China CleanTech Index dropped 48 percent in 2011

While recent share news saw some of China's solar companies making gains in recent days, the China CleanTech Index lost 48 percent of its value during 2011.

The terrible performance was reflected in monthly December loss of 9.4 percent, compared with a 0.2 percent loss for the MSCI World index. Its constituent eight sub-sectors fared little better with all of them showing double-digit losses in 2011.

Continuing global economic uncertainty, changes to feed-in-tariff schemes around the world and ongoing changes to national and international environmental and energy regulations, have hit all cleantech sectors, but have had most impact in the wind and solar sectors.

Over 130 companies make up the index with a combined capitalisation of USD112 billion. The 48 percent loss of China's clean industry compared unfavourably with a loss of 40.2 percent on the Wilder Hill New Energy Global Innovation Index (NEX) – which measures the performance of global clean energy stocks and an 18.3 percent loss on the Cleantech Index (CTIUS).

You had to be a canny stock picker with only two stocks in Index universe making share price gains over 20 percent in 2011: Shanghai 3F New Materials Co Ltd and Chaowei Power Holdings Limited. Rather more soberingly, there were 13 companies that saw over 80 percent wiped off their share price, last year.

These included:

• Advanced Battery Technologies
• A-Power Energy Generation Systems
• Beijing Water Business Doctor
• China Hydroelectric
• China Ming Yang Wind Power
• China Sun Group High Tech
• Cleantech Solutions International
• Daqo New Energy
• Hanwha Solarone
• JA Solar Holdings
• ReneSola
• SmartHeat
• Xiamen Changelight

While all sectors showed poor performance, the best performing sectors were China Waste Index and the China Hydro Index. They lost 25.9 percent and 23 percent respectively.

The worst performing sectors saw the China Efficiency Index drop 60.4 percent, the China Solar Index 57.5 percent and the China Wind Index, 57.7 percent.