From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
SEPTEMBER 27, 2021
By Paul Homewood
h/t Lez
Beware green investments!
Holders of “mini-bonds” issued by Future Renewables Eco, a wind farm investment company, are braced to lose more than half their investments after it collapsed into administration on Sept 17.
It owned 10 wind turbines across Britain and was funded by 750 bondholders who ploughed £24m into the company between 2015 and 2017.
They were due to vote on Sept 18 on whether the company should be wound up or placed in administration, but the company’s bosses said early voting suggested an administration was inevitable. The company stopped paying interest in May of this year.
One investor invested more than £150,000 of his inheritance in the bonds, which paid up to 9.5pc per year.
He said: “I was a fool. I searched for an ethical investment. I have grandchildren and I wanted it to build up the capital and support the wind industry.”
He thinks Future Renewables was too optimistic about how much money could be made from selling the electricity to the grid, a key part of its business plan.
I really cannot understand people who invest so much money in any single company, no matter how attractive it may look. I suspect they were duped by the high rates of interest on offer, which really should have set alarm bells ringing.
But I have no sympathy whatsoever with anybody who prioritises “ethical investment” over financial commonsense.
A quick look at the Annual Accounts of this company shows its whole business model was doomed to fail. The first thing to notice is that the latest set of accounts are for June 2018, filed in February 2019. Clearly the company has been in trouble for a long time.
Those Accounts show how much they have relied on subsidies for their income:
Feed in Tariffs and ROCs account for 72% of turnover, working out at £91.60.MWh. In contrast, electricity sales only earned £35.02/MWh
As you will see, they chalked up a loss of £1986K, before revaluation gains taken on the purchase of another wind farm during the year.
A glance at the P&L shows that the company was effectively bankrupt three years ago:
With turnover of £593K and operating costs of £982K, the company clearly was not viable. And that is before interest payable to bondholders of £2457K. Bondholders, by the way, were owed £15 million at the time.
The company only managed to stay afloat in 2018 by borrowing £4 million from bondholders that year.
Unfortunately investors like this guy have been fooled by the lies put about by the wind industry and renewable lobby, who have deceived the public into thinking that wind power is cheap and efficient.
As the Future Renewables Eco’s bondholders are now finding out to their cost, it is nothing of the sort.
Should have bought Bitcoin.
Or at least spread his risk.
Evidently a subsidy mining Ponzi Scheme. As the existing bond holders were getting paid out of new bond sales, it qualified as one.
But it was for a good green cause. /sarc
Am I the only one who thinks that some day Ponzi Scheme will be supplanted if not replaced by Tesla Scheme?
Green Scheme?
No, Roger Caizza, you’re not the only one.
I have yet to see that Tesla has any technology of its own that is not available to others, or that it has any advantage over the larger companies in terms of car manufacturing efficiencies.
The stock price may still go up, but I see nothing to support it in the long term other than government financial and legal support, and the enthusiasm of the few people able to afford their (attractively designed) products.
I’ve heard from friends in the industry that Tesla is working on some very innovative manufacturing technology to lower costs. Unfortunately, the biggest savings would probably require a new vehicle after an accident.
The traditional auto manufacturers are producing better e-cars and cheaper than Tesla … it is only a matter of time before the market potential is consumed by the traditional manufactures.
TSLA is NOT for long term investors, it is for short term traders, which I am not one of.
Go woke, go broke…
I really cannot understand people who invest so much money in any single company, no matter how attractive it may look.
The rules of investing are simple
Excellent life lessons and observations. If it appears to be “Too Good to be true” that is what it is and you should treat it like the ‘rona.
Grifters have been feeding on #4’s since they were formed out of the primordial Ooze that can often be recognized by the serpentine sound they make: Pssst!
The way I tend to phrase it, is that if there were a 100% safe investment that paid more than a low rate mortgage, then the bank would be putting its money in that rather than into mortgages.
The bank making a loan is putting up with some (small) risk and very low liquidity for less than 3%, if you are getting more than 3% then it’s because you’re assuming some risk.
