Quarterly overview of stock index performance and the top trends impacting the state of clean tech.

Supply disruptions and staffing shortages continued to loom large during the third quarter of 2021. While the economy proved remarkably resilient in the face of an unprecedented global pandemic, a range of commodity shortages (see Quarterly Insight: Price Volatility is Embedded in Fossil Fuels below) have hit Europe particularly hard. In the U.S., political disagreement and gamesmanship continued to leave the country without passage of either the infrastructure bill or Build Back Better plan championed by President Biden, both centerpieces of his economic agenda.

Against this backdrop, indexes in our coverage remained relatively flat during the third quarter. The S&P 500 was up 0.58% while the traditional...