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1. The Daily Sprout
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2. Wind-Powered Politics: Vestas at the DNC
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3. Compressed-Air Startup to Inflate Utility Power Generation
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4. Tangent Launches Green Power-Efficient Computer
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5. Solazyme Grows $45M for Algae Fuel
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6. The IP Guru at the Energy Biosciences Institute
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7. A Dozen States Sue EPA Over Emissions
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8. The Daily Sprout
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9. Sunrise to Make Solar Roof for Your Car
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10. Schott Solar Looks to Shine With $739M IPO
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Coal Power Plant Fights Back With Court Appeal: Last month a Georgia Superior Court revoked Longleaf Energy Station's state air quality permit citing the Supreme Court ruling that decided CO2 was a pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act. The Court of Appeals has agreed to hear the case - ClimateIntel.
MIOX Fills Up With $19M for Water Quality: Albuquerque, N.M.-based MIOX Corp. has raised $19 million in Series C funding for its water treatment and disinfectant systems. DCM, Sierra Ventures and Flywheel Ventures participated in the round - Press Release.
World Bank Slams UN Carbon Trading as Slow and Expensive: “These systems are viewed as cost effective, but they have the drawback of the initial distribution of allowances that are difficult to determine. The process of creating new methodologies and applying an approved methodology to a proposed project is expensive and time consuming.” - Bloomberg.
SunEthanol and MBI to Scale Up Cellulosic Ethanol: Using SunEthanol’s proprietary Q-Microbe and MBI’s biotech focus on fermentation process development, the two firms have agreed to work together to scale cellulosic ethanol up to the commercial level - MarketWatch.
“Ask Gordon Murray, Engineer Extraordinaire”: Want to know how to make the green car of the future? Car designer Gordon Murray, whose latest project is the super efficient Type 25, is answering questions posted by commenters on the Wheels blog at the NYTimes - NYTimes.
Wind-Powered Politics: Vestas at the DNC
Katie Fehrenbacher - Big Green
The world’s largest wind-turbine maker, Vestas, is using the so-called ‘greenest convention ever’ to make noise about its expansion plans in Colorado and across the United States. At the Democratic National Convention, in front of a 131-foot wind turbine blade from a local Vestas factory, company execs joined with the state’s Governor Bill Ritter and Representative Mark Udall to discuss the company’s growth, including three new wind-gear-manufacturing plants in Colorado, which will offer thousands of local green jobs.
The Danish company has been announcing its ramp up throughout the Rocky Mountain region over the past few weeks and months. The company opened its first plant blade manufacturing plant in Windsor, Colo., this past March, and also announced plans for an assembly factory in Brighton, Colo., (to go along with its blade factory in Brighton) and a turbine tower plant that is being called the largest in the world in Pueblo, Colo. Vestas is investing €200 million ($293.04 million) into its new plants in the state, according to Clean Technology Insight.
The company has the funds for expansion — it’s been thriving as of late. For the most recent quarter the company’s revenue grew 3 percent to €1.1 billion ($1.61 billion), and net profit rose to €65 million ($95.26 million) from €51 million ($74.74 million) a year earlier. The company claims 23 percent of the global market for wind turbines.
Colorado politicians are sure happy to see the 2,500 green jobs that Vestas will offer at all of its facilities. “Colorado would not be the national and international clean-energy leader we are today without Vestas,” Governor Ritter said. For Vestas, Colorado is the company’s manufacturing beachhead, though the company also has offices in Portland, Houston, and Chicago. The company expects to employ more than 4,000 U.S. workers by the end of 2010 to meet demand from the nation’s wind market, which is set to cross the 150 gigawatt mark by 2020, according to a report from market-research firm Emerging Energy Research (EER).
Compressed-Air Startup to Inflate Utility Power Generation
Craig Rubens - Energy
The idea of compressed-air energy storage isn’t new, but cheap and plentiful energy has precluded much research. The low-tech explanation goes like this: excess energy from a power plant is used to run air compressors, which pump air into an underground cave, where it is stored under pressure. When released, the air powers a turbine, creating electricity. The initial energy used to force the air underground can come from wind, solar, nuclear or any source.
The technology could also help utilities meet their peak demand by collecting energy from wind farms, which generate most of their power at night, or by storing excess energy from nuclear plants, which are hard to power up and down. Energy Storage and Power plans to market and license its technology to electric utility companies, independent power producers, wind developers and transmission owners. The company hopes to start deploying its technology within 5 to 10 years.