Not entirely true ! Banks use mortgages because they are very secure hard assets , long term and are capable of absorbing vast amounts of surplus money when managed properly .
Excellent rules but there are a few more like “don’t get greedy” and “never invest more than you are prepared to lose.”
Or : pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered
When you look at a company’s income statement and you see that administrative costs are double the income, be assured that the higher ups are taking all the investment money and making sure they get paid their huge salaries first. Not a good scenario to put your money into.
I noticed that right off.
There are going to be a lot more people losing money on these “green” investments. The overall track record of green investments over the last 20 years has been appalling. Most people have no idea of the risks they are running with their money. History has shown that when free money is available from the government, e.g. wind farm subsidies, every conman in existence will be looking to grab a piece of the pie.
What is even more troubling is when workers have to belong to company approved pension schemes without insight into where they contributions are being invested. They should all demand their moneys only go to certain types of companies and avoid these very risky green investments.
Last time I looked, Al Gore was doing very nicely of Climate Fascism
So nicely that he retired to a $4M seafront property, without realising that with his dire predictions of sea-level rises in the coming years, the value of his “little” retirement home would plummet!!! Curious that don’t you think? I mean, he wouldn’t have told a few fibs along the way to create that wealth would he??? No, surely not, I’m shocked that a politician would have done such a thing!!!
There is no beach front property around the world that is devaluing, with maybe the exception of Bangladesh and in fact most of that property is skyrocketing !
When solar panels came into existence for the man with a van to fit, I noticed that the Dragon’s Den men were falling over themselves to find these guys!
It would have been a larger loss if they had added the term “smart” to the eco name.
How many times must scientists be wrong
before we call it a scam?
The money my friend is blowin’ in the wind.
So what happens to all the turbines?.. Companies going broke tend to do no maintenance. Were there security bonds in place for the eventual dismantling of the turbines?
My guess is some insider will by up the assets for pence on the pound and begin raking in the subsidies until the things stop turning. They’ll then hide the fortune made in some Cayman bank, declare bankruptcy and leave it to the taxpayers to tear down the turbines and clean up the mess.
You have hit the nail right on the head. That’s exactly the sort of scam I have seen done more than once. take cash out of the business, wreck it, buy it back for a song so the investrors lose, and then either flip it, asset strip it, or run it, for profit.
Corporate raiders in the 1980s.
In theory, asset stripping is illegal in the UK, yet it still happens somewhere down the line, & someone else always ends up paying, sadly, most usually the poor old taxpayers!!!
And this scam was dreamed up where……..in your town of course. Enable some good hearted uneducated body man to build a modest house on a $50,000 loan the bank the bank plans to foreclose on when the money runs out and the house is unlivable. Don’t feel bad because body men can work under the nearest bridge or tree to support their family. Only the house is unfinished but livable so back to the plotters who have this fellow leave because the bank tells him he can’t do body work in the basement. The house is a WI Ag blueprint with all essentials finished inc 3 bathrooms so the schemers rip out the walls, tear out the new casement thermopane windows, and use their company’s double hung windows, make a big space out of the removed walls for 50 foot of under counter cabinets and gobble up the sun room and foyer. The same essential house, now decorated with siding and interior doors, is worth a quarter of a million while the body man dies in a junk service station removal. Family with nothing as the wife consistently refused to sue knowing 20 years later the suit would be settled with deductions leaving zero and a house with an unaffordable mortgage the schemers know will return to them as a deflated mortgage.
Probably the current management with a different name
That ^^^^^
Now that’s a business plan I can get behind!
Here is another copy of this list of losses…….
Some more scam enterprises harming investors and the grid….
Contractors Burned By Texas Solar Farm File Claims for $16.7M | Levelset
Workhorse Group suspends deliveries, recalls C-1000 electric delivery van (yahoo.com)
Odessa Disturbance highlights troubling gaps in solar reliability | Your Solar News Aggregator (so-solar-news.com)
Does the name Griff appear in the list of original promoters for the smart green company?
He’s the sales director for Europe (west).
Griff always strikes me as sincere.
I don’t believe that people promising 9.5% a year were sincere.
