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1. Five Green Holiday Gifts for the Home
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2. Nova Scotia Getting Independent Energy Efficiency Agency
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3. Daily Sprout
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4. The Problem With Cleantech VC Investing
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5. CEO Transition for Khosla-Funded Transonic Combustion
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6. Energy Data Aggregator AMEE's Investor List Grows
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7. California Passes Landmark Climate Plan, Adopts Cap-and-Trade
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8. EU Funds Cleantech Projects, Approves Masdar Grant
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9. Lightwave Power Gets $13M from Quercus Trust, 21 Ventures
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10. SunPower Goes Small-Scale with Latest Deals
Five Green Holiday Gifts for the Home
jchait - Home & Garden
If you’re still looking for holiday gifts - one, you better get a move on. Shipping issues are going to kick in soon. Two, here are five nice green gift ideas that any sustainable friend or family member will love.
Bamboo Bath Tub Caddy - Perfect for setting up an eco-spa day at home. Love the little compartments!
Bike-Blended Soap - For a great stocking stuffer try this unique soap made with bike power! This moisturizing cold-process soap is handmade using only vegetable and essential oils, and organic herbs and spices. “A unique invention that pairs a bicycle power train with a soap-mixing vat lets the soap makers literally pedal their way through every batch without electricity, synthetic scents or chemical hardeners.” Bizarre, yet really cool. Cured for two months and available in Lavender Rosemary, Lemongrass Ginger, Cinnamon Clove, Oatmeal Honey and Lavender.
Silver Beaded Jewelry Hook - Fair Trade hand-beaded wire jewelry holder - pretty and useful for home organizing.
Juhi Chest - This beautiful jewelry box is crafted from sustainably harvested mango wood by Fair trade artisans in Delhi, India. I also think it would look great in the kitchen as a herb holder.
Bluebird House - Recycled gift for nature lovers. Made of nearly 100% recycled materials by a master carpenter, trained birder and ornithologist.?? “Includes a nest full of information to help you select a site for your future residents, a registration card to help track nesting success, and a booklet detailing breeding and feeding habits as well as the mating particulars of bluebirds.”
Nova Scotia Getting Independent Energy Efficiency Agency
David Ehrlich - Big Green
Energy efficiency could get a boost in Eastern Canada with the creation of an independent agency in Nova Scotia tasked with overseeing programs aimed at cutting electricity consumption and reducing peak demand. Those programs are currently the responsibility of Conserve Nova Scotia, created in 2006 as part of the province’s Department of Energy.
The bulk of electricity in the region comes from Nova Scotia Power, part of the publicly traded Emera, which provides more than 95 percent of the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity in the province.
The move to an independent, non-profit agency could help cut through the bureaucracy that’s normally associated with a government-run agency, and is expected to encourage more competitive and innovative solutions, according to a report from Dalhousie University that recommended the creation of the new group. Nova Scotia will become the first province in the country to have an arm’s-length administrator for energy conservation programs, Cheryl Ratchford of the Ecology Action Centre, an environmental activist group, told the Chronicle Herald.
The agency, likely to be called the Nova Scotia Electricity Efficiency Agency, will focus on electricity generation and use, but there is the possibility that it could end up becoming a one-stop shop for the administration of other efficiency measures. The report from Dalhouse, submitted to the provincial government earlier this year, said that it could be cost-effective in the long term to have the agency handle overall energy efficiency. For now, energy efficiency and conservation programs for fuels such as home heating oil and wood will continue to be delivered by Conserve Nova Scotia.
Earlier this year, Conserve Nova Scotia announced a deal to help residential building owners invest in energy efficiency via the kind of program that would fall under the new agency’s oversight. The program offers rebates for the use of energy-efficient lighting, Energy Star-qualified washing machines, and other devices.
Energy efficiency can involve a broad range of technologies and conservation programs in green building, industrial applications, vehicle technology and more. It received attention in the U.S. just last week when President-elect Barack Obama called for an effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient.
The U.S. has a leg up on independent agencies for energy efficiency, with the Dalhousie report pointing out that agencies have already been set up in Vermont and Oregon; Efficiency Vermont was created in 2000 and the Energy Trust of Oregon was formed in 2002.
Nova Scotia’s new agency will be controlled by a board of directors, with oversight from the province’s Utility and Review Board. Costs will be covered by electricity users in the region, which could ruffle the feathers of the province’s biggest power users.
