Cleantech Blog

Saturday, March 08, 2008

GE: Doing Cleantech The Right Way

I have long had a respect for GE (NYSE:GE), and how it runs its business. In cleantech, I am very, very jealous. They have made themselves into the company to beat. Whether by plan, luck, or simply applying sound business discipline, GE has made itself into a top 3 global cleantech player no matter happens. And they did it for a fraction of the price, and a lot less risk than anyone in Silicon Valley or the energy sector. Venture capitalists beware, in cleantech, the behemoths have beat you to the punch, have done it cheaper, faster, and with more grit than you realize.

5 step Cleantech Program by GE

Wind - In 2002, GE bought Enron Wind out of Enron's bankruptcy for about $300 mm, making GE one of the top 5 wind players overnight (it's now well in excess of a billion in revenue). It was their first cleantech steal, right before the wind industry got amazingly tight (and huge).

Power - In 2003, GE acquired one of the leading gas engine manufacturers in Jenbacher, making GE an overnight leader in small, clean power systems, and powering their way into everything from distributed generation to landfill gas markets.

Solar - In 2004, just before the solar boom, GE acquired Astropower, one of the top 5 solar energy companies in the US, for less than $20 million out of bankrupcty, after the company was delisted following accounting irregularities. You cannot even build a single solar manufacturing line for $20 mm. Only the subsequent silicon supply shortages, and a lack of the needed investment in the business and next generation technology kept GE from making a homerun out of it. But despite that, there will never be another steal in solar quite like this.

Water - In 2005, GE acquired one of the largest water technology businesses in the US, Ionics, to complement its previous acqusitions in the water sector. Paying a full price of $1.1 Billion, it virtually guaranteed GE a top 5 position in the reverse osmosis, desalination, and water purification markets going forwrad, right after Ionics was shored up through a merger with Ecolochem.

Ecomagination Brand - Then on the back of these deals, in 2005 GE launched its Ecomagination initiative, and anchored the entire company's image around its new cleantech empire.

That, my friends, is the way you make money in cleantech venture capital. I would venture to guess that GE has made 10x its money, no matter how you spin it. Or put another way, an IPO of the GE cleantech business would be the hottest thing in years.

Neal Dikeman is a founding partner at Jane Capital Partners LLC, a boutique merchant bank advising strategic investors and startups in cleantech. He is founding contributor of Cleantech Blog, a Contributing Editor to Alt Energy Stocks, Chairman of Cleantech.org, and a blogger for CNET's Cleantech blog.

Labels: alternative energy, cleantech, gas engines, GE, green tech, greentech, solar, venture capital, water, wind

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Blogroll Review: Sinks, Oranges, Woz

by Frank Ling

Power Bathroom

For many years, the Japanese have recycled sink water for their toilets. Now an American company is taking it further.

WaterSaver Technologies from Kentucky has developed the AQUS system, which Philip Proefrock at EcoGeek says:

"...collects the water from a bathroom sink and filters and disinfects it before it gets re-used as flush water for an adjacent toilet. (There is nothing that would prevent this from being used in a large-scale LEED project either.)"

The toilet can save up to 7300 gallons of water each year.

According to the Word Water Council, that's enough water to produce 2 kg of beef. :)

Orange-ol

Apparently you can get more out of oranges than just orange juice. Some guys have figured out how to convert the citrus peel into ethanol.

Jim Fraser at the EnergyBlog says:

"FPL Energy said that ethanol from citrus peel could result in a new Florida industry producing over 60 million gallons of fuel per year, which could replace about one percent of Florida's annual gasoline."

If only they had a way to make Pine-sol smell orangy....oh wait, I guess they already have. :)

Green Woz

Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Cameron Diaz are all out there pushing for a greener future. But it doesn't hurt to have more celebrities out there to garner support.