An earlier version of Nakhamkin’s design is already in use at a 110-megawatt natural gas power plant in Alabama, showing that the technology is viable. And Energy Storage and Power isn’t alone. The Department of Energy, Sandia National Labs, and several Midwestern utilities are already at work designing a compressed air storage system for a plant in Iowa scheduled for completion by 2012.
Images courtesy of Energy Storage and Power.
Tangent Launches Green Power-Efficient Computer
Tony Borroz - Energy
Making computers more efficient and running them on less energy will have a significant overall effect in fighting global warming — more than 2 percent of our carbon emissions are attributed to computing. Both computer makers like Tangent and Dell and startups like Verdiem, which makes PC energy-management software, have started introducing products to cut power-chugging from PCs.
All this is well and good, but looking at the specs on the Evergreen 17 is where things come up short. For starters, the Evergreen 17 comes with either a fan-less processor (a Via Eden 1.0 GHz) or with a low noise fan processor (ViaC7 1.50 GHz). It takes power to spin fans to cool machines, so if you can do without, you can use less energy; it also makes for a quieter, more enjoyable workspace. But with the only processor options at 1.0 GHz or 1.50 GHz, color us unimpressed. We know the target buyers are government and educational users, but we could get a faster computer almost anywhere.
You can also get the Evergreen 17 with an optional solid-state drive to provide a 100 percent solid-state system, which is nice, but it maxes out at 64GB — in a desktop machine that is kind of weak.
So, at least Tangent is moving in the right direction, green-wise, but they've got to give their new kid more power, or a lot of users could end up looking elsewhere. But we guess this is the dilemma of the new green computer — less power, means, well, less power.
Solazyme Grows $45M for Algae Fuel
Craig Rubens - Startups
Like Aurora Biofuels and Synthetic Genomics, Solazyme’s intellectual property resides in the DNA of the custom-made algal strains that the company engineers. Solazyme grows its designer algae in fermentation tanks without sunlight, by feeding it sugar, and uses existing industrial equipment to extract the oil. The next step for the company, Wolfson told CNet, is a commercial-scale plant that will break ground in the next two years.
Founded in 2003, the South San Francisco-based startup began as a synthetic biology company focused on drug manufacturing, but switched over to biofuels when it found VCs were hungry to invest in cleaner transportation fuels. Since then, Solazyme has secured development deals with Chevron and Imperium Biofuels (oops).
Previously, Solazyme had raised about $8 million in equity and $7 million in debt as well as winning a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The IP Guru at the Energy Biosciences Institute
Katie Fehrenbacher - CNN Green
But anyone familiar with the money-making side of technology knows that Altschuler job, as EBI’s Intellectual Property Manager, is fundamental to the organization’s workings. Altschuler, who previously managed IP for Cargill for three years, works with the group’s hundreds of faculty and student researchers to get EBI’s valuable innovations patented, ensure that critical information isn’t disclosed too soon in research papers, and most importantly, he says, “help professors move forward with as little interruptions as possible.”
IP management is what will eventually help generate funds from the research, and is the reason UK oil giant BP has jumped on board. BP is eligible to license the technology, mostly in non-exclusive agreements, but in certain cases exclusive agreements, Altschuler says. BP’s early access to any breakthrough innovation at EBI could give it a leg up in the competitive world of fuel, and the public/private initiative is just one of BP’s biofuel investments.
Other BP biofuel bets include: a $60 million investment into Tropical BioEnergia, a Brazilian company that plans to build two ethanol refineries in Brazil, and a $90 million investment into cellulosic ethanol-maker Verenium to both access the startup’s technology and create a joint venture to work on cellulosic ethanol production.
We were wondering what the day-to-day work was like for Altschuler — Does he feel like “The Man” constantly imposing bureaucracy on the flowering scientific dreams of the scientists? Not so much; he says that “most scientists have been exposed to this and understand what it entails.” Mostly he makes it his goal to remove barriers so that the professors can publish papers as quickly and easily as possible.
And actually, given this is the Bay Area, the scientists could turn out to be quite entrepreneurial. Altschuler says “its still too early to tell” if there’s a wealth of professors-turned-entrepreneurs at EBI. But one of the first steps to transforming the innovations into businesses is getting that IP patented, so investors will be able to fund the lab technology with far less risk.
When we asked Altschuler if he had any running favorites when it came to research projects, he said he liked the idea of “bio-prospecting,” which is basically looking into different environments to find microbes and enzymes to mimic or cultivate and genetically modify. For example, there are EBI research teams looking at the stomaches of termites and cows to find bacteria that can help us produce better biofuels. We’ll see which of EBI’s many innovations end up being hits over the next several years, and if Altschuler does his job, hold enough intellectual property to deliver financial home runs.
