-
1. SunPower Snaps Up Solar Sales From Down Under
-
2. Plug-In 2008 News Roundup
-
3. PREFAB FRIDAY: EcoShack's Breezy Summer Shelter
-
4. Aptera Raises $24M for Electric Car Production
-
5. Cow Power Could Provide 3% of U.S. Electricity?
-
6. The Daily Sprout
-
7. Biofuel Lobbying: Split Between First-Gen and Next-Gen
-
8. Western America Proposed Cap-And-Trade
SunPower Snaps Up Solar Sales From Down Under
Craig Rubens - Big Green
The acquisition gives SunPower access to a distribution network of 30 dealers throughout Australia. Solar Sales has been installing residential and utility-scale solar systems for 25 years, with many of their projects powering off-grid projects scattered across the outback. Solar Sales sells inverters as well as panels for off-grid power systems that mix solar and wind generation, which require different inverters.
Australia, with its expansive, sun-baked outback, could have as much as 22,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2020, with the right incentives. But recently the Australian solar industry, which has produced startups like Ausra, has seen its prospects threatened by political fiddling of its rebates, a problem SunPower and the U.S. solar industry faces as well.
Plug-In 2008 News Roundup
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
Utilities are about to become the gas stations of the future, the Electric Power Research Institute’s Mark Duvall, said at a GM-sponsored dinner event Monday night that kicked off this week’s first annual plug-in vehicle conference in San Jose, Calif. The image stuck in my head throughout the week as the conference hosted speeches and panel sessions that featured automakers, utilities, startups, the high tech industry, academia and politicians.
Everyone’s trying to figure out what it will take for plug-in hybrids to go mainstream: free electricity, tax incentives, a more mature plug-in conversion industry, aggressive automakers, or more innovative startup tech. Likely a combo of all of those. Whatever it needs the industry’s players had more than enough news to talk about at the show:
- GM Partners with Utilities on Plug-In Vehicles
- Volt Battery Testing in Malibu Mule
- Google's Plug-In Study Finds As High As 93 MPG
- Google.org Invests in Electric Car Startups
- Battery Startup ActaCell Charges Up with Google, DFJ
- Aptera Raises $24M for Electric Car Production
- San Francisco Calls for Electric Car Pitches
- Detroit, Meet the Startups
- Video Demo of Coulomb's Smart Charging
- San Jose Partners With Coulomb's Smart Charging
Andy Grove Calls for 10 Million Plug-Ins In 4 Years
PREFAB FRIDAY: EcoShack's Breezy Summer Shelter
Mike Chino - Architecture
This week’s prefab breaks out of the hard-lined modern box with a beautiful soft-shelled structure that finds elegance in its simplicity. That’s right - it’s a Nomad Yurt! SoCal based Ecoshack has updated the ancient shelter with a modern construction that is light, flexible, and composed entirely of eco-friendly materials. The airy shelter is perfect for a summer’s eve spent stargazing, an impromptu backyard gathering, or anyplace that a peaceful private space is desired.
Aptera Raises $24M for Electric Car Production
Craig Rubens - Startups
Electric car maker Aptera Motors announced late yesterday that it has raised more than $24 million in a Series C round, which it will use to move its three-wheel electric Typ-1 into production. Google.org’s investment in the electric vehicle maker, unveiled earlier this week, is part of this round, which also included investments from Idealab, Esenjay Investments, The Simons Family and The Beall Family Trust.
An engineer with Google.org’s RechargeIT green car program, Rolf Schreiber, told us Google is interested in Aptera because its vehicles go “to the extreme of high-efficiency,” and are overall “cool,” and “modern.” Schreiber headed up Google.org’s recent plug-in vehicle driving test that found the company’s plug-in Prius’ achieved over 93 MPG.
The Carlsbad, Calif.-based startup will use the funds to start manufacturing the Typ-1s in nearby Vista, Calif. In March Aptera indicated it was close to production, and sent out a to-do list to supporters, saying the company planned to hire new employees, move to a bigger facility, crash test more test vehicles and fine-tune the production process. Though, “secure funding” must have been the biggest production milestone not named back then.
Aptera says it expects the first round of electric vehicles to start rolling off the line by the end of the year, with production ramping up through 2009. At the end of 2009, the company plans to start production of its hybrid model; down the road will work on more mainstream vehicles, Aptera CEO Steve Fambro told us in an interview in December.
Aptera already has a sizable following — the startups says it already has over 3,300 orders from California customers for what it claims will be the world’s most efficient passenger vehicle. The all-electric version will get 120 miles to the charge while the hybrid is estimated to get 300 mpg.
Aptera share Google’s $2.75 million investment with lithium-ion battery startup ActaCell. ActaCell announced Google’s investment as part of a $5.8 million involving DFJ, Applied Ventures and Good Energies as well.
Cow Power Could Provide 3% of U.S. Electricity?
Craig Rubens - In the Lab
There seems to be a lot more media attention covering “cow power,” than actual viable cow power plants out there. But a team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin say that biogas made from manure could provide as much as 3 percent of America’s electricity needs — that’s about the same amount of U.S. electricity that comes from renewables, excluding hydro and nuclear.
The researchers published the data in a paper called “Cow Power: The Energy and Emissions Benefits of Converting Manure to Biogas” in the Institute of Physics’ Environmental Research Letters yesterday (hat tip Biopact).
