Handicapping the Environmental Gold Rush

In the race to profit off the scramble to go green, there will be winners and losers. Here's how the players currently stack up.

By JEFFREY BALL

The green stampede is on.

As a global economy powered by cheap fossil fuel comes under intense pressure to change, corporate executives are racing to stay ahead of the tectonic shift in their world.

From Capitol Hill to California and Brussels to Beijing, multinational companies are stepping up their lobbying and tweaking their product lines in response to demands that they get more environmentally attuned. New companies -- even new industries -- are challenging the established giants to exploit a growing market for everything from green cars to green fuels.

And a host of middlemen have sprung up to make markets in new financial instruments created by the proliferation of green-oriented subsidies and mandates. All these players are jostling to shape the new government rules to give them the bulk of the benefit -- and hit someone else with the bulk of the burden. Ultimately, the cost will be passed on to consumers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119335097973072106.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today

4-8 Nukes worth of Tidal

Holy Tidal Power Project, Britain!

Click here to read about it...

The Littlest Eco-Warriors

By ELLEN GAMERMAN

September 29, 2007

There's a new authority cracking down on environmental missteps -- the kids. Below, a sampling of resources that deliver environmental messages to the elementary school set.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119090528485241374.html?mod=moj_latest_news

This is a great article about opportunities for kids to learn about Global Warming and the environment. Anyways i thought maybe ETG could work on developing an outreach program for the youth in the community.

A different way to think of clean energy

There is a certain energy technology out there that provides energy for 2 billion people worldwide. It gives them warmth, light and the means to prepare food. Although this technology is renewable to a certain extent, by no means is it clean. It's also slowly killing those who rely on it. The technology is fire, and for more then a third of humanity it's the only real option. It's use comes at a price, however, and a recent article in the Lancet medical journal says that the health of 2 billion people is threatened because they rely on wood fires for their energy needs. For these people, even electricity from a dirty old coal-fired generator would mean a vastly improved life. [click here for link]

Clean Energy Investment Tops $18.1 Billion in 2006

New Energy Finance Ltd., a London-based research firm that specializes in alternative-energy investments, released a report today stating that private-equity funds and venture capitalists invested $18.1 billion in the clean energy sector last year. Two billion dollars still reside in such funds and have yet to be invested. Still, the $18.1 billion figure represents a 67% increase over 2005, when venture capital and private equity investment totaled $10.8 billion. NEF estimates that private equity and venture capital invested in clean energy will grow at a compound annual rate of approximately 17% through to 2013.

Source: Energy Roundup blog, WSJ.com

Investors, big businesses see green in being green

http://www.cnn.com/
LONDON, England (AP) -- Big business fears that the fight against climate change will cost billions are now giving way to a different view: green can be the color of money.

More companies are involved in the creation of alternative sources of energy like electricity from wind farms.

The United States, Europe and Japan are locked in a frantic race to cash in on the exploding business of saving the planet. London has become the center for the multibillion dollar market in carbon emissions, attracting investors who trade CO2 allowances.

[Click here to read the original article...]

Bring on Geothermal!

Geothermal is one of the most underutilitzed sources of commercial and large home HVAC (in areas with the appropriate geology), and has tremendous potential as a renewable power source. This is a great heads-up article from Business Week.

Is Clean Tech Immune From Market Woes?

August 8, 2007, 11:18 am

Deal makers in the so-called clean-technology business are mostly brushing aside recent market weakness and forecast a healthy flow of venture capital and other transactions in the solar, biofuel and wind energy sectors for the remainder of the year.

“Every area has momentum right now,” said Dan Pullman, vice president at investment bank McNamee Lawrence & Co. “You see it solar, you see it wind, alternative transportation, fuels, and plug-in vehicles.”

“We have a need to more efficiently use energy, and get more energy from renewable sources,” said Michael Carboy, clean energy analyst at Signal Hill. “Those don’t change based on market valuation. Corrections are an opportunity to look at names thought of as too expensive in the past.”

