www.Water-Stocks.com Reports on China Listed Water Stocks as Drought Moves in

March 17 , 2010 www.Water-Stocks.com, reports on China listed water stocks for investors following the water sector.

World Water Day, held March 22, 2010 addresses global water issues including pollution and scarcity. With China facing both issues at a rapidly growing pace, Chinese water stocks are getting investor attention.


According to a recent article in China Peoples Daily, entitled “Drought continues to wreak havoc in southwestern China “ ( http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90783/91300/6922884.html)
the number of people effected is serious. It said the worst-hit areas include Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Chongqing Municipality. More than 20 million people in total were suffering water shortages.

China Listed Water Stocks :

Zhejiang Leo Co (Shanghai:002131.SZ) is the largest manufacturer and exporter of small pumps and garden machinesin China, located in Wenling, Zhejiang. Not only a manufacturer, Leo also aims to be a global solution provider for water pumps and garden machines. It continuously diversifies its products range according to customer needs, now with more than 550 items.

Xiangtan Electric Manufacturing Co. (Shanghai:600416.SH) is a company engaged in the manufacture and sale of mechanical and electrical products. The Company’s pump industry division includes hot water pumps, submersible pumps and marine pumps among others.

Qianjiang Water Resources Development Co., Ltd. (SHA:600283) China-is principally engaged in the generation and supply of tap water, as well as the development and operation of real estate. The Company also provides electric power, pipe installation services and digital products.

Anhui Water Resources Development Co., (Shanghai:600502.SH) is principally engaged in the undertaking of engineering projects, the development of real estate, the utilization of water resources, the generation of hydroelectric power, build-transfer (BT) investment and new building materials business. During the year ended December 31, 2008, the Company won 71 bids of engineering projects, conducted Bailianya hydropower station project and Longzi Lake water resource developing project and continued to develop BESTWAY residential building system. The Company operates its business in domestic markets and to overseas markets.

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Meeting the Energy and Climate Challenge

Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1997) delivered this speech “Meeting the Energy and Climate Challenge” at Stanford University on March 7, 2010, where he was formerly a professor.

Dr. Chu called on the students and faculty to take part in a new Industrial Revolution. At the epicenter of Silicon Valley, Stanford has been at the heart of the Information Technology Revolution – a catalyst for innovators such as Intel, Cisco, and Google. “America has the opportunity to lead the world in a new industrial revolution,” he was quoted in the Stanford Report.

Humans are causing Global Warming

The Novel Laureate discussed the irrefutable case for anthropogenic climate change. “There is a mountain of climate data going back to 1860.” Climate deniers say that humans are not causing global warming; rather it is a variance of solar energy including sun spots. Dr. Chu presented a chart showing the long-term continued rise in the global surface temperature while the solar energy reaching the atmosphere followed a predictable 11-year cycle of 1366 and 1367 watts per square meter (W/m²).

CO2 concentration has increased 40% since the start of the first industrial revolution, including all GHG such as methane the equivalent increase has been 50%. Irrevocable effects are under way. The Earth must warm until a new equilibrium is reached in about 150 years due to time lags such as deeper ocean warming. Added temperature increase will result from the long life of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, and from increased emissions.

The effects of warming can be measured. Satellites can now measure with good precision the mass of the earth. Dr. Chu observed that the ice mass is decreasing quadratically in the Greenland and decreasing in the Antarctic.

He also pointed to potential tipping points. There are huge uncertainties with the risk of 3.5 to 6 degree temperature increases.

United States Innovation in Energy Efficiency, Renewables, and Transportation
“The U.S. innovation machine is the greatest in the world,” said Dr. Chu. “When given the right incentives, [it] will respond.” Energy efficiency and renewables present major opportunities.

The U.S. market share of photovoltaics peaked in 1996 at over 40 percent of global production;
it is now less than 10%. Asia has the lead in batteries. China is spending $9 billion a month on clean energy. For example, the State Grid is investing $44 billion by 2012 and $88B by 2020 in UHV transmission lines with transmission losses over 2,000 kilometers that are less than 5%. China is committed to produce 100GW of wind power by 2020.

The United States Recovery Act is making an $80 billion down payment on a clean energy economy to regain our global competitiveness and create U.S. jobs. Dr. Chu described how the United States could be the world’s innovative leader. The most immediate opportunity is in energy efficiency.

Since 1975, the electricity saved from energy efficient refrigerators with smaller compressors exceeds the total energy produced from wind and solar. Consumers respond to Energy Star ratings. We are expanding our energy efficiency standards to include buildings. In answering a question, Dr. Chu noted that energy efficiency can be extended beyond buildings to city blocks and cities themselves. The Energy Secretary got laughs from the students when he demonstrated how to adjust the sleep mode settings on their PCs and Macs.

Optimistic about Research Breakthroughs

There is good reason for optimism for renewable energy. The cost factor of wind power has decreased by a power of ten. Learning curves for photovoltaics has also declined by over a factor of ten. On a large roof, the installed solar cost is still around $4 per watt. If you get to $1.50 per watt installed, solar takes off without subsidy.

Because renewables are variable they benefit from local and grid storage, and from a smart grid. Pumped water storage is often 75% efficient; compressed air has the potential to be 60 percent efficient. The DOE has funded research for a variety of grid and vehicle battery chemistries.
Currently the United States is dependent on oil. Most proven reserves for oil majors such as Exxon, BP, Shell, are now off-shore. It will cost more to extract from tar sands and with more CO2 emissions.

Transportation is the hardest area to improve, mused Dr. Chu. Liquid petroleum fuels have excellent energy density. A Boeing 777 departs with 45% of its weight in jet fuel which has an energy density of 43 Mj/kg and 32 Mj/liter; a lithium battery, only .54 Mj/kg and 0.9 Mj/liter, yet batteries can compete in cars because of the efficiency of electric drive systems and learning curve improvements. We need an automotive battery pack for less than $10,000 with 5,000 deep discharges and 5X higher storage capacity, stated Dr. Chu.
We need breakthroughs. Much can from great research labs, such as Dr. Chu’s former Bell Labs. Scientific research for new breakthroughs will be encouraged with multiple programs:

Energy Frontier Research Centers = university sponsored scientific research for
innovative energy solutions.
Energy Innovation Hubs = multi-disciplinary,
highly collaborative teams working under one roof.
Advanced Research Projects
Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) = short term, high risk – high reward research
projects

Energy Secretary Chu concluded with the first view of Earth from the Apollo 8 orbit of the lunar surface and with these two quotations:

“We came all this way to explore the moon and the most important thing is that
we discovered the Earth. – U.S. Astronaut Bill Anders (Dec 24, 1968)

“…We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.” – Dr. Martin Luther King (1967)

Video of Dr. Chu’s Speech at Stanford

John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report and speaks at conferences. He is the author of the new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet - now selling at Amazon and other booksellers.

