Is renewables trading The New New Thing? – part one

The excitement surrounding renewable energy trading and markets appears to have much in common with the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. This first instalment examines the historical similarities

Michael Lewis's 1999 book The New New Thing hit the shelves just as the technology mania and the crazy valuations of entities with net-zero revenues—to ape current phraseology—frenzied the investment world. The tech boom of the late 1990s heralded a mania where otherwise cautious and intelligent investors seemingly took leave of their senses as they jumped aboard. This is perhaps best represented in the mid-1990s by the launch of Netscape on public markets—when the stock traded to three times its offer price on day one. It was this New New Thing that led the world into a ‘new normal’—to employ another popular, if somewhat irritating phrase—and to a life dominated by the Internet and the read