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1. Accenture on Biofuels: "It Ain't Easy"
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2. Cleantech's New Angel Matt Lecar
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3. The Daily Sprout
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4. Solazyme's Algae Jet Fuel Makes the Grade
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5. Microstaq's Tiny Valves Mean Big Energy Savings
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6. Fisker Gears Up With $65M for Karma
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7. Leaked Chevy Volt Pics Get Gear Heads All Revved Up
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8. Range Fuels Taps Ceres For Grass to Gas Plans
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9. Google's Eric Schmidt Details Energy Plan, Chides Lack of Leadership
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10. Enphase Energy Raises $15M for Distributed Solar Inverters
Accenture on Biofuels: "It Ain't Easy"
Craig Rubens - Big Green
The biofuels industry, once the poster child of the new energy economy and purported savior of the internal combustion engine, is again discovering that the road to global primacy is rougher than expected. According to a report released by Accenture entitled "Biofuels' Time of Transition: Achieving high performance in a world of increasing fuel diversity," three main obstacles will hinder the sector’s growth: environmental issues, distribution and infrastructure shortcomings. These pesky inconveniences aside, Accenture estimates biofuels could make up 10-15 percent of the future fuels mix in the next 10-20 years.
However, that window of opportunity is quickly closing as competing technologies gain ground. The report says that existing biofuels will have to become as global and efficient as possible in the next decade lest algae and biotech-based fuels and electric vehicles supplant them. Despite all this, Accenture is certain that biofuels “will be here for the foreseeable future."
This study is decidedly less optimistic than a similar report on the global biofuels market Accenture issued a year ago. At the time, the food-vs.-fuel debate was a murmur and the biggest barriers identified were scalability of feedstocks and the impact energy giants like China, India and Japan might have should they wade into the biofuel brouhaha. But a prescient senior executive in Accenture's Energy industry group said then: “We believe that biofuels will experience a cycle similar to that of the Internet during the dot-com bubble." Pop!
Cleantech's New Angel Matt Lecar
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
The CalCEF Angel fund was formed with some of the money of the original non-profit CalCEF fund, which was established in 2004 with $30 million from a PG&E bankruptcy case. That original fund was mainly investing in later stage companies, and was being managed by 3 traditional venture capital firms. General Partner Susan Preston explained to Sustainable Industries that the CalCEF Angel fund was created because the original fund wasn’t “targeting the area the utilities commission was interested in, which was moving technology from the lab to the early stages of commercialization."
But the CalCEF Angel Fund, which is managed Preston and now Matt Lecar, is very much a for-profit fund, which has so far raised $7 million of a planned $20 million total fund. The fund plans to invest in very early stage companies with $300,000 to $500,000 per deal, and the ability to add on low-digit millions, and some total 15-odd deals.
Lecar joined the fund because he says he wanted to invest in early stage companies because “we need fundamentally new technology,” not just an acceleration of the current technology that we already have (that was also the topic of the Economist’s Energy Debate). Lecar says that he is looking at deals that are not too capital intensive (like large renewable energy plants that need to be built out), but that are developing intellectual property from biofuels to energy efficiency.
Lecar says the seed stage is a little different from the more traditional venture investing, partly because there’s more mentoring and prep work involved. But that’s the way he likes it and he contends: if we can take a young pitcher and teach him to throw a curve ball, that works for me.
900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity? Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Bioplastic Maker Cereplast Closes $2.6M Round: Cereplast, manufacturer of purported sustainable bio-based plastic products, has raised $2.6 million in new equity financing through a private placement of common stock to existing shareholders, new "green" institutional funds and an external Director of Cereplast - Press Release.
Wheb Ventures Raises $102M for Cleantech Fund: The London-based fund manager has raised $102M of the $267 million it is aiming to secure for its second cleantech VC fund - Clean Edge.
SolarReserve Appoints CFO: The Los Angeles-based solar thermal company, which is working on utility-scale solar energy and storage, has selected Michael Whalen, a vet of HSBC and Bank of America, as its Chief Financial Officer - Press Release.
LED Maker Intematix Nabs Cree Exec: Intematix has brought Jeff Lagaly on board as Vice President of Sales for LED Lighting. Formerly Lagaly was Global Sales Director for Cree Lighting, a shining light in the LED world. Lagaly has yet to update his LinkedIn profile - Press Release.
Q2 Cleantech Investments Near $1B: A recent report from Ernst & Young estimates venture-capital investments in U.S. cleantech companies grew by 41 percent to $961.7 million during the second quarter of 2008. Maybe we’ll hit the 10 digit milestone next quarter - Seattle Times.
Solazyme's Algae Jet Fuel Makes the Grade
Craig Rubens - Science/Technology
The race for algae biofuels to take flight is on. Just last week, a new player spun out of Arizona State University's Laboratory for Algae Research & Biotechnology picked up $3 million to further the research into and eventual commercialization of a kerosene-based aviation fuel derived from algae. Solazyme, meanwhile, which was founded in 2003, picked up $45.4 million last month. However, just like in terrestrial transport, there’s plenty of room for multiple players in aviation fuels. Solazyme estimates that in the U.S. alone, 1.6 billion gallons of jet fuel are used every month.
Still, Solazyme has a long way to go. CEO Jonathan Wolfson said recently that the company would be able to produce millions of gallons of biofuel from algae within three years, up from just thousands today. That’s an ambitious goal, especially given that the company doesn’t plan on breaking ground for its first commercial-scale plant until 2010. So until then, air travel will still likely destroy any attempt one makes to reduce one’s carbon footprint.
900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity? Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference
Microstaq's Tiny Valves Mean Big Energy Savings
Stacey Higginbotham - Hitlines
Microstaq is a manufacturer of microelectromechanical machines (MEMS), silicon-based chips that combine that digital information with the analog world (such as the microphone inside your cell phone that translate your voice into digital signals for wireless networks). The Microstaq MEM is a tiny, computer-controlled valve that aims to replace the larger and more expensive expansion valves used in air conditioning and refrigeration (shown at left). It’s more accurate than non-electrical valves and can keep the temperature better regulated, leading to the efficiencies.
Microstaq has attached the chip to a larger casing, so the MEM is easy to drop into place without re-engineering the entire air conditioning unit (shown at bottom). The 8-year-old company, which to date has raised $12.5 million, says it has signed deals with three of the top five U.S. air conditioning makers but cannot name them. It also plans to go after the industrial refrigeration market. Sandeep Kumar, Microstaq’s CEO, says the cost of the chip will be equivalent to the cost of the valves already in use today, which are about $15.
He doesn’t expect to see these valves in residential refrigeration systems anytime soon, because they are currently cooled with capillary tubes that cost about $3 — making the chip-based solution way more expensive — unless a government mandate changes things.
In the meantime, the firm is also working to put its valves inside automobile transmissions in a bid to improve fuel efficiency and lower the costs of providing a smooth-shifting manual transmission. The medical diagnostics market can also use the devices to reduce the size and cost of machines that test blood. Other uses, such as those that involve insertion in the body, are possible as well, but would require FDA approval.
900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity? Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference
Fisker Gears Up With $65M for Karma
Craig Rubens - Automotive
Fisker Automotive is moving full-steam ahead to get its $80,000 plug-in hybrid Karma on the road by the end of 2009 and today announced it will be using $65 million in Series C funding to do so. The company says the round closed on Sept. 4 and was led by a new investor, an affiliate of Qatar Investment Authority, who joined return investor Kleiner Perkins.
The money will be used to finish development of the startup’s first vehicle, the four-door Fisker Karma. Fisker says it’s still on schedule to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2009 and aims to ramp up production to 15,000 vehicles a year. So far, three prototypes have been built and the company’s engineers are now tweaking the battery management software and running crash-test simulations.
