Brian Jonestown Massacre, a retro garage rock band from San Francisco, recorded a song 18 years ago titled “A New Low in Getting High.”

The band wasn’t singing about the state of coal-fired power generation, of course … but it could have been.

In 2020, for the first time ever, renewable energy sources generated more electricity in the United States than coal-fired power plants. This landmark achievement was no fluke.

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As the chart below shows, coal power has been trending lower for many years, while renewable energy has been trending higher.

Over the last 12 months, coal still generated 19% of U.S. electric power. But that trailed slightly behind the 20% share generated by renewable energy sources. The long-term trends are clear: Coal down … renewables up.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans used 447 million short tons of coal in 2020. While the EIA forecasts a 12% increase in U.S. coal use in 2021 as we ramp up out of the pandemic, that 2020 number was the lowest since 1965.

BloombergNEF predicts that coal consumption will fall by half between 2020 and 2030.

Natural gas — not a renewable resource — is coal’s biggest competitor at the moment. However, the combination of wind and solar power and energy storage (advanced batteries) is an existential threat to coal’s future.

In other words, the Second Electric Revolution is powering ahead … and it is creating spectacular opportunities everywhere it goes. Finding the best ways to invest in this revolution is no easy task … but that’s exactly what we’ll do in today’s issue.

Going the Way of Horse-Drawn Buggies

“Can we ever really know why the bad things come our way?” the Brian Jonestown Massacre mused midway through its song. The answer, as it turns out, is “Yes.”

Bad things often come the way of inferior technologies. Think: horse-drawn buggies, telegraphs, steam engines, vinyl records, pagers, Polaroid cameras and Rand McNally maps.

Whatever virtues coal power might possess, it is a relatively dirty technology — and dirty power isn’t as popular as it used to be. Most folks would much rather breathe the air around the world’s dirtiest solar facility than the air around the world’s cleanest coal facility.

The demise of coal and ascendance of renewables is a well-established phenomenon.

For proof of these divergent trends, you do not need to consult “expert” analysis. Just look at which industries are hiring and which ones are firing.

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For most of the last decade, solar companies have been hiring and coal companies have been firing. That information alone tells us a lot about which sector is likely to be the better investment.

U.S. coal consumption reached its highest level in 2007. At the time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the industry employed 77,000 people. In March of this year, just 43,600 Americans worked in coal.

Employment in the renewable power industry is heading the other direction.

The BLS projects that the number of wind turbine service technicians will grow 58.5% over the next decade … and that the number of solar photovoltaic installers will jump by 46.8%

Obviously, employees are an expense. So, an industry that is hiring rapidly is incurring rapidly rising expenses, which means that the profitability of that industry might not be growing as rapidly as employment.

But there is only one reason why a business hires an employee. Literally, only one reason. And that reason is that the executives of that business believe a new employee will add incrementally to profit.

The fact that the renewable energy industry has been hiring at a breakneck pace tells us that the industry expects profits to soar. So do I.

But not yet …

Profits Now … Not “Eventually”

Many leading companies in the electric vehicle (EV) and energy storage sector are losing money.

According to calculations from FT Alphaville, a representative selection of 23 EV manufacturers, nine battery/cell producers and nine charging station businesses recently reached a staggering combined market value of $1.6 trillion.

Incredibly, only six of these 41 EV companies managed to generate a gross profit over the last 12 months. The other 35 were money losers.

Therefore, rather than invest in money losers in the EV sector, I have been recommending companies that provide essential ingredients to the EV and energy storage industries.

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I’m talking about “battery metals.”

EV and energy storage technologies require vast amounts of metals like lithium, copper, nickel, and manganese. The average battery-electric vehicle, for example, contains about 180 pounds of copper – that’s about half as much as the average U.S. home.

So, the boom in EVs and energy storage likely will create major “echo booms” in several metal markets.

To capitalize on this prospective boom, I’ve recommended battery metals plays to members of my paid services.

And in the latest issue of Fry’s Investment Report, I added a new name to the list.

To get access to that recommendation as a subscriber, click here.

Regards,

Eric Fry

P.S. Hundreds of thousands of folks saw my “Technochasm” viral video from earlier this year.

Well, the whole world has changed since then … and I’m back to talk about the Technochasm, the biggest megatrend in investing, in ways I couldn’t before … and discuss opportunities for even bigger market gains … the kind to keep you from falling behind. And I’m bringing along investing legend Louis Navellier to join me on camera for the first time ever.

Click here to check out our conversation – and to get our No. 1 stock pick right now.

On the date of publication, Eric Fry did not own either directly or indirectly any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

Eric Fry is an award-winning stock picker with numerous “10-bagger” calls —in good markets AND bad. How? By finding potent global megatrends… before they take off. In fact, Eric has recommended 41 different 1,000%+ stock market winners in his career. Plus, he beat 650 of the world’s most famous investors (including Bill Ackman and David Einhorn) in a contest. And today he’s revealing his next potential 1,000% winner for free, right here.