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1. Hycrete Solidifies $15M for Green Concrete
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2. Hawaiian Micro Solar Thermal Startup Sopogy Breaks Ground
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3. Martin Tobias: The Fate of Next-Gen Biofuel Startups
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4. Riverwired.com: How to Talk to Your Kids about Global Warming
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5. The Daily Sprout
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6. Climate Change = More Heat Waves = More Blackouts
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7. The Story of Tesla's Founding Feud
Hycrete Solidifies $15M for Green Concrete
Craig Rubens - Startups
Hycrete’s plan to expand internationally will connect it with the huge demand abroad for construction materials. The fastest-growing concrete markets are scattered all over the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia as construction has exploded in the developing world. China alone accounted for 45 percent of the concrete production and use last year.
Hycrete has developed a hydrophobic cement that greatly increases the life of the cement as it won’t absorb water, which cause cracks. The company says their waterproofing cement doesn’t require any special manufacturing and can be made in existing cement factories. Simply add their special Hycrete Admixture to the mixer and you’ve got waterproof cement. This process saves time on the project site compared to other waterproofing techniques, thereby saving on construction costs, the company says.
This round brings Carlstadt, N.J.-based Hycrete’s funding total to $25 million, according to a company spokesman. Previous investors included RockPort Capital and NGEN Partners.
Hawaiian Micro Solar Thermal Startup Sopogy Breaks Ground
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
That’s still relatively small compared to many of the massive solar power plants that are being slated for the deserts of the U.S. Southwest. Unlike those huge systems, the five-year-old, Honolulu-based company uses smaller, “micro-” sized systems that can be used where space is limited. The systems are small enough to be used even on rooftops, and deliver on a scale in the single megawatts. Each individual collector can produce 500 watts, and the collectors can be strung together for more wattage.
Sopogy says its solar farm on the Big Island is the first to make “large-scale use” of its solar technology and will be built in phases, over several acres. Darren Kimura, Sopogy CEO, said in the company’s release that the systems installed are also stronger and more durable than competitors’ solar thermal technology so that the farms can survive Hawaiian storms and heat.
Martin Tobias: The Fate of Next-Gen Biofuel Startups
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
The 10 next-generation biofuel startups that got funded last quarter were 10 of the reasons that cleantech venture investments hit a recent record. But how well are all these biofuel startups going to do in the market? We’re not sure, but Martin Tobias, angel investor and former CEO of Imperium Renewables, decided to give his take on how the younger crop will fare on his blog. While he agrees that some have promising technologies in the labs, he says getting the economics to work on the necessary large scale is an entirely different story.
Tobias’ favorite company is Sapphire Energy, a one-year-old startup that is looking to squeeze high-octane gasoline from algae that has raised $50 million from ARCH Venture Partners, the Wellcome Trust and Venrock. He likes the idea of skipping the big oil-controlled channel and going directly to the independent oil refiners, but wants to see more details on how the economics will work.
He also has a few nice things to say about GreenFuel, the algae fuel company that uses recycled carbon dioxide. He says he likes the strategy of placing algae farms near heavy carbon emitters for multiple revenue streams. Tobias has already invested in algae fuel startup Inventure Chemical, so he’s been following this area closely.
And that’s about the nicest things Tobias had to say about some of these companies. On Range Fuels he thinks the technology will be a lot more expensive than first-generation biofuels, and contends:
“While Khosla likes to pay lip service to investing in technologies that are economic w/o government incentives, cellulosic ethanol generally through the 2.5x RFS credits, and Range Fuels specifically through large DOE grants have been showered with government money. If the plant eventually does get up and running”
For the rest of them, it’s equally as bad. Mostly Tobias is skeptical of getting the lab processes to scale large enough and cheap enough to produce enough return on investment. When it comes to Altrabiofuels spin off EdenIQ and Khosla and GM-backed Mascoma, he says repeatedly “show me” the money.
For algae fuel company AuroraBiofuels Tobias says that the company “lays out too much wood to chop in my opinion and not enough focus.” And for both Fulcrum Bioenergy and Amyris Biotechnologies, Tobias thinks some of their commercial milestones are so difficult to reach in time that he’ll give anyone $100 if either company hits them.
Before Tobias digs into company specifics, he highlights the biggest problems he sees for the biofuel industry as a whole: oversupply, waning political support, lagging distribution infrastructure, and cold debt markets. We’ll see if a year later, cleantech investments are still up, despite the fact that there will be some misses for next-gen biofuels.