Carboy sees continued investment by venture capitalists in the sector, especially in energy storage and electric grid efficiency specialists, as well as new solar energy technology. However, he’s bearish on the ethanol stocks because they’re subject to swings both in corn prices and gasoline prices.

Jeffrey Saut, market strategist with Raymond James, sounded a word of caution on solar and other alternative energy shares, however. “If you bet the farm, you better have two farms,” Saut said. “Despite what the clean-tech people will tell you, if crude oil goes down, the price of anything related to alternative energy comes down with it. Most don’t stand on their own feet without high energy prices, or without government tax benefits.”

Saut also said he likes solar energy long-term, is bearish on ethanol, and wonders why free energy from geothermal heat isn’t more widely used.
Pullman of McNamee Lawrence said obstacles to clean tech include the Bush administration, which plans to veto the recently-passed House Energy Bill, as well as the high cost of silicon for solar energy panel makers. Players in the clean tech space expect more action from Washington — such as carbon trading legislation — after the presidential elections in 2008.

Jeff Lipton, managing director of the Clean Tech Group at Jefferies, expects to see more IPOs and secondary offerings this year. First Solar, for example, just set plans to raise a whopping $1 billion in a stock offering. On the IPO front, GT Solar International Inc. has filed a $200 million IPO to boost its business as a maker of manufacturing equipment for the solar power industry.

Venture deals on the clean-tech radar screen include a $78 million round for Energy Photovoltaics, a $70 million round for GreenVolts and a $60 million infusion for BullMoose.

[Click here for the original article...]

684 MW of euro-wind capacity goes for 2.5 billion

International Power buys Trinergy's wind portfolio. [Link]

It's safe, just trust us...

Along with solar, wind and other renewables, another power source is growing in popularity as a possible solution to the looming problem of climate change: nukes. Check out the front page of Fortune magazine this month. It's all about nuclear power. Safe, clean, abundant nuclear power. The accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are ancient history and couldn't happen again. After all, there hasn't been another major reactor incident since Chernobyl melted down in 1986. Or has there? This Wall Street Journal report indicates that all is not well with the nuclear industry's incident reporting system. [Link]

Solar power makes tiny village beam

This story shows the potential of distributed solar generation in un-developed, poverty stricken parts of the world. Just imagine it's potential in the technologically advanced West, with our acres of rooftops and paved parking lots that are just waiting for someone to slap a PV panel on them. It's interesting that solar power is somehow too expensive and unreliable for the US government to encourage it's use by Americans, but it is cheap and reliable enough to power a poor, tiny Indian village. The fact that convenience is worth more to us then a stable, clean power source that has no expiration date is an indictment of our attitude towards energy as a society.

[Link]

Different strokes

Here's a story about a study that denounces renewable energy as environmentally destructive. The study's author attacks wind, solar and biomass as destructive to the land, claiming that the amount of land we would have to "rape" in order to fulfill our energy demand from these sources is so huge that the natural environment would be destroyed. See the story here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070726/sc_livescience/studyrenewableenergynotgreen;_ylt=AnQAbNtukp4Q0G1eYF4Rwl2s0NUE

please post comments.

Hydrogen Hype

I've heard enough inaccurate statements about hydrogen as a "fuel" to warrant a Blog entry. For decades, hydrogen-philes have been touting the potential that hydrogen has as the fuel source of the future. After all, we can get hydrogen from water, and water is everywhere.

The problem is, getting the 2 H's from H2O requires energy, and that (usually) means electricity. So, the advocates say, we can use nuclear or some kind of renewable energy to make electricity to produce hydrogen, then fill our cars and homes with hydrogen fuel cells that convert hydrogen back to...well...electricity.

Critics of this idea point out the obvious: why not just skip the middle step (and all the inefficienies of the process) and power our society with electricity? Rather than investing trillions of dollars on new hydrogen dispensing infrastructure for a grand "hydrogen economy," let's invest billions on upgrading the existing grid, expanding wind and solar, and producing efficient batteries that can go further per kWh.

