Welcome to our first edition of Ethical Investment Updates for the new year! 

In this edition:

• Environmental Companies Hit Milestones - A look at four exciting renewable energy companies.
• Market Update- Shares rally to start the new year.
  
• Things we Like - The Story of Stuff Project and Treehenge.
• Self Managed Super Funds- Get your superannuation under control with a Self Managed Super Fund.
  
• Office News - Join us at the Montville Sustainability Fair.
• Follow us on Twitter - Keep up to date with the latest news.

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Environmental Companies Hit Their Commercialization Milestones

Australia is well known for developing innovative technologies, and among these are many world leading environmental technologies. Despite the subdued stock market at present, many of our early stage companies continue to make progress in bringing their technologies to market, and some have recently achieved key commercial and technological milestones.

In this article we look at four of these exciting businesses: Ceramic Fuel Cells which is commercializing the world's most efficient gas to electricity fuel cell, Carnegie Wave Energy which is developing ocean energy projects in numerous locations around the world, Orbital Corporation which has its new LPG fuel system in the latest model Ford Falcons, and Galaxy Resources which is producing lithium for electric vehicle batteries. (Click here for the full article)

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Market Update

The new calendar year started with a rally in risk assets, with improvements in US economic data, improved sovereign bond auctions in Europe and new forecasts by the Federal Reserve suggesting zero interest rates to late 2014.

Evidence of this renewed optimism was the measures undertaken by the European Central Bank in December through providing European unlimited funds over 3-years in a program called a Longer-Term-Refinancing-Operation. This appears to have made a significant step towards improving bank funding in Europe and stabilising sovereign bond yields in Spain and Italy.

Late in January, the 16th EU emergency summit concluded with further moves to a fiscal compact signed by 25 out of 27 EU countries (UK and Czech Republic did not sign the agreement). It was also announced that the two bailout funds, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) would be combined from 1 July 2012 with a joint capacity of €750bn. In other EU news, Standard and Poor’s downgraded nine EU countries, with both France and Austria downgraded from AAA to AA+. The EFSF subsequently was also downgraded to AA+.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded global economic growth forecasts for 2012 and 2013. For 2012 growth of 3.3% (was 4%) and for 2013 growth of 3.9% (was 4.5%) is now expected. Most of the downgrade was due to Europe, with a mild recession now forecast for 2012. See the chart below for updated forecasts. Inflation forecasts were also lowered.

The Australian sharemarket enjoyed a strong start to 2012, with the S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation Index rising 5.1% in January. Most of the issues which impacted the market during 2011 – including concerns about the global economic outlook, sovereign debt issues in Europe and subdued consumer confidence – remained in place, but the market was nevertheless able to post a solid gain.

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Things we like