Yesterday's new high for the Dow overshadows something of a comeback for alternative energy stocks. A case in point is Ocean Power Technologies, who - currently trading at 782.5 - have risen from just below 600 in August. Today's news that OPT has received additional funding of 1.9 mln usd for its ongoing contract with the US Navy to install the group's PowerBuoy systems off the Hawaiian island of Oahu is of course, an additional fillip.

Incidentally, I keep thinking about how important the US Military is to alternative energy research - especially the not commercially viable kind. Fuel cells are the obvious candidate. And as we see here with OPT, the US Navy takes an interest too. There's a reason for this; the US Military is a very high consumer of energy - see this piece here which explores this in some detail. Ideally, they would like to have a much smaller fuel footprint, because all the supply lines of soft-skinned vehicles, refuelling planes and tankers can be quite vulnerable to a determined yet only semi-sophisticated enemy.