Green Investors Were Crushed. Now It’s Time to Make Money.

Invest according to your political views, and you’re unlikely to make money. Companies that appeal to left-wingers or to right-wingers might be good or bad investments, but the fact of being, on current politics, clean and union-friendly for the left or oily and gun-friendly for the right is neither here nor there. What matters is their ability to make money and how highly they are valued.

This has been rammed home for environmentally-minded investors in the past year, as a coordinated selloff in anything with green credentials crushed the idea of making money while doing good.

It turns out that the real world is tougher than advocates of ESG—environmental, social and governance—investing claimed. The lessons have been hard, but should remind investors in the sector of some of the basic facts of investing. The fall in prices has improved the outlook for the stocks.

This year has been almost universally bad for clean investments. The two worst performers still in the S&P 500 are solar companies Enphase Energy and SolarEdge Technologies, down 60% and 70%, respectively. Hydrogen stocks have fallen sharply, led by Plug Power, which warned it might not survive. Wind-farm developers have been doing so badly they have pulled out of some contracts, with Denmark’s Ørsted off 48% in dollar terms and Florida-based NextEra Energy off 29%.

Electric cars have disappointed too, hitting startups and suppliers and pushing the price of lithium ores, used to produce the battery metal, down by three-quarters or more, although market-leader Tesla’s stock has been an exception.

Just as there was a coordinated green selloff, there has been a coordinated partial rebound in the past month or so.

This provides the first lesson: debt. The clean-energy sector is dependent on vast amounts of borrowing, so high interest rates really hurt. Roman Boner, who runs a clean-energy fund at Dutch fund manager Robeco, points out that major projects are typically financed with 80% debt, so rises in financing costs have a big impact on competitiveness.

Investors who bought into green stocks probably didn’t think they were making a leveraged bet on Treasurys, but that is what they ended up with. It isn’t only about corporate financing costs, either. High borrowing costs hit consumer demand for rooftop solar and for electric cars, both of which are often leased, since leasing costs depend on the cost of debt.

At a very high level, this is about long-term thinking. Low rates encourage investors to think long term, because they make future profits almost as valuable as current profits, and encourage borrowing to try to secure those future profits.

High rates encourage short-term thinking, by making profits today far more valuable than future profits—why bet on the future when you can earn 5% from Treasury bills? Short-term we get fossil-fuel profits, while long-term we get either clean energy or global warming; recently investors have been encouraged by rising rates to think short term.

The second lesson: government. Ronald Reagan overstated it when he said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” But investors who rely on state subsidies to ensure profits leave themselves at the mercy of both fickle politicians and the bureaucrats Reagan was concerned about. This year’s selloff has been worsened by the bureaucrats and their failure to provide the details of many of the subsidies promised in last year’s badly named Inflation Reduction Act.

“We’re still hoping to get them by year end,” says Ed Lees, co-head of the environmental strategies group at BNP Paribas Asset Management. The next problem might be the politicians, at least if Donald Trump wins the presidency and torches the IRA. Lees thinks this will be hard, because so many IRA-subsidised projects are heading for Republican states. But Trump certainly has no sympathy for environmental causes.

The third lesson is the one most relevant to buying today: valuation. Buying stocks when they are trendy and wildly overpriced is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps the most extreme example of late is the L&G Hydrogen Economy ETF, launched in London at the height of clean-energy excitement in February 2021. It plummeted from day one, never regained its launch price, and is down 55% since then.

“We’ve seen a very harsh reality check,” said Sonja Laud, chief investment officer of L&G Investment Management.

The question is whether the hype has left. Laud worries that one year of high rates won’t have crushed all the excesses built up in 12 years of near-zero rates. But clearly valuations are much lower than they were, and she is hopeful there are opportunities to be found now.

“The huge green premium you had previously is no longer there,” says Velislava Dimitrova, who runs sustainable funds at Fidelity International. Clean-energy stocks are “much more interesting than they used to be—I don’t believe that renewables are dead.”

In the bond market, investors are no longer paying much if any “greenium,” or extra price for green bonds. In stocks, it is harder to judge: The S&P Global Clean Energy index trades at a discount to the global market on some measures, but not others, making it difficult to conclude that the sector as a whole is a wonderful bargain.

Still, it is good news for buyers that the hype has evaporated. Investors who care about profits more than purpose can finally consider clean-energy stocks again.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

Green Investors Were Crushed. Now It’s Time to Make Money.

The lessons have been hard, and are a reminder of the basic facts of investing

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.