Creating Cleantech Clusters

by Richard T. Stuebi

Shawn Lesser of Sustainable World Capital recently posted on the CleanTech Group's website his list of Top 10 CleanTech Cluster Organizations. I was pleasantly surprised to see that four of the ten listings were from the U.S. -- in the places you'd probably suspect: Boston, New York (Upstate), California (both Northern and Southern). Interestingly, no place in China made the cut.

As Lesser notes, "creating a cluster is no simple task." In my research, I really haven't found any predictable formula or recipe for nurturing along a cluster's formation. I recall once asking a serious student of regional economic clusters, Ned Hill of Cleveland State University, for his insights. In his view, there are three necessities that must be in place for a cluster to emerge in a given geographic area:

• First, there must be a critical mass of people and organizations within and between which leading-edge knowledge transfer occurs.
  
• Second, the people and organizations that set the standards for the industry must be present.
  
• Third, an extensive set of pilot and demonstration projects must exist at which experimentation can be conducted to develop real-world improvements.

Without these three factors in place, it's very much an uphill push to create an industry cluster.

Here in Northeast Ohio, NorTech -- the economic development organization leading efforts to nurture technology-based clusters in our region -- has recently launched an initiative in partnership with The Cleveland Foundation called Energy Enterprise to help spur subclusters of activity in our region in various segments of the advanced energy technology spectrum.

In planning the activities of Energy Enterprise, we've often talked about what it takes to build a cluster, sometimes getting frustrated at all of the factors beyond the control of any agency aiming to be a catalyst for cluster growth. Although we at Energy Enterprise don't have a definitive playbook, we take some solace that cluster-building is inevitably a struggle for everyone. We have no illusions that we can enter such a top-10 list very quickly, having come a bit late to the game relative to others, but aspire that we can eventually get there in the years to come.



Richard T. Stuebi is a founding principal of Energy Enterprise, the advanced energy initiative at NorTech, where he is on loan from The Cleveland Foundation as its Fellow of Energy and Environmental Advancement. He is also a Managing Director in charge of cleantech investment activities at Early Stage Partners, a Cleveland-based venture capital firm.

Ford Transit Connect Electric Test Drive

By John Addison (3/8/10)

Before I got behind the wheel of the Transit Connect Electric, I asked myself, “Who is going to buy a battery-electric van of this size?” Fleet managers of electric utilities, universities, and city delivery all came to mind. Electric utilities have plenty of off-peak electricity for charging vehicles. For a utility with 5,000 vehicles in its fleet, hundreds could be replaced with the Transit Connect Electric. Many universities have hundreds of light electric vehicles for maintenance and on-campus delivery. The Transit Connect Electric would greatly increase the range and cargo for these applications. Many city delivery applications do not require much range and space, but value fitting in a tight parking spot.

The Transit Connect Electric looks identical to its gasoline cousin that was awarded 2010 North American Truck of the Year. The Transit Connect Electric has over 6 feet of cargo length that can be accessed through two sliding side doors, and two swinging rear doors. By keeping the cargo space to this size, the Ford has an 80-mile range on a charge of its 28kWh of lithium-ion batteries. The cargo space is perfect for many delivery, maintenance, and contractor needs, but not for all. Many fleet applications need the 290 cubic feet available in the Ford E Series vans or the 547 cubic feet of the Mercedes Sprinter.

As I get behind the wheel, I notice that the Transit Connect Electric is still ¾ fully charged, even though Ford has been giving journalists test drives for a couple of hours. The dash is simple in comparison to the Fusion Hybrid. No fancy telematics, GPS, or back-up camera. The rear view mirror won’t help me because of the high cabinets in this particular vehicle’s cargo space. I use the side mirrors to back-up. The vehicle is easy to maneuver out of the tight parking space.
As I turn and accelerate on the busy city street, the vehicle is silent. I cannot even hear the electric motor. Zero to 60 in 11 seconds is nothing to brag about, but the acceleration was adequate on the level street. Initial acceleration felt slow, when I accelerated on a 6 percent grade from a stopped position.

I asked Ford if I could get off their two-mile loop and go up a 20 percent grade. They declined because too many journalists were waiting for their turn to make a test drive. I was assured that the Transit Connect Electric is speced for a 25 percent grade.

After of few more blocks, I looped back to our starting point. With electric power steering, the vehicle was easy to drive. The electric drive system was always quiet and smooth. When I parked the Ford the charge was still ¾ full.

Ford has not yet establishing the pricing for the Transit Connect Electric, but with 28kWh of expensive lithium batteries, it will cost more than the $21,500 gasoline version of the Transit Connect and more than the natural gas version. The 2011 Transit Connect Electric uses a Force Drive electric powertrain manufactured and integrated by Azure Dynamics who has built electric delivery truck drive systems for the U.S. Post Office, Purolator Courier, and Fed Ex. In addition to the Transit Connect Electric, Ford will sell the Focus Electric in 2011 and Plug-in Hybrid 2012.

Transit Connect Electric is well-suited for fleets that travel predictable, short-range routes with frequent stop-and-go driving in cities and have a central location for daily recharging. The electric vehicle will have a top speed of 75 mph and a targeted range of up to 80 miles on a full electric charge. At 240V, the 28kWh Johnson Controls-Saft (JCS) lithium-ion battery back can be recharged in 6 to 8 hours. The battery pack is liquid cooled. An onboard charger with J1772 communications converts the AC power from the electric grid to DC power to charge the battery pack. JCS has supplied Ford for many years. JCS will supply the 8 to 13 kWh lithium battery cells for the 2012 Ford Plug-in Hybrid, but Ford will make the actual pack.

With an 80-mile charge range, the Transit Connect Electric will be used in fleet applications of less than 20,000 miles per year. The lithium batteries have been tested at many electric utilities. The Johnson Controls li-ion battery modules on bench testing at utility giant SCE accumulated the equivalent of 180,000 road miles before losing more than 5 percent of the original charge capacity. This Ford van with its JCS batteries is designed for years of use.
By partnering with Azure and JCS, Ford will be one of the first to delivery commercial freeway-speed electric vehicles in the United States. The Transit Connect Electric is part of a growing family of Ford hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles.

John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report and speaks at conferences. He is the author of the new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet - now selling at Amazon and other booksellers.

Behave Yourself!

by Richard T. Stuebi

It's axiomatic among the cleantech community that energy efficiency represents the cheapest/easiest way to address our energy and environmental challenges. Indeed, as illustrated by some analysis by McKinsey & Company, many energy efficiency measures actually have net negative costs to implement.

So, why is it so damned hard for customers to adopt energy efficiency technologies? Consider the recent article from the Wall Street Journal, profiling the challenges faced in Boulder, Colorado -- one of the most environmentally-inclined communities in North America -- in encouraging energy efficiency measures. The WSJ article spurred some navel-gazing among the green-conscious Boulder citizenry, as witnessed in this blog post.

One way of looking at this issue is that it is indeed hard to change people's habits and behaviors, but that eventually people do change. Another way of looking at this issue is that people are economic animals: they do make changes, pretty quickly, like it or not, when something hits their wallets and pocketbooks.

In other words, it's really pushing water uphill trying to encourage a shift to using less energy, when energy is so bloody cheap for most people. Unless/until energy becomes more expensive (taxes anyone?), the only way to spur many customers to use less energy is to change codes such that inefficient devices -- whether they be lightbulbs, refrigerators, air conditioners, TVs or computers -- can no longer be bought.

In the absence of price signals that strongly encourage behaviors to reduce energy consumption, restricting what customers can buy is the only brute-force method available that really works. And, as can be seen in our current political environment, many Americans don't like being strong-armed by their government.



Richard T. Stuebi is a founding principal of the advanced energy initiative at NorTech, where he is on loan from The Cleveland Foundation as its Fellow of Energy and Environmental Advancement. He is also a Managing Director in charge of cleantech investment activities at Early Stage Partners, a Cleveland-based venture capital firm.

State of the California Feed-in Tariff

David Niebauer

A new, innovative feed-in tariff for small-scale solar development is coming to California. Rather than setting a fixed price in an environment in which technology costs appear to be dropping, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has proposed a market-based approach, allowing developers to bid the lowest prices at which they would be willing to develop projects. This approach focuses on adding capacity to meet California’s aggressive renewable portfolio standard (RPS), and appears to avoid the pitfall of setting a price that is too high or too low. Time will tell if the approach is effective, but the outline of the program released by the CPUC looks promising.

Background

Feed-in tariffs have been employed around the world for a number of years as a policy mechanism designed to encourage the adoption of renewable energy sources. Because non-renewable energy sources (e.g., fossil fuel combustion) cost significantly less to develop in a pure unregulated market environment, renewables require subsidies to make them competitive. Of course, the reason for the disparity is that we already subsidize non-renewable energy development by not assessing the full cost of the resource extraction activities, but that’s a topic for another article.

One approach to the cost disparity problem would be for governments to start taxing non-renewable energy generation, assessing the full cost to society and the environment for those activities. A more politically realistic solution is to provide an incentive to those developing renewable energy resources. The feed-in tariff is an innovative incentive program that is designed to provide a level playing field for renewable energy project development.

A feed-in tariff typically includes three key provisions: 1) guaranteed grid access, 2) long-term contracts for the electricity produced, and 3) purchase prices that are based on the cost of renewable energy generation. Under feed-in tariff regulation, utilities are required to buy renewable electricity from all eligible participants, effectively leveling the market for electricity generation.

Feed-in tariffs have been successfully employed in many countries over the last few years, most notably in Germany and Spain. The goal is described as “grid parity”: the point at which renewable electricity is equal to or cheaper than (non-renewable) grid power.

The California Approach

California regulators, guided by the CPUC, have flirted with a feed-in tariff for a number of years. Standard Offer Contracts for renewable power development were first introduced in California in the early 1980s in response to the state's investor-owned utilities (IOUs) perceived discrimination against small power producers. The CPUC ordered the utilities to offer standardized contracts and to offer one such contract, Standard Offer No.4 (SO4) with fixed prices. By the mid-1980s, private power producers had installed a significant amount of wind capacity in California, much of which is still in service today. Solar technologies had not matured to a level sufficient to take advantage of SO4.

California’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) implemented in 2002 significantly raised the stakes for solar development. The California RPS program requires electric corporations to increase procurement from eligible renewable energy resources by at least 1% of their retail sales annually, until they reach 20% by 2010. On September 15, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger signed an Executive Order directing the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to adopt regulations increasing California's Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 33 percent by 2020. As currently designed, RPS projects tend to be large and located in remote areas with abundant available land, but little transmission access or capacity. These larger projects take several years, at a minimum, to develop, due to the generation and transmission permitting processes, as well as the construction time required.

In early 2008, and as a means to promote smaller scale renewable projects, CPUC adopted a feed-in tariff that directs IOUs to offer a standard contract at the so-called market price referent (MPR) to all renewable technologies up to 1.5 megawatts (MW). However, this program has been generally ineffective because the price is not high enough to attract solar development: the MPR is based on the cost of generating electricity with a combined cycle gas turbine facility.

Renewable Auction Mechanism (RAM)

In August 2009, the CPUC issued a new proposal designed to significantly increase the amount of solar energy installed in the state from smaller producers. It has moved away from using MPR to set the price and instead proposes to implement an innovative bid mechanism. The program would first expand the current feed-in tariff to 10 MW (to cover projects in the 1 – 10 MW size). Rather than setting the price at MPR, the CPUC proposes to allow developers to bid out projects through market-based pricing in what is termed a renewable auction mechanism (RAM). Under this system, developers would bid the lowest prices at which they would be willing to develop renewable energy projects and IOUs would be required to accept eligible projects starting at the lowest bid. As stated in the CPUC proposal: “This mechanism would also allow the state to pay developers a price that is sufficient to bring projects online but that does not provide surplus profits at ratepayers’ expense.”

Solicitations would be staggered for each IOU throughout the year using standard long-term power purchase agreements whose terms would not be negotiable. The program would be capped in each year and IOUs would be required to accept contracts up to the maximum amount of the cap. The program as currently envisioned totals 1 GW over 4 years, although industry observers believe that once implemented it could be easily expanded.

Next Steps

An Administrative Law Judge is currently reviewing certain jurisdictional objections raised by Southern California Edison after the initial CPUC proposal. The issue is whether the state commission can set wholesale prices or whether such an action can only be mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The RAM approach adopted by the CPUC appears to moot any such jurisdictional challenge. A decision is expected shortly. Once the decision is rendered, the content and mechanism for roll-out of the program will come up for deliberation and vote at an upcoming meeting of the CPUC.

David Niebauer is a corporate and transaction attorney, located in San Francisco, and a founding partner of Energy Counsel Partners, LLP (www.energycounselpartners.com). David’s practice is focused on renewable energy project development and environmental technologies. www.niebauer.net.

Fuel from Algae – Challenges do not Stop Big Bucks

By John Addison (3/3/10 - original post at Clean Fleet Report)

Energy, Water, and Fuel are three of the world’s most pressing needs. Algal biofuel can have a major impact on all three observed Dr. Michael Webber in opening the recent American Association for Advancing Science (AAAS) workshop about the future of fuel from algae.

Algae seems to grow everywhere except in commercial fuel processing plants. Algae grow unwanted in our showers and swimming pools. There are over 30,000 species living on land and in water. Algae include seaweed and pond scum. Scientists are actively searching for the ideal forms of algae to convert our waste and CO2 into fuel. The idea is simple: grow algae, separate the fatty lipids from water, then refine the lipids into biofuel. Producing high volumes of algae biofuel at low cost, however, is anything but simple.

Algae multiply rapidly with up to 50 percent of their weight being lipids, or triacylglycerols, which can be extracted and converted into fuel. Yes, biodiesel and other transportation fuels can be made from algae, but after decades of effort the fuel is still expensive and only made in lab-scale quantities. There are many obstacles to replacing petroleum with algal fuel in this decade. As I took notes at this three hour workshop that includes top experts in algal fuel, I had hoped to deliver a more optimistic report, but no optimism was gushing in the room.