As one electric car entrepreneuer told me recently, the next big breakthrough in getting more miles out of electric cars is not battery technology, but transmission technology. In the same way that a car with a 5-speed transmission gets better gas milleage than one with 4-speed (given the same engine), improving transmission technology will get more miles from the same amount of energy.

Granted, hydrogen might be a preferable fuel for certain long-distance, aero-space, or military applications. But for the rest of us, it is less than ideal.

Most of us drive less than 40 miles per day, and electric cars with technology developed more than 10 years ago could go twice that on a single charge. So, the question is, why bother switching to hyrdogen as a primary fuel when, for a much smaller price tag and a $10 extension cord, we have all the infrastructure we need to transform the way our society gets around.

Tilting at Windmills

The Economist always has fantastic articles. I went back to pull up one of their articles from their cleantech issue last fall, and thought I would repost the link to their article on wind power.

More...

U.S. to Host Major Renewable Energy Event

Washington, DC [RenewableEnergyAccess.com]

The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) and the leading U.S. renewable energy trade associations announced that they will host The Trade Show at WIREC 2008, to be co-located with the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) which occurs March 4-6, 2008 in the Washington DC Convention Center.
WIREC 2008 is the third global ministerial level event on renewable energy, following on the Bonn Renewables 2004 and the Beijing 2005 global meetings. In an earlier on announcement in May about the event, Secretary Rice noted that, "diversifying our energy supplies is a key foreign policy objective of this Administration," and that, "renewable energy sources can go a long way toward breaking the 'addiction to oil' that President Bush cited in his 2006 State of the Union Address." [To read the full article, click here...]

VC-Backed Cellulosic Ethanol?

VentureBeat follows the VC-backed cleantech industry closely. This particular VentureBeat alert caught my eye because of the reported construction of a cellulosic ethanol plant.

Read on...

Smart Metering

Imagine for a moment that we bought food in the way we currently buy electricity. We might order from a supply list with no prices marked and have whatever we fancied delivered to our door whenever we pleased. A single, un-itemized bill would arrive in the mail once every couple of months covering all the food ordered and delivered during the billing period. How would our food bills probably compare to what they are currently? How would we go about reducing our food bill in order to save money when we know nothing about the cost of each act of consumption?

More at the Oil Drum...

The Happy UN Report

Investors Flock to Renewable Energy and Efficiency Technologie

Climate Change Worries, high oil prices and government help top factors fueling hot renewabl energy investment climate. Investors flock to renewabl energy and efficiency technologies; tranascations leap to record $100 Billion in 2006 Says UNEP study; Renewabl shed fringe image; American, European Markets Dominate, but 9% of Global Investments are in China, 21% in Developing Countries.

The 2007 report on Trends and Investment

The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Here at the University of California at Berkeley, we have all heard denunciations of corn ethanol by prominent faculty members like Jay Keasling and Chris Somerville. But as soon as the denunciations are done, these same people immediately propose the grand solution to humanity’s energy needs: ethanol from cellulosic biomass, preferably from their own patented superweeds.

Despite repeated claims to the contrary, there is no energy-efficient and scalable industrial technology for producing ethanol from biomass. The Canadian biotech firm, Iogen Corporation, has a demonstration facility in Ottawa, with a nameplate capacity of 1 million gallons of ethanol per year. But it has only produced about 60,000 gallons of ethanol in 180 days from a 4-percent dilute beer. This demonstrates that Iogen has no viable technology beyond what was already achievable in the Soviet Union and Germany some 80 years ago.

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=516

Energy Outlook - The DOE Report

Thursday, June 14, 2007

A Wave of Wind A long train ride provided the opportunity to review the new report from the Department of Energy on the state of wind power in the US. For those who like numbers the ones in this document are fascinating. Significantly, they show that for the second year in a row, wind power capacity additions were second only to those for natural gas-fired turbines and ahead of coal, even when adjusted for “capacity factor”, the proportion of nameplate capacity actually utilized, on average. Furthermore, in at least a few states wind power is now contributing shares of total electricity sales that are comparable to the national shares from conventional sources such as hydropower and nuclear energy. At least regionally, wind is becoming mainstream, rather than niche.
http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/