The funding pushed the startup’s total funding close to $100 million. Fisker’s got the money, it’s got the manufacturer, now it just needs to finish designing the car. Oh, and to make sure that pesky lawsuit goes away.
Leaked Chevy Volt Pics Get Gear Heads All Revved Up
Tony Borroz - Automotive
Oops! Somebody's gonna be in trouble! Late yesterday, pictures of Chevy's hugely anticipated Volt were "accidentally" leaked onto the Internet, and now they're every where from the Wall Street Journal to, well, seemingly everywhere the Internet goes.
“It’s just one of those things that happens,” GM spokesman Terry Rhadigan told the Wall Street Journal, and added “We’re looking into the situation.” You bet they are. With all the interest boiling about the Volt, combined with how much GM has riding on the car, PR and image relations are normally as tightly controlled as UFO info out of Area 51. It doesn't look like GM's computers were hacked, or that some disgruntled employee sent the pictures out to the world because of spite or some car magazine had a mole within GM. It appears that the shots of (what GM hopes is) the hottest car on the planet got loose due to human error. Whoops!
Sometimes, while pictures or information get "leaked," if you catch me drift, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, everyone seems to agree that GM most certainly did not do this accidentally on purpose.
Autoblog.com agrees with GM's "human error" spin, and takes a "we don't care how, just look at the shots" view. Many are too excited about getting a chance to see the car to really care about where the pictures came from. And they also point out that it's nice having it next to a real human so you can better judge scale.
About nine other hard-core gearhead sites have their take on it, and of course Jalopnik.com has the funniest, noting a "new trend" in the models GM chooses to have pose with the car: "These images show what is said to be the production model posing with GM’s hunkiest designers and executives," say the boys from Jalopnik. I think they're kidding. I hope they're kidding.
But if GM is on the ball, what they should be paying attention to is what is said in the comments sections of all these oil-dripping car sites, like from Autoblog "Even if aerodynamics meant the car needed to look like this… I’d sacrifice 5mpg to get a version that looks more like the concept." or "When concept was released, I thought to myself ‘I may take one of these over a camaro’ now, not so much."
900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity? Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference
Range Fuels Taps Ceres For Grass to Gas Plans
Craig Rubens - Hitlines
The Soperton plant is scheduled to come online in 2009 and is expected to produce 100 million gallons of fuel a year. Its primary feedstock will be waste from the Georgia forestry industry, but the partnership with Ceres is designed to test the economic, environmental and logistical attributes of grasses as a feedstock. While it hasn’t come out and said it will be aiming for the golden $1 a gallon mark competitors like Coskata, Range Fuels has said it projects its costs to be significantly lower than both the enzymatic process and the current corn ethanol production costs, which are near $2 per gallon.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Ceres genomically enhances energy crops like switchgrass, sorghum and miscanthus and sells the seed under the brand name Blade Energy Crops replete with an ever growing list of hyphenated features: low-input, non-invasive, low-carbon, non-food, low-impact and high-yield. Some of largest players in next-gen biofuel space have turned to genetics to enhance their feedstocks including DuPont and Monsanto through a partnership with Mendel Biotechnology.
Both startups are well funded; Range Fuels collected a cool $100 million in April and Ceres pulled in $75 million a year ago.
900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity? Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference
Google's Eric Schmidt Details Energy Plan, Chides Lack of Leadership
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with Google’s energy gurus Dan Reicher and Bill Weihl, have so far served as the search giant’s most outspoken representatives of its plans to create new energy solutions. But at a dinner for the Corporate EcoForum on Monday night, Google CEO Eric Schmidt outlined a plan to wean the U.S. off of foreign oil, fight climate change and create green jobs. And Schmidt took direct aim at world leaders, contending: “We have a total failure of political leadership, at least in the U.S., and perhaps the world.”