Even if 10 million of the 240 million vehicles in the U.S. are replaced with plug-ins in this decade, that leaves 230 million vehicles needing petroleum fuel, often sourced from countries that don’t like us, or from sources such as tar sands with massive carbon emissions. Biofuel could reduce our dependency on oil. Fuel from algae can include ethanol, biodiesel, bio-jet fuel, and even bio-crude which could be refined and blended at existing oil refineries.

Currently, biofuel from corn, soy, and palm competes with food, uses large inputs of water, ammonia, petroleum, and land. Demand for food goes up; rainforests that supply our oxygen get destroyed.

“If we were to replace all of the diesel that we use in the United States” with an algae derivative, says Solix CEO Douglas Henston, “we could do it on an area of land that’s about one-half of one percent of the current farm land that we use now.”

Scientists at the AAAS conference seem to agree that 4,350 to 5,700 gallons of fuel per acre of algae per year is realistic. This is 10 to 100 times the potential of other fuel sources ranging from soy to jatropha. Land use is not an issue. Algae thrives on CO2, creating the dream of co-locating algal production at power plants and cement plants.

The DOE states, “Despite their huge potential, the state of technology for producing algal biofuels is regarded by many in the field to be in its infancy. There is a general consensus that a considerable amount of research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) needs to be carried out to provide the fundamental understanding and scale-up technologies required before algal-based fuels can be produced sustainably and economically enough to be cost-competitive with petroleum-based fuels.” Now available is a 214-page draft PDF of the National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap.

Thousands of strains of algae are being tested by private companies, universities, and research institutions. To achieve higher sustained production of triglycerides, hundreds of variables are being tested including natural strains, GMO strains (many patented), water, light intensity, nutrients, and nitrogen starvation.

Oil must be “brewed” with the right solution, light, mixing, and stirring. Cost-effective photobioreactors must be developed. Dr. Bob Hebner, University of Texas at Austin, has produced 6,000 gallons of algae in one day. Low cost targets appear achievable – $2 per gallon to produce algal oil and another $2 per gallon to process. Yet these are only achievable if the right organisms can be kept alive, water input reduced, energy costs reduced, and lipids can be separated at much lower cost. Costs must be removed at each of these steps:

1. Growing the desired strain. Major problems include predators, competing strains, and death of the needed strain.
2. Harvesting – removing water at low cost
3. Lysing to produce a lipid concentrate
4. Separations – oil from water from biomass

To achieve low cost and volume production, different pathways are being explored including anaerobic digestion, supercritical fluids, pyrolysis, and gasification.

Although algal fuel does not compete with food, it currently does compete with water. For large scale processing use of water will need to be drastically reduced to be economical with the energy cost of pumping water. Waste water or salt water will be needed, not water needed for agriculture. Optimization can likely drastically reduce needed water which can then be recycled.

Genetically modified organisms are controversial. To date, no consistent output from natural algal systems has been achieved. At the AAAS conference, Dr. Dan Kammen, U.C. Berkeley and IPCC lead author, discussed how natural strains of algae could be possible in global small scale production. He expressed concern that although GMO can cause highly productive algae, their inevitable release into other biosystems could be highly destructive.

With its ability to sequester CO2, algal fuel production will benefit from cap-and-trade legislation that exists in many states. Algal fuel can be produced in all 50 U.S. states.

Although the challenges are many, the potential of algal fuel is enormous. Exxon is investing $300 million in Craig Ventor’s Synthetic Genomics with plans to produce fuel from algae. Mexico’s BioFields is investing $850 million in an Algenol Biofuels plant for ethanol from microalgae; Dow is adding $50 million to the venture.

Greg Horowitt, T2 Venture Capital, reports that hundreds of millions are being invested in algal fuel companies such as Sapphire Energy, Aurora BioFuels, BARD, Solix, GreenFuel, and Solazyme. From Boeing to BP, from DARPA to DOE, and from Arch Venture Partners to Bill Gates, serious money is betting that algae will someday be a major biofuel source for our trucks, ships, and planes.

John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report and speaks at conferences.

All Electric Cars – The Impact of the Little Guys

by John Voltz

Recently, I made a small diversion from my walk to the office in San Francisco and took a ride in a Wheego. The Wheego was being showcased at Justin Herman Plaza right across from the Ferry Building not far from my office in the heart of the city’s Financial District. The Wheego is a brand new all-electric car from an interesting manufacturer in Georgia. Locally, the Wheego is sold at Ellis Brooks Auto Center. This intrigued me. Ellis Brooks is a venerable car name in San Francisco, having been around for 40+ years. I still remember their radio jingle from my childhood, “See Ellis Brooks today for your Chevrolet, corner of Bush and Van Ness . . .” The Ellis Brooks dealership now sells pre-owned cars and is no longer associated with GM. It has just begun selling the Wheego. Before I took my test drive, I had a chance to talk to Ellis Brooks’ grandson, John Brooks, about why they decided to sign up with Wheego. He seemed comfortable with the manufacturer in large part because the car was assembled from components made by manufacturers already in volume production of vehicles.

So how was the ride? Pretty good. It was quite roomy with a nice, quiet ride and a firm feel of the road. Allowing for the fact that it is a small two-seater coupe, it had the feel of real a car – not a golf cart or an experiment.

Now I should back up for a minute and explain that I have long been a skeptic that there will be significant adoption of all-electric vehicles any time soon. But this car changed my mind a bit.

My skepticism about this has been based on looking at the passenger car market and thinking about what it takes to succeed in that market. Then I compared the passenger car market to other potential electric vehicle markets.

Passenger cars have been the province of integrated high volume manufacturing, low margins, very high quality expectations (especially fit, finish and amenities), and very high service and support expectations. In short, the barriers to entry for this market seem quite daunting, especially when compared to the delivery truck market or the ATV market. These markets have significantly lower volumes, less integrated manufacturing (many manufacturers are essentially final assemblers), much lower quality expectations on fit, finish and amenities, and lower service and support expectations.

There are some low-volume passenger car manufacturers, but all make vehicles aimed at high priced specially markets, not low to mid priced daily drivers.

There is another big difference between the passenger car market and the delivery truck market – what delivery truck buyers want fits really well with what electric vehicles do best:

• predictable low to medium mileage daily duty cycle
• low noise
• excellent torque
• low total cost of ownership

With an electric delivery truck, you don’t need to worry that you’ll ever need to drive from San Francisco to L.A. to visit your sick aunt. In fact, for commercial trucks, limited range can be a plus - there’s no way for trucks to wander very far. With passenger cars, limited range is a big reason not to buy.

Given this, I have felt for some time that we wouldn’t see significant adoption of all-electric vehicles until we started seeing real traction in markets like delivery trucks. I expected passenger cars (and delivery trucks too to some degree) would likely first go hybrid, then shift the hybrid balance to more electric (e.g. using fuel to run a generator to extend the electric range), and then later shift to all electric. These successive market advances would be linked to gaining manufacturing scale, cost down of batteries and other components critical to all-electric vehicles (though batteries is the big one).

