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1. Earth2Tech Week in Review
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2. Water-Cooling Means More Chips With Less Heat
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3. CalPERS Could Bet $640M on Khosla
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4. Trina Solar: Earnings Up, But Silicon Woes Remain
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5. Climate Bill Blocked By Filibuster
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6. Verenium Working on 10 Cellulosic Ethanol Sites
Earth2Tech Week in Review
Craig Rubens - Misc
Climate change was debated and filibustered on Capitol Hill this week as the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act came up in the Senate. The bill represents the first serious climate change legislation with a cap and trade system on carbon to make it to the Senate floor. In case you were too busy following the Beltway climate politics and missed what was happening in the wider world of cleantech we’ve gathered the top headlines from the week for you here.
12+ Companies Racing to Build U.S. Cellulosic Ethanol Plants: The race to scale up second-generation biofuel technologies is on and a dozen companies are all vying to be the first one to have a commercial-scale plant pumping out non-food biofuel.
Iogen Suspends U.S. Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Plans: Canadian company Iogen tells us that it is backing away from its intentions to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in the U.S. Iogen was chosen by the Department of Energy in February 2007 to potentially receive funding to build the first of the next-generation of cellulosic ethanol plants in the U.S.
Solar Startup Xtreme Energetics Licenses HP's Tech: Xtreme Energetics has licensed the technology behind making clear transistors from Hewlett-Packard. The solar startup says the technology will enable the startup to make a more efficient solar panel that can convert up to 43 percent of the sun's light into energy at a cost of $1.50 per watt.
Bill Gates Slashing Stake in Pacific Ethanol: Bill Gates is making good on his plans, announced last November, to sell off his 20.6 percent stake in Pacific Ethanol.
Green Auto Startup Shows Off Hydrogen-Powered "Scorpion": A new startup in Texas is looking to bring a hydrogen-hybrid sports car to market by 2010. The Scorpion would make its own hydrogen on-demand and cost $150,000, the company says.
Water-Cooling Means More Chips With Less Heat
Stacey Higginbotham - In the Lab
IBM showed off a new computing system yesterday that packed layers of semiconductors in a vertical stack and cooled it with water running in hair-thin pipes along the chips themselves. This is more impressive than the water-cooled copper plates that subsequently cool chips, and a leap ahead of the traditional method of just using straight AC to cool data centers.
By running the water directly alongside the chips the system can pack even more chips into a smaller space without creating a ton of heat. Less heat means you need less AC to cool the system and thus less energy. This technology should show up in data centers within the next five-to-10 years.
Fans of reuse and conservation may wonder what to do with all that water. Well IBM thinks it could go to heat office buildings or provide hot water, as illustrated in the video below. Right now, some innovative companies are using heated air from a data center to take care of heating and electrical needs. Qualcomm uses heat expelled from servers to help run a cogeneration plant at its W campus in San Diego.
The Cork Internet Exchange in Ireland has also gained some fame for doing that with its data center. CIX has closed off aisles containing the fronts of servers, which require cooler temperatures and let the hot air from the back warm the room. The rooms also have heat exchangers that suck that warm air out of the room and use it to power the heating of other areas of the building, as well as of warm water. Check out this nifty video:
CalPERS Could Bet $640M on Khosla
Craig Rubens - Big Green
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is unlikely to retire anytime soon, but he could soon be investing in cleantech with the retirement funds of some of his fellow Californians. Khosla Ventures is in “advanced talks,” peHub reports, with the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), which as manager of some 1.5 million Californians’ pensions is the largest such fund in the country, to commit up to $640 million to the venture capital firm. CalPERS declined to comment and we are still waiting to hear back from Khosla Ventures.
If this deal moves forward it would make CalPERS the only other limited partner — other than Khosla himself — in the firm. This is unusual as most venture capital firms raise funds from a group of limited partners. Until now, most of Khosla Ventures’ money has come out of the founder’s deep pockets. This collaboration could bring together two bodies known for making controversial and socially conscientious investments. Like hedge funds, pension plans like CalPERS could provide capital-intensive cleantech ventures with the big funds needed to scale up to commercial size.
