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 [...]
It’s been a busy, ummm interesting year. We’ve tracked profits to founders and investors of $14 Billion in major global IPOs on US exchanges and $9 Billion in major global M&A exits from venture backed cleantech companies in the last 7-10 years. Money is being made. A lot of money. But wow, not where you’d [...]
I have to admit: it’s hard for me to be terribly enthusiastic about electric utilities. I know a fair bit about them; by my count, I’ve served about ten utilities in various consulting roles during my career. While generalizations are always dangerous, for the most part, I think it’s safe to say that electric utilities [...]
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 [...]
It’s Presidential Election year. Ergo, time to discuss our 40 year whacked out excuse for an energy policy. Royally botched up by every President since, umm? Objectives: Make US energy supply cheap for the US consumer and industry, fast growing and profitable for the American energy sector, clean, widely available and reliable, and secure, diversified, [...]
For several years, the U.S. military has been one of the most active proponents and early-adopters of renewable energy and alternative fuels, with their Operational Energy Strategy. Why? Several reasons: 1. Fuel delivered to the remote front-lines such as in Afghanistan for use in power generation and transportation has an “all-in” cost of $400/gallon. Any energy source [...]
We all know energy is global, and as much policy driven as technology driven. We have a quote, in energy, there are no disruptive technologies, just disruptive policies and economic shocks that make some technologies look disruptive after the fact. In reality, there is disruptive technology in energy, it just takes a long long time. [...]
By Guest Blogger Charles Waitman I spent a day at Intersolar North America in San Francisco, considered by some to be North America’s premier exhibition and conference for the solar industry. My career, to date has been in the oil industry. This was my second Intersolar conference. These are my observations. PV dominated the conference. [...]
It’s that time again: sifting through the detritus of a calendar year to sum up what’s happened over the past 12 months. Everybody’s doing it — for news, sports, movies, books, notable deaths…and now even for cleantech: here’s the scoop from MIT’s Technology Review, and here’s a post on GigaOM. So, my turn [drum roll, please], here’s [...]
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 [...]
Last night while watching Office reruns, I realized I’d been remiss, and a lot’s had been happening in the public equities end of the cleantech sector. Not to mention yesterday’s billion dollar BK broiler announcement by the one-time Next Greatest Thing, Solyndra. So, with my usual aplomb, I thought I’d simply peanut gallery what’s “Hot or [...]
By Neal Dikeman I had a chance to chat today with Dr. Charlie Gay, the President of Applied Material’s solar division. You may recall, we broke the story in the blogosphere 5 years ago about Applied’s entry into solar, which was anchored with a highly touted and very aggressive strategy for turnkey large format amorphous [...]
HONOLULU— www.hawaiiredcross.org, www.withaloha.org and www.Sunetric.com — Sunetric, Hawaii’s largest locally owned and operated solar installer, has donated two solar photovoltaic systems to raise funds for two local charities assisting Japan. The first is the American Red Cross Hawaii State Chapter and the second is the “With Aloha” Foundation. Donations raised through the website www.solarforjapan.com will [...]
GreentechMedia and Cleantech Group this quarter reported near record levels of cleantech venture capital investment. Nearly $2.6 Billion in deals. No, quantitative easing hasn’t made the dollar slide that much yet, the numbers are real – mainly as the solar and transport deals vintage 2004-07 are getting deep into their capital intensive cycles. But a [...]
Our Cleantech Linkedin Group, over 20,000 members strong, has had a seven month running discussion started by Robert Drummond entitled “Renewable Energy that will Really work”, asking for readers views on what’s practical in renewable energy. Kind of crowd sourcing opinion and facts on the subject of renewable energy. Robert’s discussion reached a staggering 1,500 comments this [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Something grand is emerging on the vast dusty plains of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Tres Amigas is an ambitious scheme to interconnect the three primary power grids in the U.S. — the Western grid known as WECC, the Eastern grid known as the Eastern Interconnection, and the Texas grid known [...]
Sandor Schoichet s a longtime Cleantech Blog reader, and Director of Meridian Management Consultants. Sandor has EE and SM degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT, where he studied artificial intelligence, office automation, and business process reengineering, and completed a joint program in Management of Innovation at the Sloan and Harvard business schools. [...]
Toronto-based EDF Energies Nouvelles Canada (EDF) announced on January 4 that its 12 MW St. Isidore A solar installation successfully joined Ontario’s alternative energy industry when it began operations in late December. St. Isidore is a community of fewer than 1,000 people located in Prescott and Russell County, east of Ottawa, the nation’s capital. The [...]
by David Anthony It’s true. Cleantech investment hasn’t worked out exactly how people dreamt it would back in the overly-optimistic days of the last decade. One of the main obstacles deterring venture capital investors from the sector is the frequently lengthy time lag between investment and commercialization. More importantly, the number of successful cleantech exits [...]