My Wheego ride today and my chat with the dealer changed my view. Here was an all-electric car, at a regular car dealer, with a high but regular car price, from a car manufacturer that nearly appeared out of thin air. You see Wheego as a manufacturer is just a final assembler. From my initial quick look, Wheego came on the scene as a passenger car player in 2007 or so, backed by the former founder of MindSpring. Before then, it was exclusively an electric golf cart manufacturer. So it’s really been an eye blink in automotive time scale (2007 to 2010) to see cars turning up at dealerships. Granted, the model at dealers today and the one that I test drove is just a medium speed vehicle (MSV) with a top speed of 35 MPH and not for highway usage (more on that later). But this was still impressive to me.

Wheego gets the car bodies from a big manufacturer in China (a body that is currently used for gas drive cars in other international markets). It gets its motors from a Wisconsin electric motor manufacturer and its motor controller from Curtis Instruments who makes controllers for forklifts. Maybe the truck style manufacturing could work for passenger cars after all.

In addition, I began to think about the current passenger car market for all-electrics. There probably is a significant market for all-electric vehicles, even in the current economy, and even if they aren’t strictly ‘economic’ on a dollar per mile basis compared to gas or hybrid cars. Think about how much the early EV1 cost in its day[1], and how people still rave about it years and years later. In my revised view, I think there will be a small but significant true believer market in the U.S. for all-electric cars. Yes, the big boys are coming – Nissan with the Leaf, Chevy with the Volt, Ford with the Focus EV, but not for a year, maybe two, maybe more. In the mean time, the true believer market will be served by the likes of Wheego, Think, Smart, and others. Even after Nissan, Chevy, Ford and other big car companies arrive in the market, the early entrants may have continued success. Plus they may have customers and EV infrastructure that car manufacturers with non-existent, dormant, or failing EV programs may look to acquire. There is no substitute for firsthand customer knowledge.

The Wheego I drove was a medium speed vehicle (MSV) with a max speed 35 MPH and a real world range of 40 miles. The highway speed version is on the way – due to arrive this summer. It is currently undergoing NTHSA cash testing. It will have a top speed of 65 MPH and a range of 100 miles. The high speed vehicle (HSV) Wheego will not be a lot different than the MSV. Differences include: lithium ion batteries, airbags, and some additional structure supports to the body.

I now see the all-electric car market developing from two converging paths – the true believer all-electric passenger car market and the more economically driven all-electric truck and fleet vehicle markets. The true believer market will drive visibility and customer expectations, and provide valuable real world feedback about what electric car consumers care about and will pay for. While the truck and fleet markets will help dive down cost, I expect both will speed the adoption all-electric cars to a significant portion of the passenger car market.

So for you true believers out there, price before incentives for the MSV Wheego is ~$19K (and it’s eligible for a 10% Federal tax credit) putting the MSV price around $17K before any state or local incentives. Prices for the HSV have not yet been announced, but the target price is in the $30K range (and it will be eligible for a $7500 federal tax credit) putting the net cost of the HSV before state and local incentives in the roughly in the mid $20K range.

---

[1] The EV1 had a nominal low price of $34K or ~$48K in today’s dollars though it was never sold only leased. Reportedly production costs were $80+K per vehicle at the time. Initial lease costs were $640/month or $900/month in today’s dollars. Later this dropped to $350/month or $ 500/mo in today’s dollars with many different incentives layered on.

Making the Great Lakes Great Again

by Richard T. Stuebi



For as long as I can remember, Lake Erie -- and by extension, all of the Great Lakes of North America -- symbolized water pollution. Sure, it was much worse 40 years ago, when the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland caught fire, but the reputation lingers. (Remember the "Swill" skit on Saturday Night Live in the late '70s?) Although the Great Lakes are a boater's and fisher's haven, for many people (myself included), the thought of bathing in the waters or drinking them untreated remains pretty unappealing.

This is truly a pity for the Midwest, because the Great Lakes represents one of the most fundamental assets that a region can offer: fresh water in enormous quantities. For those who've never seen the Great Lakes, they are misnamed: these are inland seas, not lakes. The Great Lakes hold 20% of the world's freshwater. Pause and think about that for a minute.


In recent decades, there has been an increase in attention paid to remediating the Great Lakes. A unique multi-government collaboration launched in 1955, the Great Lakes Commission was formed to oversee issues spanning the multiple U.S. states and Canadian provinces depending upon the Great Lakes. Founded 40 years ago, the Alliance for the Great Lakes was an early voice advocating environmental improvement in the Great Lakes. Most substantively, the U.S. EPA leads the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which targets "the most significant problems in the region, including invasive aquatic species, non-point source pollution, and contaminated sediment."

Recently, the Obama Administration announced a five-year $2.2 billion blueprint for cleaning up the Great Lakes, which aims by 2014 to (1) finish work at five "toxic hot spots" that have been known as problematic for two decades, (2) reduce the rate of new invasive species by 40%, (3) decrease phosphorous runoff measurably, and (4) protect about 100,000 wetland acres. (See article from Chicago Tribune.)

As the central feature of the industrial North American Midwest, which gave birth to the industrial era of the 20th Century, the Great Lakes were long taken advantage of -- often without much respect -- to achieve economic growth, increase standards of living, win wars, and establish the U.S. as the unparalleled leader in the world. $2.2 billion may sound like a lot of money, but it's due time we give back to the Great Lakes, for all that they've given us.



Richard T. Stuebi is a founding principal of the advanced energy initiative at NorTech, where he is on loan from The Cleveland Foundation as its Fellow of Energy and Environmental Advancement. He is also a Managing Director in charge of cleantech investment activities at Early Stage Partners, a Cleveland-based venture capital firm.

Cap and Trade vs Carbon Tax - 6 Myths Busted

In the midst of the debate over exactly what commitments will come out of the Copenhagen Accord follow-up discussions, and how a cap and trade system to incorporate those might work, we asked long time carbon trader Olivia Fussell, the CEO of Carbon Credit Capital in New York, to opine a bit on myths on cap and trade v carbon tax for the layman.  Cleantech Blog has written lots on this topic, but it always needs more. 

Myth 1: A Carbon tax provides much greater price stability than emission trading under a cap and trade system.

This argument is valid only when an emission trading system is designed without banking and borrowing options which allow firms to smooth emissions over time. This in turn contributes to leveling of the price of allowances and creates certainty in the market and thus spurs investment.

Moreover, tax regimes can easily be changed by legislative bodies which in turn can also introduce instability.

Myth 2: A carbon tax is a preferable option because the revenues from taxation can be used to invest in low carbon technology and/or used to offset potential regressive effects of carbon taxes on poorer households.

This argument is valid only with the assumption that allowances are grandfathered in an emission trading scheme. One solution to this potential problem is the auctioning of allowances which can potentially generate the same revenues as a tax.