The Chronicle Herald notes that in the past, pulp and paper companies NewPage Group and AbitibiBowater, both of which have paper mills in the region, have pushed for taxpayers to fund a new energy efficiency agency. But as the Dalhousie report points out, electricity users also have the most to gain from efficiency investments, in the form of lower electricity bills.
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Daily Sprout
Josie Garthwaite - Misc
EU Strikes Deal for Weakened “20-20-20″ Climate Package: EU leaders made concessions to polluting companies and countries to win a consensus on reducing emissions by 20 percent by 2020. As an environmental advocate from WWF put it, “A flagship EU policy now has no pilot, a mutinous crew, and numerous holes in its fuselage.”– NYT’s Green Inc.
Big Three Bailout Rejection = Big Blow to OPEC: Senate Republicans’ balking at the planned auto industry bailout has poured “more fuel on the pyre of collapsing demand” for oil. — WSJ’s Environmental Capital
Tech Companies Leading Pack on Climate Change Governance: IBM and Dell rank among companies earning top marks for actively addressing the risks and capitalizing on the opportunities of climate change in a new report from the nonprofit Ceres. — GreenBiz
$186M for Renewable Energy in South Korea: South Korea’s government plans to invest $186 million in clean energy development projects by LG Electronics, Hyundai Motor Company, Samsung SDI, and other firms in an effort to boost economic growth. — Clean Edge
Plug-in EVs in Intel’s Future?: Former Intel chairman Andrew Grove is pushing the microprocessor-maker to consider manufacturing advanced batteries for plug-in electric cars. — Wall Street Journal
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The Problem With Cleantech VC Investing
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
There’s a problem with cleantech venture investing, according to the folks at cleantech VC firm @Ventures, who put together this slide presentation. They point out there’s been almost no exits. And few failures, too, so basically there’s little to help gauge the market. While I would somewhat argue with the lack of failures part (first-gen biofuels have seen some large failures, including the bankruptcy of VeraSun, the crash of the ethanol market and the stumbling of Imperium), it’s true that there’s been a lack of information to help guide VCs on what works and what doesn’t, as cleantech startups generally take longer to mature.
So with little direction, the result is: Here come the lemmings. It’s the same thing across all of venture investing; the herd mentality often sways funding trends. But as @Ventures notes, in cleantech there’s too much focus on industries like solar, biofuels and transportation; too much concentration on later-stage investments; and as money gets stuffed into states like California and New England, large parts of the country of being virtually ignored.
So what’s the answer? @Ventures says that overall, there should be fewer funds investing in the space. (Perhaps true, but very convenient coming from a firm that has its own skin in the game). Specifically there should be fewer funds focused on later-stage, larger deals, and instead more of the smaller funds doing similarly smaller investments in innovative areas outside of the standard solar and biofuels. And bring on the early-stage seed/angels that can be “scouts” to help guide the generalists in the official rounds. Who’s the Ram Shriram of cleantech? (I always thought Sunil Paul) . Just remember, readers, that @Ventures has invested in solar startup Advent Solar, biofuel startups Cobalt Biofuels and Propel Biofuels, and many others.
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CEO Transition for Khosla-Funded Transonic Combustion
Josie Garthwaite - Automotive
Ahlborn, former president of McLaren Performance Technologies and a VP at Linamar Corporation (he also had a stint at GM), comes as the latest in a string of recruits from the legacy auto world — a seduction process that can only be getting easier. Transonic brought in hires from Ford and Delphi shortly before securing a third injection of funds from Khosla Ventures, making Vinod Khosla the startup’s largest preferred shareholder.
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Energy Data Aggregator AMEE's Investor List Grows
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
Determining energy consumption and carbon emissions is all about data, data, data — how to organize it and what to do with it. And companies using software and web tools to deal with such energy-related data are increasingly gaining the support of investors. Among them is AMEE, which stands for Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine, a British startup that’s aggregating the world’s energy and carbon data in order to determine the carbon footprint of just about anything. It was previously disclosed in a regulatory filing that AMEE had raised $1 million from O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures in a Series A round (seed funding arm of the media company), but the startup announced today the participation of two additional investors: Union Square Ventures and The Accelerator Group.
AMEE was launched by Gavin Starks in 2007 and has managed to work with customers like the UK government, Morgan Stanley, Google, Radiohead, and Sun. AMEE provides the data engine for web-based carbon services and footprints — see Google’s UK Carbon Footprint Project. We’re not sure of the total amount raised from all three investors in the Series A, but Starks tells us it’s in the seven-figure (GBP) range. The financing will be used to grow AMEE’s data sets and customers.
