Investors would be smart to place long-term bets on natural gas as a lucrative alternative energy play, says Northland Securities, Inc., Senior Research Analyst Eric Stine, who focuses his coverage on clean-technology companies, including Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE), Fuel Systems Solutions (FSYS) and Westport Innovations (WPRT), among others.

“I think the outlook for these [natural gas-focused] companies is nice for a number of reasons, first of which is that natural gas is cleaner. From a transportation standpoint, it results in 22% to 29% lower greenhouse gas emissions. It’s got lower NOx emissions and virtually no particulate matter,” said Stine, who also points out that natural gas offers significant fuel cost savings for vehicle fleets in addition to independence from foreign oil.

“Natural gas generation is more flexible as far as the time it takes to fire up, and I think that this will be increasingly important to help fill in the intermittency gaps as wind and solar are integrated, since those are definitely part of the solution. But as part of that, natural gas will certainly help,” he adds.