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1. Toyota Plugs All-Electric Vehicle As 2009 Sales Outlook Dips
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2. Green Mountain Energy Cites Policy, Not Price, for FPL Program's Death
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3. Xcel Energy: Did We Say Profit? Not When We Count Carbon
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4. Look Out, First Solar: AVA Solar Scorches With $104M
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5. The Daily Sprout
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6. NBC Bans Pickens Ad, Boone Responds
Toyota Plugs All-Electric Vehicle As 2009 Sales Outlook Dips
Tony Borroz - Big Green
The news from the Wall Street Journal today is that Toyota (TM) has rolled back its sales predictions for the upcoming year, but the company is still committed to hybrid car production and its plans to produce an electric vehicle to compete with rival auto manufacturers.
Despite a 700,000-vehicle predicted drop in sales, Toyota is still on path toward its goal of selling 1 million hybrids a year by the early 2010s. The company also announced that Toyota would start producing an electric car by early next decade, a direct challenge to the plans of Nissan and Mitsubishi, which plan to mass produce their own electric vehicles within the next two years. Toyota stock rose slightly, indicating that the company’s pursuit of efficient technologies is one that The Street agrees with.
Are slower sales sign of tough economic times? Yes, of course, but they also point out that Toyota can’t get away with producing larger, fuel inefficient vehicles any more than Ford or GM or Chrysler. Toyota’s big sales drops have, like Detroit’s big three, largely come in the full-sized truck and large car segments. Hybrid and small car sales remain robust.
The heart of Toyota’s future growth remains hybrid vehicles, and Toyota is not slacking off on its hybrid push one iota. Toyota still plans to unveil the next-gen Prius as promised, on schedule, next year as well as to introduce a new Lexus hybrid. It’s also forging ahead with other, more fuel efficient models. President Katsuaki Watanabe says Toyota plans to use the foreseen slowdown to streamline its already lean manufacturing operations, making its production system in the U.S. more agile, and to develop more hybrid cars and other fuel-efficient vehicles.
The undercurrent here seems to be, ‘OK, we were a little off in our production estimates, but we’re still pressing ahead with the next Prius, and we’re serious about producing an electric car too!’
To which we can all say, “Good!”
Green Mountain Energy Cites Policy, Not Price, for FPL Program's...
Celeste LeCompte - Energy
After the Florida Public Service Commission unceremoniously shuttered FPL’s leading utility green power program earlier this month, citing high marketing and sales costs, Green Mountain Energy has released data disputing the claim.
Costs for sales and marketing accounted for just 52 percent of Green Mountain's revenues. That figure is comparable to other top-ranked programs in the U.S., including Portland General Electric. Thor Hinckley, green power program manager for PGE, says Green Mountain Energy spends 56 percent of its budget on marketing costs for the Portland program.
The Florida PSC told Earth2Tech in early August that voluntary programs like FPL’s were no longer necessary, thanks to the state’s forthcoming Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Xcel Energy: Did We Say Profit? Not When We Count Carbon
Craig Rubens - Policy
While cleantech investors are betting that global warming will make their investments perform well, most publicly-traded companies have had their head in the sand when it comes to warning its investors about the financial risks of global warming. That is until now — in an agreement between environmental crusader New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Minnesota-based Xcel Energy (XEL), the utility will disclose to its investors in detail the risks global warming pose to its business. This first of its kind disclosure could be a sign of things to come for the electricity generation industry, the single largest contributor to the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the agreement, Xcel will disclose in SEC filings the risks of future climate change regulation and legislation, climate-change related litigation and physical impacts of climate change. Additionally, Xcel will also disclose its current carbon emissions, projected emissions from proposed coal power plants and its plans to reduce emissions.
Xcel already provides such information to the voluntary Carbon Disclosure Project and in its annual “triple-bottom-line” report. Xcel estimates that, at $9 per ton (lower than EU prices, but higher than current prices on RGGI), its carbon emission would have cost the company $603 million last year, according to TwinCities.com.
In 2007, Xcel reported just $577 million in profit. (Numbers like these are why banks have been taking into consideration what carbon regulation could mean for their investments and scaled back their plays in areas like coal.)