Software, web services and IT tools will be crucial to ushering in an era in which energy consumption and carbon emission data is calculated for everything from a company’s supply chain to your the small daily actions of individuals. AMEE’s goal is to add accuracy and transparency to that process. AMEE founder Starks will also be giving a talk at our Green:Net conference on March 24th in San Francisco. Come check out his thoughts on how everyone and everything will have a carbon ID!
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California Passes Landmark Climate Plan, Adopts Cap-and-Trade
Josie Garthwaite - Carbon Markets
The California Air Resources Board has unanimously approved a sweeping plan for reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels — an average cut of four tons of annual emissions per person — by 2020. Outlining rules for nearly every sector of California’s economy, the plan represents the country’s most comprehensive strategy for curbing climate change and fostering a low-carbon (read: cleantech) economy.
ARB chairman Mary Nichols, who looks like she’ll be passed over for a spot in President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration, called the plan “California’s prospectus for a more secure and sustainable economy.” She added that the scheme would encourage investment in energy efficiency and renewables while creating hundreds of thousands of green jobs in California.
Today’s vote came about as a result of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, or AB 32, which set the 2020 emissions target and required the air resources board to develop a plan for meeting it. Since a draft of the plan first appeared on the board’s web site in October, it has been downloaded more than 250,000 times and staffers have received more than 43,000 comments. Here’s how the board explained the key elements in today’s release:
An important component of the plan is a cap-and-trade program covering 85 percent of the state’s emissions. This program will be developed in conjunction with the Western Climate Initiative, comprised of seven states and four Canadian provinces that have committed to cap their emissions and create a regional carbon market. Additional key recommendations of the plan include strategies to enhance and expand proven cost-saving energy efficiency programs; implementation of California’s clean cars standards; increases in the amount of clean and renewable energy used to power the state; and, implementation of a low-carbon fuel standard that will make the fuels used in the state cleaner.
Other steps outlined in the plan include tightening regulation of emissions from trucks and ships docked in California ports — a move estimated to cost the trucking industry $5.5 billion. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t sit well with Driving Toward a Cleaner California, an advocacy group of truckers, farmers, and contractors. As the Los Angeles Business Journal reports, the group has denounced the plan as “the nation's most stringent new emissions regulations that could also be the most costly and far-reaching rule that business has yet to face."
Businesses from a variety of sectors — not just electric car startups hoping to fill those showrooms, but also wine and finance — and environmental watchdogs have largely registered support for the board’s plan.
How about Joe the Californian — what does it mean for him? The Associated Press explains:
Air regulators said the average Californian could see more fuel-efficient cars and plug-in hybrids on showroom floors; better public transportation; housing nearer to schools and businesses; and utility rebates to make their homes more energy-efficient.
Sounds pretty great, huh? Oh wait, there’s more (again from AP):
But there will also be costs: Cars could become more expensive, and Californians can expect higher electric rates as utilities increase their use of renewable energy. Homes built with energy-efficient materials could also prove more costly, as could gasoline reformulated to release less carbon dioxide.
…all of which means big opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies developing green cars and building materials, energy management systems, renewable energy, and on and on.
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EU Funds Cleantech Projects, Approves Masdar Grant
David Ehrlich - Big Green
As the UN climate change talks continue in Poland, the European Commission announced today that it’s picked the first set of investments for its Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund. This first round will funnel €22 million ($29.3 million) into small-scale renewable energy projects in developing countries in Africa and Asia.
The very well-funded thin-film solar firm Masdar PV also picked up some funding today, with the European Commission approving €28 million in aid from Germany. Masdar PV is backed by oil-rich Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Initiative.
The €22 million of the Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund, meanwhile, will be invested in two regional funds, one focused on projects in sub-Saharan and southern Africa, the other in Asia with a focus on India. The commission said regional projects including wind power, small hydro, biomass and methane recovery will get financing.
According to the commission, 1.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to reliable energy services. The EU hopes to help change that with its global fund, which has received €110 million in commitments from the European Commission, Germany and Norway through 2011. The fund is targeted at investments under €10 million, which the commission said are mostly ignored by private investors and international finance institutions. In addition to Africa and Asia, the fund is looking at projects in the Caribbean, the Pacific, Latin America, and non-EU Eastern Europe.
Masdar, which announced earlier this year that it would put $2 billion into manufacturing thin-film photovoltaic solar modules, is getting a break on some of that cash from the German government with the €28 million in regional investment aid. Germany needed to get authorization from the European Commission for the grant under EU rules.