Bernie Madoff 🙂
Bernie Made off with all the money
If griff were sincere he would accept there are valid arguments against his climate hysteria.
Griff is sincere in the same way Bloody Mary was sincere. There was no argument about the true faith any heretic had to be dealt with, usually by death. Hopefully Griff doesn’t want to have us burnt at the stake like Mary’s 283 heretics consumed by fire.
And it wouldn’t paste the same baseless specious comments endlessly or provide links that do not support it’s irrational claims.
But he is sincere … sincerely deranged. That’s the meaning of “true believer”. Such people are unable to see beyond their own limited perspective. Skeptics don’t rely on trust which is why he’s unskeptical of the continuous line of BS he believes in and then regurgitates.
It is similar to being a successful politician. You need to be sincere. Once you can fake that you have it made.
Sincere ideologues, intent on giving you what they believe you need, good and hard, do vastly more damage than common flim flam men and hucksters out to make a crooked buck.
In fact, as in this case, the latter often couldn’t even exist without the former creating the opportunity.
Griff can’t even manage to read half the links he puts up because they often don’t even support his case just the headline says what he wants. I am not sure he could promote anything outside a headline.
I was recommended Octopus Energy by my advisor.
Al Gore’s firm buys £483m stake in Octopus Energy Group …
That makes Octopus bigger than the owner of British Gas
Get a new advisor.
Blue Horsehoe loves Anacott Steel
In Germany happend several insolvencies the last 2 years concerning windmill investors.
Will not be the last.
The timing of this story is epic, BBC have a front-page story on the very subject today.
haha Quote:”One leading fund manager, BlackRock’s chief investment officer for sustainable investing, Tariq Fancy, left his job in frustration. He has denounced ESG investing as “sustain-a-babble” arguing it does more harm than good because people think they’re tackling climate change when they’re not.”
From here – aimed at kiddy-winkles too – how low can they go….
Forcing higher interest rates on fossil fuel companies will only result in one thing, they will direct their attention to something else profitable whilst still financing fossil fuels.
Our governments are dumb enough to believe they can outsmart really clever fund managers. They have tried on innumerable occasions before and always come off second best.
I like that! Add “sustain-a-bubble” and you have my opinion. 😀
9.5pc per year!
Ethical, my backside.
You’re lucky to get 3% anywhere at the moment. This was pure greed luring a man to his doom.
On the bright side, only an idiot would miss that this was a scam. 9.5pc per year, really. And it’s better that idiots lose their money lest they spend it on something dangerous.
Just the same as people who were using the Icelandic banks for high interest rates around 2007/8 in the UK. Too good to be true.
Actually 9.5% is not that hard to get. Just not with ‘ethical’ investments
I have got about 27% ROI in the last three years. But I am taking fairly big risks. I think this year I wont get anything like that much
In the last 12 months the S&P 500 has returned 39%.
The people who make these kinds of investments probably buy into the hype because they are incapable of doing the real analysis to evaluate a claim, regardless of a claim about an investments value or a planets climate dynamics. They follow a narrative, i.e., they like storytelling, they get burned.
It’s bad enough that an unsophisticated investor simply believed the BS about wind power being cheaper than natural gas. It is totally idiotic that a company built a business plan on believing in the BS.
It should be clear from this example to the unsophisticated activist commenters here that they too have been bamboozled by the “wind is free” slogan. Some of them, of course, know it’s a scam as is the “crisis climate” fronting for global marxist governance.
The “ethical” investor’s lost cash is also a lesson. If it’s dubbed “ethical”, expect lesser real due diligence and higher risk. Seeing through the vail, can we really call an investment ethical that is cynically fronting for a new world order tyranny for the vast majority? Unlike crisis climate, which is still awaited, the misery planned is already upon us
Be interesting to see how much money from superannuation funds goes into ESG ticked scams.
These would be a magnet for “other people’s money”.
I just hope it’s the BBC pension fund.
michael hart,
My understanding is that a fairish chunk of the [A? – not sure if there are different funds for different employees] BBC Pension fund is, indeed, in ‘green’
scamsindulgences.A cynic might, possibly, wonder if that is an explanation for the BBC pushing the whole CAGW nonsense.
