Chris Nelder

Chris was a software engineer and technical writer for 17 years at various companies including Microsoft and several Web startups. During that time he also founded and published an online magazine called Better World in the mid '90s, as part of his lifelong interest in sustainability and environmental and social responsibility.

However, after 9/11, he had an epiphany: He realized that peak oil, climate change, and ecological overshoot were about to change life as we know it, and that mankind was now facing its greatest crisis ever. He had to take up the challenge.

He then embarked on intensive study of peak oil, the world of energy, and new sustainable modes of living appropriate to the challenges of the 21st Century. He created an email list to share the insights from his research. He then jumped out of the software industry and into the solar industry, where he designed and sold solar PV systems for several years.

In 2003 Chris converted his email list to a blog, where he wrote hundreds of articles on energy and politics. Realizing that investing was key to addressing our energy challenges, he began writing professionally in 2006 for the investing newsletters Energy & Capital and Green Chip Stocks. He then wrote a book on peak oil, Profit from the Peak (Wiley, 2008) which geologist Colin Campbell, one of the originators of peak oil research, called “the best job I have seen in describing the Peak Oil issue in a sound and very understandable way.” It is still in the top 100 for sales of commodity investment books on Amazon. He also co-authored another book, Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks (Wiley, 2008).

Today Chris continues to consult and lecture on energy investing and policy and do media appearances. He has been featured in dozens of interviews about energy in broadcast media and print, including CNN Radio, Fox Business, Financial Sense, and Venture Beat. He has published over 750 articles in his blog at GetREALList, including over 150 articles published on issues related to peak oil.

From the time he bought his first stock at the age of 9, through the years of working as a software developer for MSN Money, and on up to the present, Chris has been an investor for most of his life. Most recently he has begun working with the team at Logi Energy, a new peak oil hedge fund.