A Dozen States Sue EPA Over Emissions
Craig Rubens - Policy
A Supreme Court ruling didn’t make it happen; we’ll see if a lawsuit can compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. A dozen states, the city of New York and the District of Columbia, led by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, are suing the EPA in order to challenge its refusal to regulate greenhouse gases from oil refineries. The states include New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Last year the Supreme Court decided that, according to the Clean Air Act, the EPA should regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. But the EPA has passed the buck and claimed that the duty falls to Congress. In response to the lawsuit announced today, EPA spokesman Tim Lyons told Reuters that the time and money would be better spent lobbying Congress to legislate regulations than introducing lawsuits.
Bush doesn’t seem like the lame duck environmentalist type who would given in to a lawsuit from a state Attorney General. Greenhouse regulation is coming, but it will likely have to wait for the next administration, which undoubtedly will be kinder to the cleantech sector. Cuomo is really raining on the Bush administration’s environmental parade today; it just got around to saving the whales.
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Corn Growers for Obama: The American Corn Growers Association, claiming representation for farm families and rural America, has announced their endorsement of Barack Obama for president. Too bad McCain never did get around to supporting corn ethanol - Press Release.
Chinese Automaker Bringing Electric Cars to Israel: BYD will get its all-electric E6 and its 60 mile plug-in serial hybrid (PHEV) F6DM to Israel with the help of IDB Holding Corp. Ltd., a large company with interests in service stations. The combination of cheap electric cars and a network of existing service points could prove to be a boon or bane for Shai Agassi’s Better Place - Globes Online via Autoblog Green.
Ethanol: “The Political Football” An Essay: The winning essay in a competition run by the Center for Responsive Politics examines the connection between campaign contributions and a candidate’s endorsement of ethanol - Open Secrets.
Exploding Bat Lungs Caused by Wind Turbines: A new study has found that wind turbines create low pressure systems that cause the delicate lungs of bats to expand, bursting and killing the winged mammal. Holy windy batacide! - New Scientist.
Solar-Powered Plane Flies Through 3 Days and Nights: A solar-powered spy plane has set an unofficial record for longest uninterrupted, unmanned flight at 82 hours and 37 minutes. The makers of the Zephyr think they eventually will be able to get the aircraft to stay aloft for weeks or even months at a time - Guardian.
Sunrise to Make Solar Roof for Your Car
Craig Rubens - CNN Green
Details on the San Antonio, Texas-based company’s roof design and intended customers are scant. Is this an after-market item for DIYers to add to their cars or something aimed at automotive OEMs? Sunrise Solar hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment. The company, which is traded on the over-the-counter market, says it also intends to sell a number of consumer-facing solar products, including panels, a cell-phone charger and solar-powered light-up bricks.
We know some vehicle manufacturers are already thinking about putting solar panels on the roofs of their next-gen vehicles. Japanese newspaper Nikkei and Reuters have both reported that the 2010 Prius would sport solar panels that would help power the air conditioning system. Electric car startup Fisker Automotive also intends to use a solar roof to run a cooling system. Fisker, through its powertrain maker and investor Quantum, is having Asola design its roof; the company says solar roofs will be on the first Karmas, due out at the end of the 2009.
However, a solar roof does not a solar-powered car make. The trickle charge coming off of the several square feet of PV cells would be enough to keep some ventilation fans going, but they wouldn’t be able to fully recharge your car’s battery over the course of a day. But it would be nice to find your car comfortably cool after a day of baking in a sunny parking lot.
Schott Solar Looks to Shine With $739M IPO
Craig Rubens - Big Green
Reports say that funds will be used to fuel expansion, including Schott Solar’s recently announced plans to more than double production capacity at one of its German facilities by 2011. The company has arranged several huge banks to guide its IPO, including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and JP Morgan. Schott Solar recently reported a 310 percent boost in third-quarter earnings.
Although the German markets have been in a slump as of late, solar stocks have started to rally all over the world. “This is the fourth-best quarter for PV public markets ever, even in the current economy,” Nathaniel Bullard, senior analyst at New Energy Finance, told us. Bosch’s acquisition of ErSol, an integrated solar player and competitor of Schott, earlier this summer shows that big companies are excited to invest in these types of solar makers, Bullard added.
In addition SunPower’s stock surged following its recent deal with PG&E and Chinese solar giant Suntech rallied last week on news that second-quarter revenues were up 51 percent over last year, beating analysts’ predictions. New Energy Finance data shows that public solar companies raised nearly $2 billion globally in the second quarter, though little of that was from IPOs.
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