Climate changes – yes.
Global Warming, since the Little Ice Age – yes, a bit, thankfully.
But Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming . . . . no!
Auto
“A fool and his money are soon parted.” Thomas Tusser, 460 years ago. Still valid.
Also look in Proverbs 21:20 …
“There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.”
If it looks to good to be true, it surely is too good to be true.
It’s now a race by fraudsters in EVs vs. wind, solar, and lithium.
In the previous round of sanctioned fraud, a lot of U.S. states gave taxpayer incentives for large scale (pilot) projects in biofuels and silicon-saving solar tech on top of DOE funds from Obama. Those went quietly out of business following the Obama funding mantra of “we don’t pick winners”–only politically connected losers.
Alberta Man Faces Fracking Fraud Charges in $2.6M Scam | Oilfield, Industrial | Energy Job Shop
SEC.gov | Oil and Gas Scams: Common Red Flags and Steps You Can Take to Protect Yoursel
It isn’t just renewables
Weak, even by your standards, Griff. Of course there are other scammers out there, no matter the industry. But the volume of them related to renewables is far larger, and will only increase.
Griff, show me some O&G scams that are setup, publicized and subsidized by government.
In the first link, the scammer was referred to police in 2013. Typical flim flam artist claiming to have invented something new and revolutionary. Not sure how that relates to a wind farm? Are you saying wind farms are garbage tech produced and marketed by flim flam artists.
The second link is from 2007 and is an SEC document on what to beware of. A similar document today would warn about renewables and their “markets” which is entirely determined by government fiat, as there is no market basis for them,
To be fair, these time frames are what you think of in terms of Climate change so i can see it from that perspective
Bingo!
That’s the difference.
As Warren Buffett observed-
the only way wind & solar businesses make financial sense is to harvest the subsidies and tax advantages.
Correct!
However, I can point to a multitude of “evil big oil” companies that are profitable; are there any “green energy” companies that are profitable?
None that I’ve ever seen.
Well, at least you seem to accept the wholesale corruption of the renewables industry!!!
A wise investor would surely do some kind of “due diligence” before making such large investments.
Yeah, ask all the Theranos investors about that.
“Meanwhile, as we wait for Europe’s green dream to go up in carbon-heavy smoke as the continent has no choice but to destroy its virtue and ramp up coal plants, we leave the last word to Bloomberg’s Javie Blas who writes that he has “never seen a large economy like Europe (UK+EU) sleep walking into an energy crunch (maybe let’s call it a crisis since major industrial companies are having to shut down) and no a single politician appears to give a damn about it. Incredible.” https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/european-gas-prices-hit-escape-velocity-after-russian-gas-supplies-plunge-57
There is that, but a couple of other things seem to be in the mix also:
1] Conservation & Profit: In the “old days”, conservation involved sacrifice and was akin to giving away money (losing net worth) to worthwhile charitable causes (something profit seeking market forces usually don’t do). But at 9.5pc per year? With a return like that, all of the Robber Barons of yesteryear, who turned to conservation after making their fortunes, would have made more money through their conservation efforts than they would have made by running Standard Oil or US Steel. I always hear alarm bells when I read about conservation efforts that make the proponents wealthy. Getting rich by running a charity or NGO seems to be all the rage these days (eg The Clinton Foundation). Quite an amazing reversal. IMHO
2] Reliance on Authority: “I searched for an ethical investment.” The wonderful thing about the internet is that it gives us access to humanity’s “collective intelligence”. However it also gets us out of the practice of thinking critically for ourselves. I am incredibly guilty of this as well. In my twenties, I could spend hours thinking about how to repair a carburetor, whereas now, a five minute YouTube video obviates that. Is life better with YouTube? Certainly! But I have become out of practice in thinking for myself.
Aren’t a lot of pension funds currently invested in a whole raft of “ethical” and “green” schemes? Thanks to idiot people demanding that their money be put into virtuous areas, a lot of these clowns are going to be trying to live on Social Security….
