Trump May Not Like Alternative Energy, but Investors Should

Giv­en what Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald J. Trump has said about his ener­gy strat­e­gy — he favors coal and wants to end fed­er­al sub­si­dies to the clean ener­gy indus­try — does it still make sense to invest in wind, solar and oth­er alter­na­tive sources of power?

The answer is an emphat­ic yes, accord­ing to invest­ment advis­ers, who say clean ener­gy com­pa­nies will con­tin­ue to thrive dur­ing a Trump admin­is­tra­tion, regard­less of what the pres­i­dent says or does. The sec­tor has become as much about get­ting returns on invest­ments and catch­ing the next tech­no­log­i­cal boom as it is about reduc­ing green­house gas­es and help­ing the environment.

And clean ener­gy is cre­at­ing jobs in every state, not just the ones that have oil or gas in the ground. Even the most polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive states, like Kansas and Iowa, are lead­ers in wind pow­er and are like­ly to con­tin­ue invest­ing in it.

“No longer is there a trade-off between what you believe in and what you can make mon­ey off of,” said Nan­cy Pfund, a founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of DBL Part­ners, which made ear­ly invest­ments in SolarCi­ty and Tesla.

She pre­dicts that investors “are going to redou­ble their efforts to migrate their port­fo­lios to a 21st-cen­tu­ry ener­gy econ­o­my.” Even with­out sub­si­dies, she said, alter­na­tive ener­gy sources will be well posi­tioned to com­pete with coal and oth­er car­bon spewers.

“It real­ly has to do with the cost of wind, solar and elec­tric cars com­pared to where we were 12 years ago,” Ms. Pfund said.

To read the full arti­cle, vis­it The New York Times.