Riverwired.com: How to Talk to Your Kids about Global Warming
citizengoat - A Hot Planet Needs Cool Kids
A woman I know lives with her family in a house that backs up against a forest. The forest is being clear cut, a not so infrequent occurrence in this part of the country. One day, while the woman was on a business call in the house, her nine-year-old son rounded up his two younger brothers, and the three of them marched out onto the logging road and stood in front of an oncoming logging truck. The truck driver managed to stop in time. At the children's request, the driver wrote down on a piece of paper the name of the logging company.
The four boys then returned home, and the oldest went to interrupt his mother's phone call. He told his mother what they had done and said he would keep doing it until she and his father did something to stop what was happening to the planet. He explained to his mother that he and his brothers were the ones who would be living through most of the effects of climate change, but that they needed their parents to help them since they were just children.
The mother got the message. She turned to some friends, and together they formed a climate change response team at their kids' school. The school now has a series of events and activities planned for the next school year. And they met with some other friends and acquaintances. All of us started Earth Kids Organized (EKO), a networking site and organizational model to help children, parents, and schools and other institutions across the planet communicate and work together to increase their power and effect.
Out of the Mouths of Kids
The point here is that kids know. They already, by age nine and younger, get what is happening, they want to do something about it, and they understand that they need help. But many of our climate change responses are adult centered and exclude kids from the action, which seems downright unfair given that our kids are the ones who are inheriting this situation.
Schools and libraries are logical places to base many kid-focused and kid-led efforts to respond swiftly and effectively to climate change. One elementary school is, at the request of the students, plowing over a grassy play area to make an organic fruit and vegetable garden. A middle school is working with a local organic farm to institute organic lunches one day a week. That same farm is working with local parents to institute organic farming camps for kids this summer. At another middle school library, students have formed one club to care for injured and homeless animals and another club to help the school compost. Two students at this school are making a documentary about the decline of a salmon stream.
Efforts like EKO are important because they expand the reach of children beyond the narrow confines of their own institutions and link children in a wider area, giving them a greater sense of hope and community. Families too need to feel that their efforts are not isolated and unique to their own homes. Joining other families in school- or community-based efforts can give everyone a sense of empowerment and even relief that people are responding appropriately to this crisis.
Five Kid-Sized Steps
Lowering your carbon emissions is important but it is just as important to involve your children in climate change conversation, research, and wider action. Consider taking the following steps at home and at school or the library with your children:
- Read together about climate change. Look for Julie's upcoming book A Hot Planet Needs Cool Kids (Green Goat Books, August 2007) as a good place to start. Be sure to talk about what you have read.
- Create a culture of empathy toward all living things. Don't kill spiders and flies. Relocate them outside if necessary using a bug vac. Don't use toxic cleaning or lawn care products. Talk about and look for evidence of the animals, plants, and trees that share the space where you live. Turn your yard or school grounds into a Certified Wildlife Habitat.
- Get involved in something bigger. Help your kids start or join a climate change response team at their school or other local insitution.
- Get involved in something even bigger. Join EKO or another environmental group with a broad focus. The Internet is a great tool for this level of networking.
- Socialize with similarly engaged people. Your kids need to feel like they're not alone in their concerns for and work for the planet. Make sure that at least some of what you do in response to climate change is social. Picnics, potlucks, and informational fairs can make this uneasy business something that we and our children can live with better and more healthfully.
We're not protecting our children from anything by keeping them out of the business of responding to global warming. They already know and they're worried. The ways to ease their anxiety are (1) to show them that we are doing something about it and (2) to involve them. Besides, some of the most creative people I know are kids—maybe the answers to many of the planet's problems rest in some smaller-sized hands.
By Sarah at ProgressiveKid
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Stirling On Track for 30,000-dish, 750MW Solar Thermal Plant: Although they were one of the first solar thermal companies to sign a big contract, Stirling Energy Systems is a little behind. But now the company has the paperwork for its first solar power plant - Green Wombat.
“The Energy Gap and the Climate Challenge”: “Can the human species be sophisticated enough to keep in mind a looming challenge (decarbonizing the energy system, which will happen eventually anyway) even as it deals with a real-time problem (avoiding energy-related economic turmoil)?” Quite a mouthful - NYTimes Blog Dot Earth.
Sungevity’s Got Games With Solar Coupons: Residential solar installer Sungevity, which uses satellite imaging to size a solar system for your roof, has launched an online game site that tests your solar skills and rewards you with a $100 discount on your solar system. Cheesy but fun - Sungevity.
MIT Opens New ‘Window’ on Solar Energy”: Researchers at MIT have created a solar concentrating window that focuses light toward the edges lined with photovoltaic cells. They say they’re cheap and effective and could be in buildings in three years - MIT Press Release.