Sadly they may well pull others under with them as they drown! I received a newsletter from my (UK) pension provider today. Apparently they conducted a survey earlier this year. They tell me that 76% of members felt funds should be invested to avoid harming the planet rather than for maximum return. (I can’t quote it exactly – I seem to have binned it in disgust)
Hmm, who decides what that means?Ciggies vs planting forests? Arms vs building houses? Gain of function viral research vs aircraft? Or windmills vs gas? Solar scams vs nukes? Woodchips vs coal? My choices might not be theirs!
https://www.cppinvestments.com/public-media/headlines/2018/cppib-signs-agreement-canadian-operating-wind-and-solar-power-portfolio
Now if the investor happens to be a Government putting in money in the form of subsidies, are they going to call in the administrators or keep pouring taxpayers money in to keep the scheme going in order to save face, and votes? How many other wind farms are in exactly the same position?
You have to be truly rubbish at running a windfarm business to make a loss at that level of ROC income. Or perhaps it all went in ‘directors fees’
Same as all of these “markets”, without massive government subsidies they are uneconomic.
The exact opposite of the market.
Ah, schadenfreude. One the few pleasures left in the post COVID world.
A grandparent that inherited at least £150,000 pounds and promptly sinks it all into wind turbines?
Sounds to me that that grandparent is already well into their dotage and probably shouldn’t be making financial decisions.
Ten wind turbines, £24m ($32,486,400 dollars on /28/2021) invested at a rate of £2.4m per wind turbine? Besides proving the lie that wind and solar energy are cheap, this investment is failing.
If it wasn’t for the combined Biden lunacy and European addiction to Russian LNG, I’d say they could’ve installed LNG generating facilities for decades of cheap reliable electricity.
Maybe they should install a few coal generators?
People who invest in RE are no better than those that pay money to fraudsters to collect fake lottery wins where they never bought a ticket, or to claim fake inheritance from a person they never knew. You can’t fix stupid.
Also left unsaid is gross fiscal mismanagement at Future Renewables Eco plc.
Just look at their “Statement of Cash Flows” for 2018 versus 2017, provided at the end of the above article. In 2017 they booked negative cash flow of £351,836 on the line item “Acquisition of Subsidiaries”, despite having a whopping £2.1 million deficit in the line item “Cash generated from operations”. So what do they decide to do the following fiscal year, 2018? . . . why, increase their “Acquisition of Subsidiaries” negative cash flow to an incredible £1,090,964, a 3-fold increase to the downside!
Also, a careful potential investor might have raised an eyebrow or two over the consecutive yearly negative cash flows, each over £2 million, from “Purchase of tangible assets”.
Oh, well.
It worries me that super funds are being drawn into “ethical Investments.” Once the subsidies stop and the free energy is no longer free, are they going to get burned at some stage as well?
I suspect that their investors thought the fix was in, that is, the govt would not let wind farms go under. That would be my assumption.
Just like people investing with Bernie Madoff. Nobody could make his consistent returns legally. They all knew it was a racket. No innocents.
On the other hand, speaking of energy investments, natural gas has doubled this year in the USA, and even more in Europe. If that fellow had bought natural gas assets several years ago he would be sitting on a pile of cash right now. I plan on making real money this week selling calls on my natural gas holdings. The calls are fantastically priced I ASSUME because some people have to have natural gas this coming January, no matter what the cost!
“So, dirty fossil fuel burner, you want natural gas to make electricity for widows and orphans this January? It’s gonna cost ya!”
Good times.
“Administrative expenses” … the syphoning of investors’ funds out of the business into the pockets of the executive managers.
And this is a tiny fraction of the money the rest of us have lost due to government support of these ponzi schemes.
The big problem is when Governments get fooled like this. But then, no problem. It’s only taxpayer’s money…
greed of high returns more then ethical investing methinks
Wind is 60% infrasound, and used uphill, no longer available downhill.
The pending loss of £12–24 million by bondholders of Future Renewables Eco is equivalent to pocket change compared to the Solyndra debacle in the United States, where the Federal Government alone incurred a USD $528 million loss.
Should have bought BAT, they pay a good dividend, and so do BHP and Rio.