Masdar PV is setting up a €143 million thin-film solar module factory in Germany, with the project expected to create at least 184 new jobs. The Abu Dhabi-backed group, which is also putting up a solar factory in its home country, has already made at least one distribution deal for its planned solar modules, with Germany’s Colexon announcing earlier this week that it signed a strategic partnership with Masdar PV for more than 150 megawatts of solar modules. That contract runs until 2013.
Masdar PV’s first production site in Erfut, Germany, is expected to start operations in the third quarter of 2009, with the Abu Dhabi factory going on-line in the second quarter of 2010. The company said both sites will initially reach a total production capacity of 210 MW per year.
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Lightwave Power Gets $13M from Quercus Trust, 21 Ventures
Josie Garthwaite - Energy
Solar startup Lightwave Power said today it has closed a Series A round of just over $13 million, with Quercus Trust leading the investment and 21 Ventures co-investing. Lightwave co-founder Lawrence Kaufman told us the funding began in June, just six months after the company launched and began licensing technology from MicroContinuum, a decade-old developer of “roll-to-roll processes,” often used for making electronics on rolls of flexible plastic or metal foil.
Lightwave, which shares its Cambridge, Mass. office and half of its founding team with MicroContinuum, combines roll-to-roll processing, nanotechnology and photovoltaics — much like Nanosolar, a relative heavyweight in the market Lightwave wants to enter. The company is working on large, flexible films that it says can be added to existing solar cells at low cost for efficiency of up to 85 percent. Kaufman said the films, stamped with arrays of repeating metals, would be “helpers” for silicon crystal, amorphous silicon, or other solar cells, and could be licensed to companies like Nanosolar.
Lightwave is also working on optical antennas that, like solar panels and unlike the films, would turn solar energy into electricity — rather than being “stuck on anyone else’s solar cells,” Kaufman said. As explained in a straightforward video on the MicroContinuum site (at the bottom of this page), these thin sheets, made with plastic and common metals, are printed with arrays of nano-antennas that can capture infrared radiation. Think TV antennas, but much smaller so they pick up much smaller wavelengths.
The deal announced today marks yet another step into the solar sector for David Gelbaum’s quiet Quercus Trust, at least three-quarters of whose holdings lie in solar technology. We’re waiting to see if Lightwave will keep pace with its Quercus-funded brethren, which now includes Sencera, GridPoint and Open Energy.
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SunPower Goes Small-Scale with Latest Deals
David Ehrlich - Big Green
Silicon Valley-based SunPower can still go big with solar, but today the company announced two installations that are under a megawatt each. In Western Australia, SunPower signed a deal to build a 505-kilowatt solar power plant for Horizon Power that SunPower said will be the largest solar power tracking system in the country. Closer to home, SunPower also announced the completion of a 554-kW system at the Wal-Mart store in Hanford, Calif.
The small-scale business seems to be doing well for SunPower, with its worldwide residential and small-commercial rooftop dealer network growing by more than 25 percent in the third quarter over the previous quarter. The company reported $377.5 million in revenue for the third quarter, with its Components segment, which includes those small installations, accounting for 49 percent of that revenue.
The Horizon Power installation will be built on two sites in the east Pilbara region of Western Australia, with construction expected to be complete by September 2009. The government-owned Horizon Power provides power to remote and regional communities and operations in the state.
SunPower entered the Australian solar market earlier this year when it acquired Solar Sales, an Australian distributor with a network of 30 dealers throughout the country.
In California, the Wal-Mart installation is expected to cover 15 percent of the Hanford store’s electricity. It’s part of a pilot project at the giant retailer to put in solar power systems at up to 22 Wal-Mart stores, Sam’s Clubs (also owned by Wal-Mart) and distribution centers in California and Hawaii.
A total of eight Wal-Mart locations in California will be getting SunPower solar installations by the end of this year, adding up to 4.2-MW. The other systems are going up in Porterville, Chino, Simi Valley, Brea, Orange, Lakewood, and Palmdale.
SunPower, which handles everything from the design and manufacturing of solar cells and products to the installation of commercial, residential and utility-scale solar power projects, scored two utility-scale deals over the summer.
In July, SunPower announced a contract for two big solar power plants for Florida Power & Light. SunPower will design and build the 25-megawatt and 10-MW plants and Florida Power will own and maintain the facilities. And in August, PG&E signed a deal to buy power from a 250-MW SunPower plant in Northern California, as well as from a 550-MW solar plant being built by OptiSolar.
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