It’s been fashionable to debate whether China will some day surpass the U.S. in clean technology. Yet, after reviewing some of the metrics that really matter, one could conclude that it already has. At least this was my thesis in moderating a recent Haas School of Business event at U.C. Berkeley in California that explored [...]
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 [...]
To start off with, I have to say like many people I’m deeply concerned with the oil spill at Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. It is a generational environmental hit that cannot be overstated. Perhaps BP deserves more credit than it’s getting for responding fast with a massive amount of resource, no finger pointing, [...]
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 [...]
A couple weeks ago, I took the liberty on this blog to write a open letter in support of my good friend, Christiana Figueres to be the next Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. While that selection process is ongoing for another couple weeks it appears, it’s been inspiring in its own right to see the [...]
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 [...]
So, with recent changes in my professional life, my family and I made the decision to relocate to the Bay Area. There were a lot of reasons, but the main one is my general perception that my world (carbon trading) and their world (cleantech and information technology) rarely meet. Indeed, the maestro of this blog, [...]
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 [...]
Makower One of our favorite cleantech insider Joel Makower has come back from Japan with very interesting observations. It seems that the US is not the only country where the government does not have a strong mandate to create strong policies for climate. Political gridlock pervades here as well. There was much discussion about how [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
By John Addison (2/9/10) Americans are Spending 20 percent of their income on transportation. In the average two-car household it is often higher. Big Oil and Big Ag are fighting for their share of that moneyPetroleum use has started to drop in the United States as we have fewer cars and more fuel efficient cars. [...]
By David Niebauer Whatever else happened or didn’t happen as a result of the recent Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, the Global community did take action on slowing the destruction of the world’s tropical forests. Certainly one can argue that we are not doing enough, but getting the “global community” to agree on anything [...]
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 [...]
