NEW YORK, NY, March 6, 2013 – It was announced today that prominent renewable energy investor Clean Feet Investors has provided BrightFarms with a $3M project equity facility; this investment is believed to be the first institutional project finance capital for a company focused on scalable, commercial urban agriculture. Clean Feet seeks to help socially [...]
I just read a very interesting article from Motley Fool on the oversupply of solar in the marketplace that is predicted in 2011. The article went on to try to compare the competitive position of the thin-film mfg and the crystalline mfg based on $/Wdc. Of course for those of us in the industry we [...]
I read this oped with great sadness. I also sympathize with Louis Bacon’s case. That being said, to link the Louis Bacon case to solar being expensive is not only irrelevant but wrong. Why would you possibly link the two cases together. 1) It takes a long time to build transmission so I don’t think [...]
I just agreed to judge this contest. I wanted to see what you guys thought of contests like this. It seems like an amazing way for entrepreneurs to get recognition and differentiation. Cleantech Connect features the hottest and fastest growing Cleantech companies in Europe. For the second year running GP Bullhound, with premium sponsors Schroders [...]
I was shocked when reading this letter from Governor Bobby Jindal. Now I find him to be over political at times, even though I like his governing style in general. In this case, he is just out of his mind. BP has not even capped the well yet and Governor Jindal is asking for more [...]
I am watching the Chris Matthews show. There was a comment about American’s being nostalgic for their childhood when families stayed together and there were no global problems. The problem with that point of view is that it is not true today, it may never have been true. We are in a situation now where [...]
Barrons had an interesting take on biofuels from garbage: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB127327100968888619.html I have been following this movement for some time and there does seem to be an extraordinary amount of capital and brainpower going into this space. People talk a lot about ethanol and I am a big of ethanol, mostly because I like the constiuency [...]
First Sarah Palin, now Robert Bryce taking pot shots around things they barely understand: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042302220.html 1) Solar and Wind take up too much land: If you just focus on rooftop solar and buffer land at airports, brownfields, wastewater treatment facilities, and military bases you could power the US almost 2 times over with just solar [...]
Just saw this article: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/08/1866150/kcpl-boosts-cost-for-new-electricity.html Comparing the cost of the upfront capital in this plant to technologies have have free fuel costs are just inaccurate. Technologies like wind, solar, energy efficiency and others act like Nuclear power did in the 1970s. They have high upfront costs but reduce electric utility rates over time as their [...]
This op-ed says it all. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04friedman.html I am not usually a huge Tom Friedman fan (although I like him), mainly because I find that while he is an amazing communicator, I am not usually spurred to action. This time I am. The data here is well known to me because I follow the Kaufmann Foundation, [...]
I was reading with sadness about the decision by BP Solar to shut down the Frederick, MD manufacturing facility. As many of you may know, I worked for BP Solar and this facility was the first real large scale solar mfg facility in the United States. Solarex (bought by BP) perfected the use of polycrystalline [...]
Since 2000, electricity rates have gone up by about 4.5% annually. Even in this downturn, electric utility have little shame in raising rates to invest in infrastructure that depends on 20th century approaches. In 2008, Missouri voters decided to pass a 300 MW solar program within a bold RPS plan. The plan requires a rebate [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
Is it time for a real trade association for the Building Efficiency industry? I was thinking about this today. I have seen one that really does the job. For those of you that have been a part of the efficiency industry for a long time, you know that it is like a greyhound race. Companies [...]
by Jigar Shah, Founder SunEdison and CEO of the Carbon War Room I was looking at the new Homestar program on the Efficiency First website here: http://www.efficiencyfirst.org/home-star/ To start, it would be an amazing effort on the part of the Federal government. This comes on the heels of a huge effort on the part of [...]
by Jigar Shah, Founder SunEdison and CEO of the Carbon War Room As wind come out at a robust 9.9GW in 2009, Solar at maybe 600MW, etc, it looks like the zero-emissions folks will again install a majority of incremental MWs. The balance is mostly natural gas a little bit of Coal. Getting this number [...]
by Jigar Shah, Founder SunEdison and CEO of the Carbon War Room This is an interesting article from Greentech Media. It basically is saying that if we are aiming to decarbonize our electricity grid we cannot do it without Nuclear energy. I like to break this down into bite size chunks so that I can [...]
By Jigar Shah What a difference a couple of years make. Two years ago, the solar industry was over subsidized and doing well. Last year, the solar industry fell victim to the financial crisis, but emerged victorious through skill and determination to achieve another year of positive growth — after many predictions to the contrary. [...]
I was pleasantly surprised by the work that Solar Electric Light Fund has been doing with Paul Farmer and Partners in Health. With over 75% of Haitians unelectrified pre-earthquake, it seems that the central command and control utility hasn’t worked too well in the past. With diesel fuel hard to come by, it looks the [...]
