In April, the Advanced Energy Economy Institute (AEEI) released the synthesis of a survey of executives in the advanced energy sector conducted by PA Consulting to suggest priorities for U.S. energy policy. The report, Accelerating Advanced Energy in America, outlined business challenges and policy challenges thwarting the growth of the advanced energy sector, in order [...]
Over the weekend, I attended the annual shareholder’s meeting of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) in Omaha to hear the wit and wisdom of CEO Warren Buffett and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger. For five hours on Saturday, Buffett and Munger fielded questions from panelists and investors on a wide range of topics. A good synopsis [...]
Over the weekend, ABB (NYSE: ABB) announced the $1 billion acquisition of Power-One (NASDAQ: PWER), which makes a wide spectrum of power conversion electronics equipment. Notably, Power-One is a major player in the market for inverters, which convert DC power into AC power. In turn, inverters are important for synchronizing DC-based technologies such as batteries, [...]
Albert Einstein once said: “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Pundits always pursue the former, but often fail to uphold the latter. Such has been the case recently in regards to the prospects for electric vehicles. Will electric vehicles be commercially successful or won’t they? As often happens, there is superficial evidence [...]
Like most other tech sectors, the cleantech world is subject to fads that are overhyped — meteoric rises, sometimes followed by spectacular flameouts. It seems like we humans like to create heroes and then tear them down. There’s a particular tendency to sing the praises of the latest “hot company”: the one that has the [...]
When I was a young lad in college, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early 1980s, I took a course in energy economics taught by Prof. Morris Adelman. I was an anomaly: there were probably no more than a handful of courses then being taught in energy economics in the colleges and [...]
In the energy sector, there are few topics that generate more debate today than the relative merits/demerits of fracking. To see just how strongly-held yet evenly-divided opinion is, check out this online debate moderated by The Economist and sponsored by Statoil (NYSE: STO). The question is framed simply: “Do the benefits derived from shale gas [...]
As I posted a few years ago, so many of the best opportunities for cleantech to have immediate benefit can be found in China. Every day, evidence accumulates supporting this thesis. Of course, this winter’s air pollution crises in Beijing and other cities made global news. More gruesome was last week’s discovery of nearly 7,000 [...]
I try hard to stay on top of a wide range of developments in the cleantech world. Maybe I spread myself too thin, sacrificing depth for breadth, as I scan through a lot of journals and attend a lot of events to see what’s new and interesting. Even so, I’m continually surprised by the number [...]
In the January issue of Pollution Engineering, Roy Bigham and Josh Foster have compiled their list of “10 Top Technologies for 2013″. Summarizing their summary of the new-and-nifty that the environmental industry should monitor: Self-healing plastics that rush in to repair cracks and voids. Obviously, this would have significant implications in a wide variety of [...]
On February 13, the Cleveland office of the law firm McDonald Hopkins hosted a panel to discuss the pivotal water issues facing producers of oil/gas from shale via fracking. In addition to three MH attorneys, the panel also included Jeff Dick (Director of the Natural Gas and Water Resource Institute at Youngstown State University), Samuel [...]
Thanks to the efforts of Chris Mather, co-head of the Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center, I was able to gain a tour of the Dolan Laboratories, located just outside Columbus, owned and operated by American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP). This facility is now highly unusual for the electric utility industry. Back in the day, a [...]
On January 29, I spent a day inside a ballroom on The Ohio State University campus in Columbus serving as a judge for the Ohio Clean Energy Challenge, presented by the University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio and NorTech. This contest pitted student teams from universities and colleges across Ohio pitching their clean energy business [...]
Writing in the January issue of POWER magazine, Arshad Mansoor (Senior Vice President of Research and Development at the Electric Power Research Institute) authored an article entitled “Emerging Technologies Enable ‘No Regrets’ Energy Strategy” to provide a soup-to-nuts vision of the future technology landscape for the electric power industry. I don’t know that it’s possible [...]
“I’m a contrarian, so when everyone else is capitulating, I think it’s time to invest.” So says Stuart Bernstein, the partner in charge of cleantech at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), in this recent article about the ending slump of renewable energy financing. “It feels like the worst is behind us…The market appears to have troughed [...]
Boeing (NYSE: BA) may soon be on the verge of renaming its new 787 the Nightmareliner… After a prolonged development program and costly production delays, Boeing started delivering its latest state-of-the-art airplane just 15 months ago, three years behind schedule. Although the company has a lucrative backlog of nearly 800 787s on order, worth roughly [...]
The transition to cleantech – some would call it a revolution – inevitably entails change, which implies risk. In turn, this implies that some things will fail. We’ve already seen more than a few failures, and we’ll no doubt see many more. As long as the successes outweigh the failures, that’s all that ultimately matters. [...]
Recently, I came across this very interesting thought-piece, “Cleantech Marketing Isn’t IT Marketing”, written by Aaron Fike, the founder and CEO of Energy Cache. Energy Cache has developed a rather unusual energy storage technology. As described here, Energy Cache is offering a solution that is a hybrid of ski-lifts and mining technology, hauling gravel in [...]
Happy new year everyone. As we reflect upon the year now past us, it’s also that time of year to look ahead. For the cleantech sector, Dallas Kachan from Kachan & Co. recently put his neck on the line with his “Predictions for Cleantech in 2013”. It’s a good read, well-reasoned. The sound-bite version: Cleantech [...]
