A green bubble? We dissect the investment boom

GREEN ASSETS are on a tear. The prices of battery metals such as lithium and cobalt have surged by about two-thirds and a third, respectively, so far this year. Copper has reached a record, partly owing to its importance for the energy transition; so too has the price of carbon in Europe.

The surge has extended to the stockmarket, too. Since January 2020 the value of Orsted, a windpower producer, is up by more than a third. The shares of SunRun, a solar firm, have trebled; those of Tesla and Nio, electric-vehicle (EV) makers, have climbed six-fold and nine-fold, respectively. Even lookalikes have gained: Tiziana Life Sciences, a biotech firm with the ticker “TLSA”, benefited from a bump last year when investors mistook it for Tesla (TSLA).