Turn a Profit From Global-Warming Stocks

This year I expect more research money to be thrown at the same sectors, with the possibility that the Bush administration will actually apply more federal cash to the big job: building unit volume in order to drive down costs for wind and solar, the most commercially developed of these technologies.

What does all this amount to from an investor's perspective? I'd break down the opportunities into two groups.

Group 1: Saving the World

These stocks maximize your long-term potential returns, since they really can play a role in solving the global-warming problem.

Wind and solar: These technologies are set to go over the top and into the commercial market. There are several factors putting a breeze at the back of wind technology:

• More cost-efficient turbines have driven down the cost of using the wind to produce electricity by about 50% over the past 15 years.
• The European Union's carbon-trading systems put a price on pollution, making it more costly for utilities to do business the old way.
• Big utilities are able to raise capital at extremely low costs.
• Government funding for global-warming programs will be enough to finance the construction of manufacturing facilities that will remove the current solar-cell bottleneck. It's hard to grow a solar-energy market when no one can get enough raw material to build solar cells.

Stocks to watch: I'd look to add global-warming positions in European market leaders such as Gamesa, which trades over-the-counter, and Vestas, which trades on the Copenhagen Exchange); Indian market leader Suzlon Energy, which trades on the Mumbai stock exchange; and U.S. market leader GE Wind, a subsidiary of General Electric(GE Quote).

Or you can buy up-and-coming suppliers of key technologies to the wind industry, such as carbon-fiber supplier Zoltek Cos.(ZOLT Quote) and ultracapacitor maker Maxwell Technologies(MXWL Quote).