In addition, governmental funding tends to “pick a winning” technology, whereas technological innovation is needed in many areas (renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, etc). A cap and trade system provides an important incentive for the development of these technologies by providing a price signal that enables firms to capture the value of new technologies. Because cap and trade is not technology specific, it can encourage and accommodate any emerging GHG control technologies or practices.

Myth 3: The introduction of a carbon tax is simpler than an emission trading scheme under cap and trade.

True, an emission trading scheme is much more complicated than taxation. The introduction of a new tax does not require setting up a new system with additional administrative costs attached to it. However, having an international agreement on a global tax is highly unlikely if not impossible. This statement is supported by an example of the unsuccessful attempt to impose carbon tax in the 1990s within its multi-national European Union’s structure. Also the Clinton administration unsuccessfully tried to introduce an energy tax in the mid 1990s but encountered strong opposition in Congress.

Myth 4: A Cap and trade system creates market and environmental uncertainty.

Not true, a tax does not set a quantitative, legally enforceable limit on emissions. On the other hand, a cap and trade system measures, monitors, and achieves a specific environmental objective.

Myth 5: Cap and trade doesn’t work because the European Union Emissions Trading (EU ETS) Scheme did not prove that significant emissions reductions were achieved.

The fact that Phase I of the EU ETS achieved only small reductions in emissions was not due to the embedded flaw in the cap and trade but because the emission cap was set too high. In addition, the EU over allocated allowances. This was mainly due to many countries lacking reliable data monitoring and information standards of GHG emissions when the scheme was first introduced. Since then the EU has solved the problem of monitoring and reporting and tightened the cap for Phase II.

Myth 6: A Cap and trade system allows for ‘windfall profits’ for regulated firms.

It is true that implementation of the trading scheme in the EU led to the increase in retail electricity prices. However, this situation can occur under any type of regulation and it’s not cap and trade specific. The determining factor is not the type of regulation but the ability of a company to pass through the costs to consumers. Based on the EU ETS example, electricity generators were able to make profits because they were able to reflect the value of allowances in prices of electricity, even though they received the allowances for free (‘grandfathering’). This problem can be addressed through the mechanism of allocating allowances and more specifically through auctioning. Regulators would require companies to purchase allowances, and this could ensure that the companies incur direct costs, thus reducing their profit margin. However, this does not solve the problem of passing costs onto consumers. One can solve this by passing the revenues from the auctioning of allowances back to the consumers.

You can reach Olivia for comment at http://www.carboncreditcapital.com/

Will Google Charge your Electric Cars?

By John Addison - original article at Clean Fleet Report

Google Energy could be a Smart Charging and V2G Provider

Google finally won approval from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to be an electric utility. Now that they are making billions delivering web ads, do they want to make added billions selling electricity? Quite possibly. Google already offers a smart meter app that allows smart grid customers to manage their home electricity use. With their new approval to be a utility, Google could be a smart grid / smart charge service provider.

Auto makers and utilities have already agreed on smart charging standards that allow you to plug-in using a J1772 connection, but not have charging start immediately. A service provider is needed to look at your preferences, take action, and provide information. Your preference might be to not charge until 9 p.m. when rates fall to a fraction of peak electricity demand hours. You might want to receive a text message when your charging is complete. You might want Google Maps to show you the nearest public charging stations that are available and display their cost per kilowatt hour. It looks like a natural for companies like Google. They story gets better in the year’s ahead when cars are V2G enabled.

Electric car sales will get a boost when the utility meter spins backward and customers make money by plugging-in. University of Delaware, AutoPort, and partners are planning to put 100 electric cars on the road in the next 18 months that will plug-in and sell power back to the utility using vehicle-to-grid (v2G) technology. AutoPort plans to secure local fleets that fund conversion of their vehicles. The University of Delaware currently has six Scion eBoxs, converted by AC Propulsion, to be electric cars with V2G.

I just got to hear from the V2G experts while I attend the American Association for Advancing Science (AAAS) Conference. I am posting this report from the conference.

A solar home might have 3 to 5 kW of solar PV. An electric car might have 24 kWh stored in its lithium batteries. Vehicles can be charged at night when excess wind and other forms of electricity are generated. The electricity can be sold back at premium rates during peak hours.
By the end of the decade, some electric cars will be less expensive to purchase than gasoline powered cars; most will be much cheaper to fuel. Monthly electric utility bills will be small for some; others will get paid to plug-in. The concept is not new. Solar power grew rapidly whenever feed-in tariffs created an incentive by having utilities purchase power from homes and businesses.

V2G will initially be promoted by agile businesses that can make things happen much faster than cautious utilities or automakers. When V2G becomes a billion dollar business, look for hundreds of players including auto makers and utilities.

The V2G cars in Delaware will get Big Bucks to sell electricity back to the grid. Electric utilities are becoming desperate for stored energy. Utilities are willing to pay serious money for some contracted delivery of electricity. Dr. Jasna Tomic of CALSTART reports that utilities will pay $15 to 55 MWh for electricity supplied for frequency regulation, but the utility does not want to deal with 100,000 car drivers. The utility wants one aggregator in the middle to provide the power. This could eventually be a billion dollar opportuntity for a Google, GE, IBM, EnerNOC, Better Place, or a new start-up.

Spinning reserves is another major opportunity. If a GW coal or nuclear plant goes down, a utility needs to find a new GW of power online in ten minutes. If you are an energy aggregator who can guarantee that GW 24/7 year-round you can make money every day of the year, even if reserves are rarely needed. A utility might pay $20 MWh for spinning reserves.

Ken Huber, Manager Advanced Technology for PJM, an independent systems operator (ISO) PJM, told me that they had 30 incidents last year that required the use of spinning reserves. On average, the reserves were only needed for about ten minutes. PJM is an energy wholesaler with over 550 member companies that serve 51 million people services in 13 states. On a typical day they are providing 100 GW of electricity. They can handle a 144 GW peak load.

These premium ancillary services can cost-justify early adoption of V2G. A decade from now, less valuable peak and base-load delivery of electricity from electric car batteries may add to the economic value of V2G.

Utilities and their air quality regulators would like to get rid of dirty peaker plants that may only be fired up a few hundred hours per year, when temperatures soar and air conditioning blasts cold air. Dr. Tomic estimates a peak power value of 5 to 80 cents per kWh. For those afternoon peak hours, utilities might offer 2 to10 cents per kWh.

100 V2G cars in Delaware is only a beginning. Fleets will be early adopters of V2G. In the United States, fleets currently have over 20,000 light-electric vehicles in operation. These same fleets will be candidates for new freeway-speed electric vehicles with V2G. Early adopters will include other universities, corporate leaders, and government organizations. The U.S. Post Office, if it secures funding support, may convert part of its 220,000 fleet to electric delivery vehicles with V2G. Utilities with thousands of cars and heavy-duty trucks are perfect candidates for early adoption of V2G.

A New Breed of Energy Service Providers

Electric cars, smart grids, and needed grid available storage will attract a agile innovators, many with deep pockets. Ken Huber of PJM identified a number of potential aggregators that include energy storage providers such as CAES which currently provides PJM with one MW of lithium-ion battery storage; smart grid providers such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco; vehicle service providers such as GM OnStar, Grid Point, and Better Place; and demand-response providers such as Comverge and EnerNOC.

