at the end of the day decided he loved his Toyota Prius too much to switch. And while plenty of people pay a few thousand dollars to turn their hybrid Priuses into electrics, Darmaraj took, well, a very Silicon Valley route instead.

A true tech geek, Darmaraj sought out George Barris, the creator of the original Batmobile and updated versions of the Knight Rider car, and convinced him to come out of retirement to make Darmaraj’s Prius something greener, cooler and of course more high-tech. The result is a one-of-a-kind car that wound up costing Darmaraj more than a Tesla Roadster, but boasts sunny colors and sporty lines, an all-carbon-fiber redone interior, and in-car wifi network. All this and it still gets a 105 miles per gallon.

This is the latest in our series on Valley luminaries who are investing in remaking the U.S. auto industry and breaking America's dependence on foreign oil:

• Elon Musk’s sporty Tesla, which changes the idea of what an electric car is 
• Vinod Khosla, who is betting big on smarter-ethanol
• Shai Agassi, whose ambitious plan is to build out a network of battery charging and replacement centers around the world

As their ventures make clear, everyone has a slightly different vision of exactly what that future should look like.

But here's Satish Darmaraj's vision of fun, starting right here today. Enjoy!

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Shai Agassi is doing his best to break the world of its gas addiction through his startup, Better Place. But he needs the car companies, consumers and most off all, the government, to pull it off. So far, Better Place has spent most of its time rolling out its network of charging and battery replacement stations in smaller countries like Denmark and Israel. But eventually Agassi's eyes are locked on the U.S. market.

He’s not necessarily looking for handouts or subsidies. He just wants an even playing field - something he says the U.S. doesn't have now, thanks to artificially low prices at the pump. He explains what he thinks the U.S. can learn from France, Germany and even China in the clip.

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Earlier:

• Why Shai Agassi quit his dream job to make the world "a Better Place"
• Better Place's breakthrough: changing a car battery in one minute
• Shai Agassi's plan to get the world off oil

Shai Agassi started programming when he was seven. He finished school early and started building companies with his dad in Israel. Finally he knew he’d hit on a winner when he sold TopTier Software to industry titan SAP in 2001. Only SAP wasn’t just interested in the software—they wanted Agassi.

People thought the brash 30-something would last six months inside the stodgy German giant. Six years later, he was poised to be the company’s next CEO. Well, co-CEO technically, but still, he was a role model for Israeli techies and about to be one of the most important men in the tech world.

That’s when he decided to quit. In the third segment of our sit-down with Agassi opens up about the life-changing decision to go from software executive to an entrepreneur, building a company so ambitious many people call it crazy.

Earlier:

• Better Place's breakthrough: changing a car battery in one minute
• Shai Agassi's plan to get the world off oil

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When I asked Better Place founder and CEO Shai Agassi what exactly he’d accomplished in the last two years, he smiled and demurred “cars take time.” Indeed, while he’s managed to convince two countries to let him roll out his network of charging stations and a major car maker to make as many cars as customers demand, he’s still two years away from widely opening the service up to customers in his test markets of Denmark and Israel.

But the challenge critics have seized on the most is his plan to offer not only battery charging at Better Place stations, but robots who can completely replace your battery in less than a minute. Better Place finally debuted the technology on May 13 in Japan, and Agassi says he ran the machine 1,000 times in one day— just to prove to naysayers it really worked.

In this segment, he talks about that breakthrough and why he claims this ambitious play will eventually have a better business model than the oil companies.

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Back in 2006 Shai Agassi was at the top of his game. A programmer since the age of seven, he’d worked his way up the high-tech food chain, and at just 39-years-old he was next in-line to be software giant SAP’s co-CEO. Then, he shocked everyone by quitting to start a cleantech company from scratch. 

And it’s not just any cleantech company. Better Place —as it’s called—is aiming to get the entire world off gasoline. As ambitious as Elon Musk’s plan to build a luxury electric car is, in some ways Agassi is aiming for even more. He’s working to create an entire ecosystem that's not about getting 100 or even 1,000 electric cars on the road—but millions. Last week, we brought you an interview with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla who argued electric cars couldn’t scale. Agassi begs to differ...

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Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla may have the largest cleantech portfolio in Silicon Valley, but he made his fame and fortune as an IT guy. So does the about-face mean IT growth is officially dead? Not if you pick and chose wisely. Khosla cites his investment in Aliph, the company that makes the Jawbone Bluetooth headsets. It did $500,000 in revenues in 2006 and a whopping $140 million last year. Guess what? It’s still growing even in the recession.

In the final segment of our rare sit-down interview with one of Silicon Valley’s most renowned investors, Khosla talks about what he likes in IT these days and what kind of companies he’s avoiding. The former Sun-founder also gives his thoughts on the Sun-Oracle deal.

But it’s not just IT that’s changed. The venture business itself has grown and matured during Khosla’s multi-decade career as an investor, and not all for the better. His thoughts on why venture capitalists need to focus more on the “venture part” and less on the “capital” on the clip.

See also:

• Can Cleantech Produce "Ten Googles"?
• Why Ethanol--Not Electric Cars and Hybrids--Is the Answer

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