This isn’t simply done by throwing cow patties in the furnace. The paper suggests that if the billion plus tons of manure produced annually in the U.S. by livestock were anaerobically converted into biogas we could burn it in any standard gas power plant. If that biogas were to supplant coal, it could reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by 4 percent.
Some of that savings comes from the fact that much of the manure currently decomposes aerobically, releasing over 50 million metric tons of noxious green house gases like methane and nitrous oxide.
None of these are small numbers and could provide real income and power in rural areas. The U.S. government has started funding such efforts. The EPA has a whole primer on how to access state and federal resources to fund your biogas digester and offers tips on how to run a manure-to-biogas operation cost competitively.
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Gas, Oil, Wind and Wave All Want Offshore Space: Wind companies have been trying for years to secure offshore locations but now with a new push to open up American shores for drilling, the federal government is trying to streamline the process - MarketWatch.
Arctic Oil Is There But Still Expensive: A report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that about 20 percent of the world’s recoverable oil is up in the Arctic. With ice melting it’s getting easier to get at but still nowhere as easy as pumping it from dry land - WSJ’s Environmental Capital.
Tri-Partisan Open Fuel Standard Introduced in Congress: Republicans, Democrats and an Independent have introduced a bill that would require half of new cars be flex-fuel vehicles by 2012, increasing to 80 percent of new cars by 2015 - Green Car Congress.
“GM and the New Plug-In Infrastructure”: While the media has been in a tizzy over GM’s partnership with 30 utilities to push plug-in cars, there are some serious issues about electrifying America’s auto fleet that need to be addressed - Joel Makower’s Blog.
Where America’s Green Energy Is in Maps: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has mapped out various renewable energy sources - solar, wind, geothermal, etc. - and as a good publicly-funded institution put them online for you - Christian Science Monitor.
Biofuel Lobbying: Split Between First-Gen and Next-Gen
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
U.S. biofuel policy will determine the fate of a very diverse group of companies in that space, from the first generation, which produces fuel from corn and soy beans, to the next generation, which is working on fuel made from feedstocks like waste and algae. Both generations know that the right policy could mean the difference between success and failure, and so are spending millions on lobbying, albeit for very different — almost opposing — purposes.
Those funds are largely being spent in an effort to hold on to the biofuel subsidies that are already in place, but are facing increased skepticism and fading political good will. The Farm Bill will cut the subsidies for corn-based ethanol and double the subsidies for biofuels from alternative next-gen sources. Critics of corn ethanol have also called for an elimination of corn ethanol incentives in the Energy Bill.
On the other hand, companies that are building the next-generation biofuel industry, with feedstocks as diverse as municipal waste, algae, and non-food energy crops, are spending money to try to differentiate themselves from the corn-ethanol crew. But they don’t seem have the necessary funds quite yet. The next-gen biofuel industry spent $3.08 million on lobbying since the beginning of 2007, says the Center for Responsive Politics.
That’s less than half of what the traditional biofuel industry spent on lobbying. The next-gen industry is just too new and too diverse to be able to match the funds of the first-generation folks. Fuel producers of next-gen ethanol spent $2.4 million, while fuel producers for next-gen biodiesel spent $680,000. Though, as the next-gen companies raise more funds from investors and start to get some of their plants built, those lobbying figures will likely only go up.
To put all of this in perspective: The incumbent oil and gas industries spent almost $110 million on lobbying for the same period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — roughly 10 times the amount that the combined biofuel industry.
Graph courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Western America Proposed Cap-And-Trade
Craig Rubens - Policy
The Western Climate Initiative, a consortium of seven states and four Canadian provinces, yesterday issued a draft of their proposed plan to institute a regional cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions. The group’s proposal would have states start monitoring emissions in 2010 and reporting them starting in 2011 in preparation for a cap on carbon emissions starting in 2012. This is part of the region’s goal to cut emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
In a cap-and-trade system, credits are exchanged on an open market, allowing for a certain amount of CO2 to be emitted. The WCI draft recommends including emissions from a broad swath of the economy, from electricity generation to forestry to transportation. Each year the market’s governing body would reduce the number of available credits, thus lowering CO2 emissions overall.
The proposal, however, is extremely vague, with the phrase “precise point to be determined” cropping up multiple times. Nor does it include some significant sources of emissions, like air travel. But there’s good news for biofuel startups: Biofuel and biomass emissions are exempt. The proposal, however, makes great allowances for changes in thresholds and the expansion of regulated emitters.
One of the most hotly contested issues when it comes to a cap-and-trade system, permit allocation, was not addressed in the WCI proposal. Among the questions that still need to be answered are: Will emission permits be issued for free to emitters based on historical emissions, potentially providing windfall profits and a free pass for the first year of regulations? Or will permits be auctioned off on the open market, a strategy that presidential candidate Obama has put forward as part of his cap-and-trade proposal?
This draft is being viewed as a possible template for a national cap-and-trade system in the U.S. and 14 non-initiative U.S., Mexican and Canandian states and provinces are officially tracking the initiative’s progress. There is concern that industry will try to obstruct its enforcement, possibly in the same way the auto industry has blocked California’s attempt to regulate car emissions. Final recommendations will be made in mid-September, when the group will also outline its 2009 road map.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment