Solar Investing

Alison_Bisley

I'm looking into green investments as a safer way to invest my money following the credit crunch for uk buy-to-lets. I'm interested in low entry deals and entry deals around 30-50 euros. I've looked into the countries that have the feed-in tariff in place with competitive financing options - germany has, however, currently sold out. Not interested in investing in stocks or funds.

Anyone got any ideas?

LongTermLurker

Alison_Bisley wrote: »

I'm looking into green investments as a safer way to invest my money following the credit crunch for uk buy-to-lets. I'm interested in low entry deals and entry deals around 30-50 euros. I've looked into the countries that have the feed-in tariff in place with competitive financing options - germany has, however, currently sold out. Not interested in investing in stocks or funds.

Anyone got any ideas?

Sorry, I don't understand what you're looking to do, if you want to invest, but not in stocks (ie company shares) or funds (collective groups of company shares). Are you looking to buy a bond in an individual, non-UK company? As you're looking at a very niche market, that would be very risky.

If you want to invest in good, strong environmental companies, I would look at long standing uniy trusts such as Jupiter Ecology or Jupiter Environmental Income. There are other funds which you should research as well. You'll be very busy if you want to research your own "Green companies". I don't know what €30 - €50 is in real money :rolleyes: but the general starting level for funds is about £50pm.

Sorry if I've misunderstood anything obvious.

Alison_Bisley

Sorry I meant 30-50k in euros. I'm definately looking for a structured deal in purchasing in countries with the feed-in tariff in place with a good loan option, guarenteeing returns each month over a long period. Im not so interested in stocks

runciblespoon

It sounds like you're saying you want to buy bonds being offered by 'green' companies. But (and perhaps I'm showing my ignorance here) I don't understand how this depends on a particular sector.

A bond is a loan; you won't get a rate premium for loaning money to a particular sector, because the company could just go to the commercial market and get the money from there instead. The only premium is based on the risk put on that loan. Perhaps you feel that 'green' investments are inherently less risky than the market prices them and you can make a better profit that way. Or perhaps you're more worried about the security than getting a top income? If the company is successful, bondholders don't make any more profit they just have a lower risk of default. (Probably the sale price of the bonds will rise a bit as the risk diminishes, but I don't know if that's significant and only applies if you plan to sell the bonds before their redemption date)

If you're interested in it from an ethical point of view rather than a profit motive, your question makes rather more sense. But I'm not sure there is any particular way to target your investment as you're looking for a very specific field. (And therefore risky too, but let's assume you're happy with the risks). There are some ethical bond funds but that's more like lending money to Tesco instead of Kalashnikov Inc - not nearly specific enough.

Is there a reason why you aren't interested in shares? That would seem to be the standard way to invest in companies, whether from an ethical or profit motive. I suppose lack of regular income could be a problem (and I doubt these companies would have big dividends).

I'm a market novice, but I've not seen anything that comes even remotely close to what you're looking for. I think the only way you'd be able to do this is approach unlisted companies and offer them loans. But you don't have enough capital for that, and it's very, very risky.

Perhaps you could expand on why you're targeting this particular niche so people could suggest alternatives?

runciblespoon

To follow up my own post, I notice that Triodos are offering a renewables share offering that has a past dividend of 7.1%. But it's not just solar and seems to be UK-based.

In the US there seem to be 'solar bonds' in California and other places for people to install renewables, but I can't find where the finance comes from.

This bond might have been towards what you want, but it was a year ago.

That was a quick Google for 'solar bond'