YOU would have to be a complete contrarian to invest in anything to do with clean air, water or renewable energy in Australia.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
During the past two or three years the Punter has watched millions of dollars of private investors' and taxpayers' money written off in these green industry categories.
Geothermal companies are now looking to overseas projects or switching to other businesses to survive.
CBD Energy (former ASX code CBD) has abandoned the Australian Securities Exchange in favour of the US, Linc Energy has gone to the Singapore market, Ceramic Fuel Cells (CFU) is focusing its business almost entirely in Europe and the tree-planting and carbon-sink CO2 Group (COZ) is going into fish farming.
Infigen (IFN), probably the country's biggest wind farm company, has seen its shares collapse from $1.40 to 20 cents in the past four years - despite rising revenues and shrinking losses.
Although the terms "contrarian" and "idiot" are often interchangeable in the investing world, the Punter is happy to go against the flow this week and cast more money on green waters.
He's pumping another $1730 into Carnegie Wave Energy (CWE) to buy another 30,000 shares at 5.7c, bringing his total investment in this Perth-based company to nearly $5000.
The Punter has become a bit of a fan of this company, which is always dangerous.
It has sunk $100 million into developing its technology, and even if all goes well, it will be years before it begins to make any money.
But it does have a commercial demonstration project underway at Garden Island in Western Australia, with the navy signed up as a customer for the power that will be generated by Carnegie's bobbing wave energy buoys.
The other "boys" at Carnegie now want to build a bigger and better buoy, which promises to generate a megawatt, or four times the power generated by each of the Garden Island units.
The new design is a "step change" in that the pump and generator will be inside the buoy, instead of based on the seabed and on shore, so there is clearly a technical risk.
If all goes well, Carnegie will install three of these monsters in a commercial demonstration in 2016.
Carnegie reckons they will be "cost competitive with existing renewable energy technologies.
The Punter certainly hopes so.
The Punter has no financial qualifications and no links to the financial services industry. He owns shares in a number of companies featured in this column.