What are Green Investments?

Top green investing opportunities offer investors a way to contribute to the fight against global warming and climate change. Investors are currently looking for green energy stocks and investment opportunities. Today, most sectors across the world aim to achieve carbon neutrality in the coming years. Statistics show that even the COVID-19 pandemic failed to disrupt green energy investments. In fact, 2020 witnessed a $505 billion investment in energy sectors, according to a report published by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Electric vehicles and renewable energy sectors saw investments, exhibiting a 9 percent growth from the previous year.

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Several businesses and industries are going green, from sustainable farming and organic groceries to power generation and recycling. There is an increasing interest among scientists, researchers, and even business people, consumers, and politicians in easing the burden humanity has placed and continues to place on the ecology.

Top green investing opportunities are conventional investments like stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, etc. The underlying companies and businesses are somehow involved in operations aimed at improving the environment. From industries developing alternative energy technologies to those trying to implement sustainable practices in our food chain, they all come under the top green investing opportunities.

Green investments also refer to funds or businesses seeking to reduce the emission of harmful pollutants or use resources more sustainably. These can happen in the form of technologies such as wind, solar, or researching how we can efficiently use resources.

Renewable Energy Investments

Green energy is a hot topic in today’s world concerned about climate change. There are many top green investment opportunities in the form of power generation that does not rely on burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. The most common renewable energy sources include wind, solar, and hydroelectricity.

1. Hydroelectricity

For centuries, water has been the go-to resource for renewable energy. The ancient Greeks ran their grain mills on the power harnessed from flowing water. Today, massive hydroelectric projects on dams around the world supply electricity to around 70-80 million households. The International Renewable Energy Agency stated that hydropower is the most cost-efficient way of electricity generation.

2. Wind Power

Among all the sources of renewable energy, the wind is the fastest-growing. Onshore and offshore wind farms generate around 1592 terra watts (TW) of energy every year. In 2020, electricity generation from wind sources increased by 11% as compared to previous years. It remained one of the highest power generation technologies in 2020. China and the United States made up the bulk of wind deployments.

If renewable energy investments interest you, look for wind farms that sell their generated energy or companies manufacturing parts of wind turbines. A few of the world’s popular and well-performing wind stocks include:

• Vestas Wind Systems
• NextEra Energy
• General Electric

3. Solar

Solar energy powers homes, buildings, and various other things such as street lights and radios. Companies that manufacture solar panels benefit from the increased adoption of solar energy in homes and businesses. In 2020, solar PVs accounted for 3.1% of global energy generation. It remains the third-largest renewable energy technology after hydropower and wind production. The solar companies that currently perform well on the stock market include:

• First Solar
• JinkoSolar Holdings
• Enphase Energy

4. Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is heat inside the Earth. The slow decay of radioactive particles inside the Earth produces heat known to us as geothermal energy. It is a form of clean energy.

Geothermal energy covers a large share of electricity demand in countries like New Zealand, Kenya, the Philippines, Iceland, and El Salvador. The main advantage of geothermal energy is that it does not depend on the weather, unlike solar. The large geothermal companies include:

• Ormat Technologies
• Green Energy Geothermal
• Terra Gen
• Alterra Power Corporation

Green Transportation Investments

Over the past several years, the transportation industry has made several strides toward developing environmental-friendly technology for vehicles. Today, green vehicles are gaining more ground against conventional ones. When it comes to investing in green transportation companies, Tesla is the first name on everyone’s mind. While the company’s exciting technology has kept it in the news, it is not the only green vehicle player in town.

On a smaller scale, researchers are exploring fuel cell technologies to discover an alternative way of powering the automobile industry. The success of this technology would make electric vehicles more efficient and meet the green vehicle requirements of millions of customers. The technology is what makes the green vehicle industry one of today’s top green investing opportunities. Companies operating in the hydrogen fuel cell technology domain include Ballard Power Systems and FuelCell Energy.

Alternative Agriculture

1. Organic farming

Organic farming engages in sustainable agriculture practices. This does not use pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Therefore, the food they produce is healthier for us and the planet. Organic farming helps keep chemicals out of the food chain. It also promotes animal management practices that do away with using hormones and antibiotics. Organic farming helps improve the quality of the surrounding land and water bodies and increases biodiversity. Because organic farming prohibits the use of fertilizers, chemicals cannot infiltrate groundwater and pollute surrounding water bodies.

Because of its ability to sequester carbon in the soil, organic food companies are one of the top green investing opportunities for today’s world threatened by the impacts of climate change. Organic management practices increase the productivity of the soil and help it draw down more amount of carbon from the atmosphere.

Some of the world’s best organic food companies include:

• Whole Foods Market
• Earth’s Best Organics
• Organic Valley
• Horizon Organic

2. Aquaculture

Overfishing is impacting the human food chain and a growing number of people are starting to recognize this problem. Wild fish stocks and marine biodiversity are rapidly diminishing. Oceans are one of the world’s biggest carbon sinks. Without healthy marine biodiversity, the ocean will fail to absorb carbon dioxide, and we will lose all hopes of combating climate change. As a result, interest in sustainable fishing has grown significantly over the past few years. This makes sustainable fishing practices, like aquaculture, a stable food-related investment opportunity. The top aquaculture companies today are:

• AquaBounty Technologies
• BlueNalu
• Kemin Industries
• Siemens