In his speech, Schmidt called for 100 percent of U.S. power generation to come from green power in about 20 years, as well as the replacement of half of the nation’s traditional cars with plug-in hybrids. Cleaning up the power grid would lead to the creation of 500,000 jobs in wind alone, Schmidt claimed; his plan would also allegedly reduce emissions by half.
Schmidt also spoke at length about the antiquated power grid: “We’ve got to solve the grid problem,” he said, noting that 9 percent of efficiency is lost in the current architecture. And like most infotech titans, he called for integrating technologies borne out of the Internet revolution to the grid; sophisticated routing, switching and networking technologies didn’t yet exist when the grid was built. The opportunity to remake the grid is not unlike the opportunities of the Internet and the PC, he said.
Schmidt was most passionate, however, when he chided political leadership for a failure to act. There is a lack of understanding about how technology can change the dialogue, he said. The government is about to pass a massive stimulus package, so instead of randomly handing out cash to the all the usual suspects, “Why not retool the energy infrastructure in the U.S?”
When we asked Schmidt if, given his concern over a lack of leadership, he was looking to either of the presidential candidates’ energy solutions as a better option, he declined to back one candidate over the other. He said simply that he would urge politicians to stop looking at the near-term energy options and look instead at the bigger energy picture.
Schmidt’s speech reminded us of a more business-savvy amalgamation of the calls for action put out by former Vice-President Al Gore and former Intel Chairman Andy Grove. Gore has called for 100 percent of electricity to come from clean power, but in a decade — roughly half the timeline that Schmidt laid out. But Gore in that latest speech, didn’t really address the issue of transportation. Grove, meanwhile, has called for 10 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the roads in four years — somewhat different than Schmidt’s vision — but has been similarly vocal about the need to recreate the PC- and Internet-type revolutions for energy, noting, in particular, that the aftermarket for plug-in conversions is not unlike that of PC hobbyists back in the day.
Schmidt distinguished himself from those two by urging corporate America to view energy efficiency as an opportunity to reduce costs and increase return on investment. Google has create a scorecard to help boost energy efficiency, particularly in buildings — it was easy to do and saved the company money, he stressed.
So far Google has been by far the most committed company in the Internet sector to investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and green transportation. The search engine giant has committed to hundreds of millions of dollars for research and investment into clean power, including recent investments in wind, enhanced geothermal and plug-in vehicle startups.
Google has even recently patented a floating wave-powered data center as a way to both get data centers closer to users while utilizing clean power. Schmidt said he thought putting data centers on floating barges was a clever idea, adding with a shrug, “You never know.”
900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity? Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference
Enphase Energy Raises $15M for Distributed Solar Inverters
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
The solar industry is just starting to understand the benefits of distributed solar inverters — the devices that convert direct current (DC) to grid-usable alternating current (AC). While most solar panels use a centralized inverter, inverter-maker Enphase Energy says slapping a cell phone-sized distributed inverter on the back of every solar panel can help harvest 5 to 25 percent more energy. Investors are getting it too, and this morning Enphase says it has raised $15 million in new funding led by RockPort Capital Partners, and including Third Point Ventures and Applied Ventures (VC arm of Applied Materials).
Enphase CEO Paul Nahi says the company plans to use the money to keep growing to meet what it says is “tremendous demand.” Nahi says the company has sold about 1,000 inverter systems, half for residential systems and half to commercial installations; Enphase sells its systems through the traditional inverter channel of solar installers.
Beyond the micro-inverter system, the company also uses an integrated solar monitoring service, which stems from the IT world — not a surprise given the company boasts several “20-year veterans” from infotech. The monitoring system checks the solar setup every five minutes and reports back if certain panels aren’t producing adequately or are in too much shade or need to be cleaned. We’re not entirely clear on the setup of how it’s networked and what pipes send what data; the company says it is proprietary. But Dan Kammen, director of UC Berkeley's Renewable Energy Labs, recently attested to the company’s innovative use of broadband technology to deliver solar services. So they must be doing something right.
900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity? Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference
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