Some energy providers will fight to be first to market with smart charging and V2G services. Others will be fast followers. Most utilities will leave the investments of capital and creating new business models to others. Some innovative utilities may directly offer their own V2G services – Duke, Edison, Sempra, Austin Energy, and Xcel come to mind. Electric car customers will benefit from the convenience, smart charging cost savings, and ability to make money with V2G.
The Grid is Ready for Millions of Electric Cars

“Electricity is the new vehicle fuel,” explains Dr. Will Kempton, Director, Center for Carbon-free Power Integration, University of Delaware. He is confident that the U.S. electric grid can support millions of electric cars that are likely to be added in the next decades. He observes that the U.S. total grid load is about 417 GW. If all U.S. cars will converted to V2G plug-ins with an average of 15 kWh per vehicle, they would provide 2,865 GW. A U.S. fleet of electric vehicles could provide 7X entire electricity needed in U.S.

The average U.S. car is parked 23 hours per day. If most charge off-peak and only 20 percent are available for V2G at any given time, V2G will be a major contributor in energy security and more affordable electricity. A brighter future will be created by early adopters of electric vehicles, utilities with renewable energy portfolios, and a new breed of smart grid and V2G service providers.

John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report and speaks at conferences. He is the author of the new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet - now selling at Amazon and other booksellers.

Vermont Yankee to be Shut Down

“Vermonters sent a message to President Obama and the nuclear industry today,” said Greenpeace’s Nuclear Policy Analyst Jim Riccio. “The nuclear renaissance is dead on arrival. We can retire old, decrepit and leaking reactors like Vermont Yankee and help usher in the energy revolution that America needs.”

“When American’s have the choice about the kind of energy they want in their communities, they don’t want nuclear. Vermont has shut down the myth of the so-called nuclear renaissance. Greenpeace is calling on Vermonter legislators to vote against relicensing in the house as well so that the message to America registers loud and clear.”

This decision is an interesting one. Like Sacramento many years before it, Vermont decided to proactively shut down their Nuclear plant. In this case, Vermont was choosing this pathway even though the variable costs of the plant were less than $0.03/kWh.

For new Nuclear we have a slightly different case. The recently $8.3B in loan guarantees for Southern Company's nuclear plant is on a total bill of $14.4B for just 2,200MW of nuclear. At the same time, McKinsey claims that over over 85% of the 17 gigatons of carbon reduction we need globally by 2020 could be achieved by efficiency alone. Further, that for $14.4B, Southern company could perform such deep energy efficiency retrofits that they would create 10 times the number of construction jobs than the Nuclear plant.

I am not anti-nuclear, but some of these large Nuclear plants plans need to rethought towards more manageable strategies. Companies like Hyperion are creating small reactors that can be sited and financed more easily than the large Nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power holds the promise to be a big player in our effort to decarbonize the electricity grid, but their lack of common sense around how to handle public relations seems to be their Achilles heel.

Jigar Shah

CEO, Carbon War Room

Founder, SunEdison

Saving Cleantech: Bloom town Silicon Valley?

Just on the eve of the industry headliner San Francisco Cleantech Forum, Bloom Energy finally blooms?

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) like the Bloom Box have been under development for a couple of decades, and many of the major firms both in the US and abroad are still at it. The issues, questions and performance/cost/longevity triangle constraints are well known. So far Bloom Energy has answered none of them. Though we congratulate them on getting into what looks like significant first field trials. That puts them in small company with the maybe twenty or so other companies out of 1,000 plus who have tried. All of those handful took well over $100 mm plus to do it (though $400 mm is rather a lot of money, I must say, that’s taking one for the team). All of them took 5-10 years plus. At one point as an industry we were spending $1.5 Billion per year in annual R&D on fuel cells. Perhaps two companies, Fuel Cell Energy and Smart Fuel Cell, are arguably shipping commercial product today, with UTC, Plug Power and ClearEdge Power other possible contenders for "commercial".

Of course, none of them have shown as little evidence of what progress has actually been achieved as Bloom. And while it's a great list of customers, I’m not certain that eBay or Google are necessarily seasoned fuel cell buyers whose judgment I’d trust (especially after reading the rather suspect financial cost effectiveness analysis Google subjected their original solar PV pilot to).  Where's the Department of Defense and Department of Energy who has bought and/or validated virtually every fuel cell in existence?  But view the quality of the information provided for yourself:

Bloom Energy;
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n

The major SOFC SECA players’ peer reviewed reports:
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/09/seca/index.html#core

I’ve been asked numerous times this week what I think of the Bloom unveiling. My answer was simple, I’m excited at the promise, but since they haven’t actually shown anything yet, the skeptic in me says beware the devil who asks for the check before showing the details.

I have sent an inquiry to the “press” button on Bloom’s website. We shall see if I’m one of the privileged reporters who gets a call back. I won’t hold my breath. Because I’m just a blogger who once helped found a fuel cell company, right? Not exactly Lesley Stahl.

And I hope the $800,000 price quoted in this week’s media was for something larger than the 25kW unit the Kanellos reporting machine was crediting as the Bloom Box size last year. I imagine it must be. Somebody check me on my math, but that would be ugly. Perhaps it’s for a 100 kW size (one of the 400 kW total 4 unit installation Google reportedly has), which is a more manageable but still ugly $8,000/kW a bit better (as it should be) than ClearEdge’s 5 kW residential unit of 1/20th the size, or maybe it’s $800,000 for the full 400 kW and then would be close Fuel Cell Energy’s $2,000-$3,000 /kW larger MCFC units (for which they lose 30 cents on every dollar and have stated they need to double to c $150 mm in revenues before the gross margin will be positive)? Have to be careful here, the fuel cell /DG industry makes the solar and hybrid car industries look like choir boys when it comes to economic analysis statistics.

So on the technology itself, any one who has been around fuel cells for long, before answering any question like, “what do you think, is it exciting?”, would hope you’d get the basic questions people ask of all serious fuel cell technologies answered. Questions like these:

On the technology:

What’s the basic design of the cell and stack?

What are the cell/stack/system performance and efficiency curves?

How many cells/stack, stacks/unit, cell and stack size/performance?

How many of the current generation of cells, stacks, systems have they built and when?

What’s the production yield of the cells/stacks? Is it automated?

What’s the metal alloy they use?

How do they do the sealing?

How do they handle the metal to ceramic junction?

What’s the history of cracking?

What do the cell degradation curves look like (in the lab and the field)?

How many hours do they have on cell/stack/system/field trials?

How many thermal cycles?

What are the results of the 1,000 and 5,000 hour tests in the lab, and how do the field trials stack up against the lab results? How many of each is the sample size/distribution of results?



On the system:

What is the operating temperature, normal operating condition specs, fuel/air flow rates, electrical and thermal output?

What are charging, and what’s the installation cost? Is it turnkey?

How long to start up/cool down the system?