CalPERS has played with Sand Hill Road firms before, investing $500 million in a venture vehicle managed by Oak Hill Investment Management. Still, betting on Khosla Ventures with more than half a billion dollars is a potentially risky move as few of Khosla’s plays have yet to exit.
While not commenting on a potential deal with Khosla, CalPERS spokesperson Clark McKinley did say, “We’re long-term investors and we can be very patient.” This long-term investment strategy could match nicely with the long time horizon many cleantech firms are likely to take.
Trina Solar: Earnings Up, But Silicon Woes Remain
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
With Trina Solar’s (TSL) announcement this morning that its quarterly earnings had more than doubled, you’d expect to see the solar cell maker’s shares at least rise slightly this morning. Not so much. There’s still that little problem of the rising cost of polysilicon, which has been plaguing solar-cell manufacturers that rely on silicon supplies, including LDK and SunPower, all year.
Instead, Trina’s shares dropped $3.81 to $45.91 (almost 8 percent) this morning on the news that its profit margins would narrow in the second quarter due to higher silicon costs. The company estimated its gross margin for the second quarter to be between 23 percent and 25 percent and operating margin to range between 13.5 percent and 15.5 percent of total net revenues; the AP noted that was a potential loss of 3 percentage points. Back in November, rising polysilicon costs drove Trina's margins down to 20.6 percent from 26 percent.
The stock dropped despite strong earnings that beat expectations. The company reported a first-quarter net income of $12.9 million compared with $4.8 million a year earlier, and revenues almost tripled to $120.7 million.
But that pesky silicon! It’s been the same problem with the stocks of other solar manufacturers that rely on silicon. In April SunPower saw its stock slide 13 percent on its earnings, even though its revenue nearly doubled to $274 million in the first quarter. In May, LDK said the rising price of polysilicon meant a lower margin forecast, which sent the company's stock down almost 6 percent, despite strong first quarter earnings with a net income of $49.8 million.
While solar makers are increasingly looking to other materials to reduce costs (a key motivation for thin film solar), the industry is expecting the solar silicon supply crunch to abate over the next few years. Trina itself had been planning on building a polysilicon manufacturing plant but decided that the supply conditions looked favorable enough to scrap that plan. So, it’s going to get better, but for now solar makers will just have to weather the storm.
Image: Trina Solar stock over 6 months, courtesy of Yahoo Finance.
Climate Bill Blocked By Filibuster
Craig Rubens - Policy
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faces a tough choice following a successful Republican filibuster of the first serious legislation to tackle climate change. The bill, America's Climate Security Act of 2007, proposes to setup a cap-and-trade system to manage carbon emissions. Today Democrats fell 12 votes short of getting the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster (which included a stunt requiring an eight-hour reading of the 492-page bill) and call a final vote, the AP reports. Now Reid must decide whether or not to pull the bill and push it back until next year, when it can be considered again with a new Congress and a new president.
Unfortunately, this is all just a warm up for more serious discussion later. A new Congress — and especially a new president — will be necessary to make carbon cap and trade law. President Bush has already said he would veto any such bill. But both presumptive presidential candidates say that a cap-and-trade system on carbon is a major part of their climate policies.
Republicans are concerned that such a system, which would give carbon emissions a value and charge emitters to pollute, would massively and detrimentally restructure the American economy. Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told the AP the bill represents “the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal.” Such a system would make dirty technologies, like coal power, much more expensive and make clean technologies far more cost competitive. Environmentalists eagerly await the next president to help pass such legislation.
Verenium Working on 10 Cellulosic Ethanol Sites
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
John McCarthy, Verenium’s executive vice president of CFO, said the idea is that once the technology is proven in the demonstration scale facility by the end of this year, the company can have these sites waiting to scale up to commercial production. He called proving the technology in the demo plant a “gating item.” McCarthy said the company plans to announce locations and partnerships in the near future for some of these sites.
McCarthy also said Verenium has planted three plots of “energy cane” at three sites in the Southeast, “not because we want to be in the farming business” but because the company wants to understand the agribusiness. He said those three sites could fuel a cellulosic plant if the company wanted to.
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