Last week I attended the 2010 EIA Energy Conference – “Short Term Stresses, Long Term Change” – in Washington DC. The conference was made up of industry types, financial investors and government regulators, which focused on energy-related issues that ranged from US Natural Gas supply to Climate Change policy. The keynote addresses were given by the Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu and the Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers.

The EIA (Energy Information Administration) is a non-partisan section of the US Department of Energy that provides statistics, data, analysis on resources, supply, production, and consumption for all energy sources to the public domain. The information provided by the EIA is used for determining pricing and future output of the US and the world and is heavily relied on by the energy industry.

The conference was very informative and I think it would serve investors well to know a few of the key takeaways from the conference.

1. EIA, Global Insight and ExxonMobil’s forecasting methodology for energy sources and production are determined by population growth, GDP growth and transportation demand but do not take into consideration new energy efficiencies and technologies.
2. A main focus of the conference was a potential carbon price in either the form of cap and trade or a carbon tax, however the price of carbon has not been determined.
3. Strategic and growth capital has been flowing into storage device technologies and end-user resources such as advanced battery technologies and advanced meter readers.
4. Asia’s demand for energy is expected to exceed the US and Europe’s combined energy use by 2030.
5. The new energy economy is expected to lead the US into the future as an exporter of efficiency technology.
6. Energy legislation is expected to be released after Tax Day and before Earth Day.
7. Financial regulation reform will have to coincide with energy legislation as government regulators are trying to crack down on energy pricing manipulation.
8. Climate change will have to be addressed within energy legislation, as it is a top priority of the Obama Administration.

In short, there is a tremendous amount of capital and attention being paid to the energy debate and until we solve our energy crisis, money will continue to flow into new technologies and there will continue to be investment opportunities. The energy investment landscape is very similar to the technology investment landscape of the 1990s. It is entirely accurate to declare that not all of the current energy technologies will survive and become a big the next big thing, but some will and the opportunity to invest in the leader should never be disregarded.