Steve Jobs (from his own blog!) quotes his old buddy Steve Wozniak as saying he wants to reduce his emissions:

"I have a long dream to build my own house in a very energy-efficient approach. That's going to be very soon. It uses the right kind of wood that serves as a heater and as an air conditioner."

Frank Ling is a postdoctoral fellow at the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) at UC Berkeley. He is also a producer of the Berkeley Groks Science Show.

Labels: alternative energy, biofuels, cellulosic ethanol, clean energy, cleantech, Cleantech Blog, energy, green, green tech, greentech, water

Thursday, March 01, 2007

The Trouble with Water

Previously posted on Inside Greentech.

There was an active discussion around water at the recent Cleantech Forum in San Francisco. As there always is.

Everyone knows the old joke, applied to just about everything at one time or another, that runs: "hydrogen is the fuel of the future... and always will be," or "Brazil is the superpower of the future, and always will be."

Well, I wonder if that applies to water.

Will water always remain the "problem of the future," and not of the present? Despite the maxim that "water is the next oil," nobody ever seems to put their money where their mouth is in the water sector.

The basic story goes like this:

The water industry is huge, mostly public owned by entities that have no money for the (pick your number of) billions in upgrades needed
Population is growing every year
Population is increasing most rapidly in driest regions
Water is cheap, so no one conserves it (think about that statement as an economist and ask yourself if we really have a problem yet)
Water is even more important than energy as a "basic right," so no government will let its population run short.

Therefore, investing in water technology (desalination, membranes, remediation, purification, metering, etc.) to create solutions to the coming problem is a good idea.

But it never happens. The investment community just doesn't walk the walk when it comes to water. Why is that?

Some thoughts on why:

Motivation. The water industry, while huge, is not widely privatized and is very fragmented. It's not been heavily "technology" driven to date, and has proven to be even more cumbersome than the electric utility market to break new technologies into. Investor owned utilities, which are now a very large portion of the electric and gas utility market, are just a few percentage points of the water market. So very few of the potential customers for technology are big enough and profit driven enough to care.
Maturity. The technologies these water companies use is relatively old. Membrane technology used in reverse osmosis and more efficient valves and even smart control systems are not new ideas. And a lot of potential "breakthroughs" have been beat out of the industry already. So unless price radically changes - as in several orders of magnitude, it's likely that the technology we've got is "good enough" or at least hard to beat.
Price. Water is cheap (see above). Read: nobody's bearing any real pain today in most of the industrialized world. I'm not. I don't even get a water bill. I'll cut my morning Starbucks before I reduce my water usage. It's a bigger hit on my pocketbook. In pockets of the market, this may be changing (we do read about water crises in Australia from time to time, ultra clean water needed for semiconductor processes and additional water demand for a particular housing development in Southern California), but it is really hard to get a return on R&D when your customer is measured in "pockets" as opposed to "markets."
Solar, ethanol and carbon. Three years ago, water was the buzz of the venture conferences. Money looked like it might flow. Then the solar and ethanol markets took off, carbon trading got traction and climate change grabbed the headlines and the political mindshare (including mandates, rebates, and subsidies). Water - both the problems and the solutions - fell out of vogue.
Size and capital intensity. Like energy projects, water projects are often really big and expensive. Scaling up ALWAYS has more risk than one thinks it does. Like in energy, one just doesn't invest in a pilot for a new technology lightly. And just because one or two projects with a given technology are running does not a successful launch make. When 30 or 40 are running for 5 to 10 years, then you've broken through.

So I guess it remains to be seen if water is the problem of the future - or if it really is the next big thing. And it definitely remains to be seen if anyone can make big money investing in new water technologies and solutions.

Neal Dikeman is a founding partner at Jane Capital Partners LLC, a boutique merchant bank advising strategic investors and startups in cleantech. He is founding contributor of Cleantech Blog and a Contributing Editor to Alt Energy Stocks.

Labels: alternative energy, cleantech, Cleantech Blog, energy, green tech, greentech, investment, venture capital, water