Climate Change = More Heat Waves = More Blackouts
Craig Rubens - Energy
Coming soon to a city near you — more power outages! As temperatures soar across the nation, a report published today in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology details research from scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which estimates that electricity demand could outstrip supply by as much as 17 percent on the hottest days in the coming decades. Co-author Norman Miller said in a statement: “Climate warming across the western U.S. could further strain the electricity grid, making brownouts or even rolling blackouts more frequent.” Cue ominous music.
What’s most discouraging about the report is that it doesn’t offer any solutions other than the stock “energy conservation and emissions reductions.” Yawn. Of course those would alleviate many of the problems of global warming, but this report addresses the specific problem of peak power demand. And there are several clean technologies that specifically address peak demand as well.
One of the biggest advantage of solar energy is that it’s a peak power producer. The day is hottest when the sun is beating down hard. Peak solar energy production, either from rooftop photovoltaics or desert-located solar thermal plants, could overlap with peak demand. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is currently pushing rooftop solar which could obviate new, natural gas power plants.
Demand response, a grid management service offered by the likes of EnerNOC, coordinates large energy users and can alleviate peak demand by getting clients to click systems off when demand is high. The clients enjoy discounts on their energy for participating, while the utility gains extra capacity in the form of “negawatts,” and EnerNOC takes a nice cut.
Air conditioning is by far the biggest offender in these heat wave-induced energy spikes. Greener ventilation design can drastically reduce the need to cool a building. Of the presidential hopefuls, Barack Obama has made a building efficiency a part of his energy planby proposing that all new government buildings must be carbon neutral by 2030. He also wants to improve the energy efficiency of existing government buildings by 25 percent.
The Story of Tesla's Founding Feud
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
For any entrepreneur that’s lived through a vicious feud between a startup’s original team members, here’s a must-read for you. Our buddy Michael Copeland over at Fortune just wrote a sweeping piece on the dispute that went down between the founder and former CEO of electric car startup Tesla Motors, Martin Eberhard, and Tesla’s chairman and prominent investor Elon Musk. The story goes into excruciatingly awesome detail, with R-rated quotes from both sides. Here’s some of the bits that stood out for us:
Musk’s Investment: Musk has invested $55 million of his own money into Tesla, so more than a third of Tesla’s total $145 million in funding.
How It Started: The original technology came into being when Al Cocconi, an engineer of GM’s EV-1 and founder of AC Propulsion, created an electric sports car called the “tzero” that used 1,000 pounds of lead-acid batteries. Eberhard invested $150,000 into helping Cocconi switch out the tzero’s lead-acid batteries with thousands of lithium-ion batteries. Eberhard then decided to create a business that licensed AC Propulsions technology, so along with partner Marc Tarpenning, incorporated Tesla Motors in July 2003. At the same time, Musk was trying to buy a tzero from AC Propulsion, to no avail. AC Propulsion’s CEO suggested that Eberhard and Musk should meet.
Bad Feelings: Eberhard regrets letting Musk have “disproportionate control of the board,” and while he doesn’t take issue with Tesla the company, he says he has “problems with Elon and the way he treats people. As for Musk: “I have never met someone who is as capable of creating such a disinformation campaign as Martin Eberhard.” Harsh.
What Went Wrong: Tesla at one point estimated that it would cost $65,000 to build the car, with lower costs as production grew. But a short time later the company’s VCs realized that it would “cost $100,000 for the first 50 cars and would decrease only slightly as more cars were built.” Eberhard reportedly told a colleague in a meeting: “If this is true…you and I are both fired.”
Interim CEO Marks’ Action: Interim CEO Michael Marks had a list with the most important priorities for Tesla that included the battery pack, the battery cooling and the transmission. Upon taking the job he ordered a six-month delay and shut down plans for the WhiteStar factory in New Mexico, and he killed plans for a side business producing battery packs in Thailand for other car companies. So the much-touted New Mexico plant was shuttered waaay before the company likely looked to Cali to manufacture its now-named Model S. And Tesla has claimed that moving battery production to the U.S. away from Thailand was a way to cut down on logistics and distribution expenses — not necessarily because the company had shelved a side business.
The Founders Series: There are only seven, and guess who gets them — not you. They are “Musk, his brother, board member Antonio Gracias, investor Jeff Skoll, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Martin Eberhard.” (Though Eberhard’s is currently back in the shop).
Musk Determined that Tesla Not Be DeLorean: Musk tells Fortune, “Why did DeLorean fail?…Because it was a shitty sports car. It may have looked cool, but it had the acceleration of a Honda Civic. That’s what our car would have been with the motor we had and the power electronics we had connected to a single speed.” So not big news, but we like thinking about the DeLorean.
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