Our firm, Kachan & Co., has just published its latest annual set of predictions for the cleantech sector for the year ahead. To our analysis, 2013 is shaping up to be something of a year of backtracking for the cleantech industry, a year that calls into question some of its traditional leading indicators of health, and [...]
Earlier this month, I turned 50 years old. Such milestones are natural occasions for reflection. Beyond recalling many of the phases and individual episodes of my life, my reflection included a consideration of how the world had changed in the 50 years in which I had lived. And, naturally, given my profession, I pondered what it would have [...]
I’ve been working with new energy inventions and their creators for almost 15 years now. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a new technology described as “the Holy Grail”: solving all of the world’s problems forever. Well, here’s the newest one using the Holy Grail cliche: a supposedly carbon-neutral method of using microbes [...]
The oil gas ratio hit a new record high December 27th with gas trading at $3.11/mmBtu and WTI going for $101.25/bbl yielding an energy ratio of 5.61. In simple terms this means gas is trading at the equivalent of $18.05/bbl crude. The market is starting to notice this rapid shift in natural gas economics. Back [...]
On January 13, 1994 the ratio(*) of the price of oil to the price of natural gas was 1.14. Today it hit a record high over this period of 5.26. Gas traded at $3.28 today, just 21% of the $15.38 / mmBtu it traded for on December 13, 2005. Shale gas is providing gas in [...]
Seemingly generating nary a ripple here in the U.S., the International Energy Agency (IEA) just issued its 2011 World Energy Outlook – its annual synopsis on the future of the global energy sector. If ignorance is bliss, then we’re certainly blessed by generally not bothering to confront the pretty-alarming conclusions of the report. A pastiche of the highlighted snippets in the Executive Summary, when [...]
It’s a $160 billion a year market you’ve probably never heard of. Ethylene, the intermediary chemical compound from which popular plastics and many other high value products are derived, has traditionally been made in the petroleum industry via steam cracking, an energy- and carbon-intensive process. It’s the most produced organic compound in the world; annual global [...]
Ordinarily, I let my fellow blogging colleague Neal Dikeman of Jane Capital take the lead in covering cleantech IPOs and publicly-traded stocks. However, I recently received the May 2011 newsletter from 21Ventures, and found the commentary by David Anthony on cleantech public equities an interesting complement to Neal’s most current take – sufficiently so to expound upon it herein. [...]
At the bustling intersection of renewable energy mandates, carbon emissions regulation, economic growth and legacy infrastructure lies untapped potential for producers of bio natural gas (BNG). It’s new. It’s important. It’s certainly not to be confused with plain biogas. And particularly if you work or have invested in solar, wind or energy storage, you need [...]
The natural gas market has always been a roller-coaster. It’s a very seasonal fuel, typically experiencing price spikes during the winter heating months. So, it’s important to begin any discussion about natural gas with a statement of the obvious: natural gas prices are very volatile. A few years ago, natural gas prices exceeded $12/mmBtu (as [...]
It had been on my nightstand for awhile, but I finally got around to finishing Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce. According to his own bio on the book jacket, “Bryce has been producing industrial-strength journalism for two decades” –whatever “industrial-strength” is supposed to [...]
Recently, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released its prescription for U.S. energy policy. “Facing Our Energy Realities: A Plan to Fuel Our Recovery” is a more balanced document than what I might have expected. Given the Chamber’s ardent undercutting of all efforts to deal with climate change in a thoughtful manner during the last Congress — [...]
Here’s what Kachan and Co. believe we can expect for the new year in cleantech worldwide… and the outlook is positive, if that darn economy thing doesn’t get in the way.
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 [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Last week, the MIT Club of Northeast Ohio hosted a talk at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland by Professor Ernest Moniz, the Director of the MIT Energy Initiative, and a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Over the course of about an hour of [...]
