CarbonExpo 2009 Highly Informative

[Sparty]

Some observations of my perceptions of the Carbon Expo 09 held earlier this week from Monday - Wednesday at the Gold Coast Convention Centre.

To start with my comments need to be taken in the following context: I am probably not representative of the “normal” conference attendees as I come from a strong retail investment background and attended the conference with learning objectives biased towards learning about how Carbon Reduction will impact my ASX listed investments.


Additionally my daughter’s company Intaanetto is a social media company that publishes a series of websites that provide information to investors about a diverse range of energy related subjects including Rare Earths, Lithium, UCG-GTL, Uranium, Gas, Hot Rocks etc with a strong Australian focus and as one of her many adviser’s I thought that it would be useful for me to get up to speed across the range of subjects that were presented.

I found the conference met and exceeded my expectations. My understanding of the issues presented has been greatly expanded and my attendance has given me a wonderful “feel” for the state of play on issues such as the looming Carbon ETS, CPRS, RET and the resulting investment opportunities both here in Australia and Europe. The audio-visual equipment was of an excellent standard and the ability of participants to question, meet and talk with the presenters was useful and educational.

The wide range of subjects presented was pleasing and my attendance has highlighted several areas where I was deeply ignorant and has pointed out several areas where I need to brush up on.

When asked by my wife whether I got anything out of the conference I said that: “I had learned more in the three days than I would have done by studying for 3 months”. In short my learning objectives were met and exceeded.

Of great interest to me is that there appears to be two camps of people who are highly engaged in Carbon reduction and what happens next as we transition from a Carbon based economy to a low Carbon economy on the journey towards the 21st century’s Electron based economy that would benefit greatly from attending future “Carbon Expos”. The vast bulk of the attendees were highly focused on Carbon and by and large seemed, at least to me, to be policy makers/shapers and representatives of NGOs, Banks, Brokers, Lobbyists and of course companies involved in actual Carbon reduction. The second camp of stakeholders, “Retail Investors” by and large seemed to be largely absent and I found that somewhat curious. As it is the retail investors that support the cutting edge companies and bear much of those cutting edge companies’ risk that are involved in: Hot Rocks, UCG, GTL, UCG-GTL, REEs, Lithium, Vanadium, Wind, Wave and Solar etc. and consequently would greatly benefit from the educational experience I enjoyed.


My recommendation for those that invest in anything to do with energy is that they should attend the next Carbon Expo... it is a great way to achieve a rapid, but thorough, learning experience on which to base future investments.