Xcel is the first of five utilities subpoenaed by Cuomo. The Attorney General’s office is still negotiating with AES Corp., Dominion, Dynegy and Peabody Energy. In the carbon-constrained economy of the future, just as the SEC likes to keep track of corporations’ financial dealings, they will want to know about companies’ carbon dealings as well.
Look Out, First Solar: AVA Solar Scorches With $104M
Katie Fehrenbacher - CNN Green
AVA is working on making thin-film photovoltaics out of cadmium telluride — the same material that has boosted First Solar to its solar darling status — so everyone is interested to see how the company will stack up to the leader. In some of the Fort Collins-based company’s literature it boasts it can produce solar PV modules at a cost below $1/watt. First Solar calls its manufacturing cost per watt of $1.14/watt for the first quarter of 2008, “the lowest in the industry;” that production cost will also likely come down over the coming months and years.
We’ll see what AVA’s production costs end up being after it starts up its 200-megawatt solar PV factory sometime this year. The company appears to be using a similar process to First Solar, depositing a thin layer of cadmium telluride on glass.
AVA says it has reached “distributed conversion efficiencies around 11.5 percent” — First Solar has similar efficiency, and has reported an average of 10.7 percent with its cells, and a goal of 12 percent.
If AVA could end up being able to produce its PV more cheaply than First Solar, it would put them in a good position to enter the new, massive market of utility-scale and rooftop solar. First Solar brought in revenues of $267 million for the most recent quarter, 36 percent above the $196 million in the previous quarter and more than three times larger than the $77 million in the second quarter of 2007.
It’s not always hip to be a company a little later to the game. Eric Wesoff and the Greenlight crew, who tipped off the story of AVA’s funding yesterday, talked to investors that passed on AVA’s funding, because the valuation was too high, and the deal was too much of a copycat of First Solar. But AVA could still create a sizable business. AVA was incubated out of the labs at Colorado State University with a partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and formed in January 2007.
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Florida’s First Energy Farm Planted in Destiny: Destiny, Florida, a city claiming “eco-sustainability” (whatever that means), says it has created the Sunshine state’s first energy farm where it will grow energy crops like sweet sorghum, algae, jatropha and other crops for alternative fuels - Press Release.
EcoMotors Expanding Operations in Michigan: Khosla-backed EcoMotors, a startup which aims to deliver a 100 mpg diesel engine by 2011, says it’s moving to a bigger space and will be hiring 157 new people - Cleantech Group.
U.S. Gas Price Heat Map: We do love maps, and this one from Gasbuddy shows the varying price of gasoline in the continental U.S. It’s interactive too, so make sure to click around - Gasbuddy via Autoblog Green.
GEOSmart Loan to Help Homeowners Go Solar: Arizona utility APS and the non-profit Electric & Gas Industries Association have created a new loan to help eliminate to large, upfront cost of residential solar - Press Release.
China’s Zero Energy New Great Wall: Beijing’s Media Wall is one of the world’s largest LED displays, standing four stories tall. The wall charges itself during the day using integrated photovoltaics and then performs a show once the sun goes down - ScribeMedia.
NBC Bans Pickens Ad, Boone Responds
Craig Rubens - Big Green
The Pickens Plan media blitz hit a glitch this week when NBC refused to air the latest television spot promoting the former oil tycoon’s natural gas and wind energy plan. The 15-second ad, entitled “Iran” and embedded below, asserts that Iran is converting its own cars to run on natural gas “and we’re not doing a thing here.” NBC wants the Pickens Plan to prove that we are indeed a do-nothing nation when it comes to natural gas transport, according to the group. While it is a strange nit to pick, NBC has a point. Things are being done, some of them by Pickens’ own natural gas car venture.
Find more videos like this on PickensPlan
The ad was cleared by all the other major networks, and NBC has only taken issue with this one ad, out of four new ads that will be running on television this week. T. Boone sent a letter to NBC Universal CEO and President Jeff Zucker expressing his dismay and again proclaiming his patriotic duty: “To deny this advertisement is to deny Americans their fundamental right to information and the ability to make their own decisions.”
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