Are all the stacks in the field trials the same? Have any of them been replaced?

How does the system move the gas/air/exhaust? What’s the history with that BOP system?

What’s the actual system level field performance across the fleet in the field?

And how much of this is externally validated?


Then we'll get to the real questions.  First, just the basics please.  The same questions I've personally asked executives at dozens of fuel cell companies over the years.

And then let’s hope this week’s launch is because the technology is actually ready, not because the company’s last round came in short and Kleiner Perkins has been after them to try and float it. Fuel cell companies have a long history of doing that, too.

Neal Dikeman is a partner at cleantech merchant bank Jane Capital Partners, LLC, and a long time entrepreneur in cleantech.  And yes, I did my time in fuel cells, too.

Gators Go for World Championship With Record Prices for Solar Power

by Tom Rooney

Something’s gotten into those Gators.

First, they won back to back championships in college basketball. Then they added a national football title to the mix, along with a Heisman trophy.

Now the city surrounding the University of Florida is doing something of even greater national import. Something that just might be remembered in 100 years as the place where America began its march to world energy leadership:

The Gainseville city leaders became the first in the country to set a competitive price for people who create renewable energy with their solar panels or wind farms or whatever, and who sell it back to the local utility.

They call it a feed-in tariff, if you must know the technical term. But it is simply the price you receive for generating your own power then selling it back to the utility.

Many solar leaders regard it as the key to the next step in the growth of solar in America -- both the use and manufacture.

Which is also the key to creating energy independence and reducing carbon.

Which of course we are not doing enough of.

On a recent trip to China, I visited several large factories where they make solar panels.

I wish everyone who wishes America to be an energy super power could have seen what I saw. These factories are world-class models of efficiency and skill. Their managers, many of whom are trained in the United States are very good and getting better.

Many of the panels they make are going to places where local utilities pay premium prices for solar power generated on rooftops; there is no doubt that wherever solar owners receive higher prices, more solar power exists.

In Germany and Spain and France and Italy, the feed-in tariff is as high as 72 cents per kilowatt hour. In German it is the highest, that is why they have more solar than anyone anywhere.

And most of this they did ten years ago.

In Gainseville, they recently set their price at 32 cents per kilowatt hour. Interest in solar in this college town is exploding far beyond what an economist might expect from the financial incentives alone.

Which tells us that people have important economic and non-economic reasons for using renewable energy.

If only they get the chance.

A competitive feed in tariff is just the beginning. The bigger the local market for solar, the greater the chance for local manufacturers to compete.

And that is what is missing in America so far. Missing from the plans of those who hope for tens of thousands of green jobs; Missing from the folks who crave energy independence. Missing from those who say solar is the cure for carbon.

But not missing in Gainseville -- where their 32 cent per kilowatt hour is a message to the rest of the country that this is what people do who are serious about energy independence and carbon reduction.

Compare that with California, the most solar friendly place in America, where solar power owners are lucky to get 1/3 of that.

There’s always a reason why we are not going whole hog on solar. The grid is not ready. The price is too high. We have more and better energy in -- fill in the blank -- that all we have to do to get it is -- fill in the blank.

But the blanks are always years and and years and trilions of dollars away. Meanwhile, Asian suppliers and European competitors are racing ahead.

Today our national leaders correctly say that America can and should be a world power in renewable energy. But business leaders in Asia feel America will not get there.

If we are going to compete -- let alone win - for this world energy championship, we are going to have to acting like winners. And we can begin by acting the way they do in the hometown of the national championship Gators.

Tom Rooney is the President and CEO of SPG Solar. He can be reached at http://www.spgsolar.com/

Batteries 'R' Us

by Richard T. Stuebi

Of all the cleantech technology sectors, the one I can least keep track of is batteries. For those of you who want to keep pulse of this dynamic arena, a new blog called This Week in Batteries is just what you might be looking for.

The host of this blog is Venkat Srinivasan, who is part of the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies (BATT) Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, so he should be pretty near the center of the action in the battery world -- at least as it pertains to electric vehicle applications.

Srinivasan's most recent post is a nice riff exposing the absurdity of extrapolating Moore's Law for semiconductors to other realms of technology advancement -- as if forever-continuing exponential improvements won't bump up against the laws of physics.

Richard T. Stuebi is a founding principal of the advanced energy initiative at NorTech, where he is on loan from The Cleveland Foundation as its Fellow of Energy and Environmental Advancement. He is also a Managing Director in charge of cleantech investment activities at Early Stage Partners, a Cleveland-based venture capital firm.

Investing our way out of the Recession

I recently ran across this blogpost from a man I really respect. He says, "However, Paulson acknowledged to NPR host Scott Simon, the "conundrum" is that to spur the economy, we now need to spend more and create more jobs. Paulson did not offer a solution to this impasse.

Indeed, this contradiction is now paralyzing the nation's political life, as Americans are worried about both high unemployment and record deficits. The Obama Administration and Congress are now walking a tightrope between these anxieties.

Investment as Solution. The solution to this jobs vs. savings conundrum is to invest money now, into projects that when completed will help us individually and as a nation to save more."

The blog post goes on to offer some recommendations and I would visit it here: http://energyeconomyonline.com/Job_Needs_Push_Energy_Bill.html

My recommendation is to focus only on the built environment. According to a Navigant study funded by the Energy Foundation, there are 15,000,000 Commercial buildings in the US. out of a total of 130,000,000 million structures. There has been huge movement in the non-recourse financing space since SunEdison pioneered financing for solar PV in 2003. Today Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) bonds and utility on-bill payment mechanisms can bring interest rates for non-recourse energy efficiency bonds down to below 8.5% over 20 years. Not bad!

Companies like Pulse Energy, SCI, and others have software/hardware solutions that for less than $15,000 per building to perform retro-commissioning/continuous commissioning solutions to save over 10% of total electricity used in the Commercial sector -- or around 150 terawatt hours. Given the 80/20 rule you would focus your efforts on the 3,000,000 buildings that are the largest opportunities or $45B in investment. The savings from these 20% of buildings would exceed 100 terawatt-hours per year or $10B per year. With interest the customer pays an extra $1,000 per year and savings of over $3,000 per year.

Job creation occurs from this one cost effective technology alone is almost a half a million job years. Taking energy audits that have already been completed for deeper energy retrofits and giving them a non-recourse financing solutions gives you a 2-3X multiplier on this opportunity. Cost effective solar, demand response, ice storage, and other consumer technologies multiply this by another 3X. LBNL estimates that the opportunity is around $440B using today's technology.

The job creation from the work is important but not really what we are after. Money that is freed up from the sleepy electricity industry is usually redeployed in much more value creating areas -- new businesses, consumption, savings

The multiplication effect here is what we are after. The Carbon War Room has recently launched the Green Capital Global Challenge to go after this opportunity.

There are so many investment opportunities that do not need federal government financial support -- simply some assistance on removing market barriers. Smells like an opportunity!

Jigar Shah

Founder of SunEdison

CEO of the Carbon War Room

www.carbonwarroom.com