A move away from nuclear energy in light of last year’s tragic accident at the Fukushima nuclear power station in Japan is creating opportunities for transmission and energy storage companies believes a long/short equity absolute return manager, reported Citywire Global this week. Jon Sigurdsen (pictured), manager of the renewable energy-focused DNB Fund ECO Absolute Return, said a lot of opportunities had been created in Japan, and other major energy producing countries, as nuclear technology comes under increasing pressure over safety concerns. Apparently Sigurdsen was responding to a question on how he was positioning the renewable fund vis-à-vis nuclear energy as part of an investor update. Sigurdsen said a lot of recovery and construction in Japan was now being seen and that this would create “a lot of opportunities in the energy supply space”, such as supplying new transmission lines. Indeed, transmission lines had been one of the fund’s key contributors to performance according to Sigurdsen, whose fund has returned 15.75 per cent over the past year. Japanese companies that provide back-up energy storage is another area of potential investment said Sigurdsen. As for the fund’s overall portfolio composition, Sigurdsen said that renewable stocks were ‘terrible’ from a long-only perspective and that a large proportion of the fund’s outperformance had derived from going short solar energy stocks, which suffer from over-capacity in most markets.