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1. Honk if you love hankies
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2. Downturn Pins Coskata's Commercial Plant on Government Aid
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3. Fisker Promises Affordable Plug-In Cars in Two Years Flat (If DOE OK's Loans)
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4. Are There Any Green Jobs for You? Where the New Green Jobs Will Be
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5. Ecotality, Nissan to Hook Up Arizona Car Charging Network
Honk if you love hankies
Shelby Wood, The Oregonian - Eat Your Greens
Downturn Pins Coskata's Commercial Plant on Government Aid
Katie Fehrenbacher - Biofuels
For young companies toiling over how to convert plant waste and non-food crops into ethanol — the next generation of biofuels — the effects of the downturn are starting to play a familiar beat: access to capital is so limited that companies that could have snagged funds in better economic times are seeing their commercialization plans crippled. The latest is Coskata, one of the better known cellulosic ethanol makers, backed by car maker GM and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. At the Wall Street Journal Eco:nomics conference this week, Coskata CEO Bill Roe said the company is now waiting for a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to build its first commercial scale plant and that the plant is basically stalled until then.
Coskata was previously hoping to break ground on the plant — expected to produce 50-100 million gallons of ethanol annually — this year and to complete the factory in late 2010 or early 2011. Coskata Chief Marketing Officer Wes Bolsen told us back in December that the commercial plant time line would probably run more solidly into 2011. When we asked Bolsen yesterday if there was a new time line for the commercial plant, he told us:
“We are highly encouraged by what Secretary Steven Chu and the Department of Energy are saying about how fast they can issue the loan guarantees. The Coskata technology is ready to deploy, but we are hesitant to put any revised timeline out there until we see the closing of the financing.”
Chu said last month that new loan guarantees will be offered under the stimulus legislation by early summer, and at least 70 percent of its share of the stimulus will be disbursed by the end of 2010. Bolsen further explained Roe’s comments and the effect of the downturn on the company’s ability to raise financing: “In this financial environment, banks are not lending to themselves, let alone renewable energy projects.”
If Coskata is having trouble, smaller less-well-connected firms will be struggling even more. Coskata told us last November that it was able to close a Series C round in financing, and the company is backed with at least $30 million from Globespan Capital Partners, GM, Khosla Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures and Advanced Technology Ventures.
Other cellulosic ethanol makers like Verenium, that has a similarly strong partner in oil giant BP, are feeling the effects of the downturn on commercial plant plans, too. Verenium is moving forward with its first commercial plant, but has pushed back breaking ground to 2010 from a previously planned timeline of 2009.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Fisker Promises Affordable Plug-In Cars in Two Years Flat (If DOE...
Josie Garthwaite - Automotive
This sounds familiar: An alternative-fuel luxury sports car startup promises to get affordable green cars into production for the mass market — if the Department of Energy comes through with a loan. Back in November, the startup was Tesla Motors: CEO Elon Musk said Tesla could set up manufacturing for batteries and the delayed Model S sedan in “a matter of months” with about $400 million in low-interest loans. (Musk has revealed a more exact figure, $350 million, for the sedan project since then.) Now we’re hearing a similar tune from Fisker Automotive.
Henrik Fisker, founder and CEO of the Irvine, Calif.-based company, spoke with Reuters at the 79th International Motor Show in Geneva on Wednesday about a plan to refurbish a factory in the U.S. and develop a lower-cost, higher-volume plug-in hybrid car than its $87,900 Fisker Karma if DOE loans come through.
Fisker did not specify how much money the company has requested, but did offer a timeline for the project. According to the Reuters report:
“If we get the DOE loan we will start the project this year,” he said. “It could be in the market in as little as 26 months from when we start.”
As we noted last fall, when Tesla described its mass-market vehicle plans, more than a few hurdles stand between applicants and DOE loans. Interim rules established by the DOE favor projects involving manufacturing facilities that are at least 20 years old (a possible leg up for Fisker, given its scheme to refurbish a factory) and require that companies demonstrate financial viability for the term of the loan. Fisker got a vote of confidence from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins this week in the form of $3 million to help secure an exclusive supply of battery technology. We’ll wait and see if the DOE follows suit.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Are There Any Green Jobs for You? Where the New Green Jobs Will Be
susan - Sustainable Ideas
Who says we can't afford to go green in these tough economic times? For those gloomy prognosticators, we'd suggest taking a look at a new report that shows how the U.S. can create two million jobs in the next two years by investing in a green economic recovery plan (focusing on six economic strategies, from biofuels to wind power).
If you want to find out if there are going to be any green jobs for you in the new green economy, check out which occupations in each state stand to win jobs. This report from the Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, looks at which occupations would be affected by six green economic strategies: building retrofitting, mass transit, energy-efficient automobiles, wind power, solar power and cellulosic biofuels.
- To see what would happen in this green recovery plan, state-by-state:
> Alaska
> Arizona
> Arkansas
> California
> Colorado
> Florida
> Illinois
> Indiana
> Iowa
> Kansas
> Maine
> Maryland
> Massachusetts
> Michigan
> Minnesota
> Missouri
> Montana
> Nebraska
> Nevada
> New Hampshire
> New Jersey
> New Mexico
> New York
> North Carolina
> North Dakota
> Ohio
> Oregon
> Pennsylvania
> South Carolina
> Tennessee
> Virginia
> Washington
> West Virginia
>Wisconsin
- For an even easier-to-read fact sheet, based on this report, go to the Blue Green Alliances' fact sheets on these 12 states: Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.
- For more on the report and the Blue Green Alliance, a partnership between labor unions (the "blue" in "blue-collar") and environmental organizations (the "green"), here’s their web site.
Photo credit: www.city-data.com
Ecotality, Nissan to Hook Up Arizona Car Charging Network
David Ehrlich - Automotive
Ecotality, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company that makes fast electric vehicle chargers and energy storage, is moving up in the world. The firm has lined up a big-name partner, saying today that it will work with Nissan North America to set up an electric vehicle charging network in Arizona’s Pima County, a deal that would include the state’s second-largest city, Tuscon.
Ecotality says it already has more than 5,100 charging stations installed around the country for vehicles including forklifts in warehouses and ground support vehicles at airports, but this looks like one of the company’s first deals for a publicly accessible charging network. And it comes at time when competition for car-charging infrastructure, as well as interest in electric vehicles, seems to be heating up.
The company didn’t release many details on the project, but it said Nissan has committed to making available an unspecified number of electric vehicles for public and private fleets in 2010, when Nissan’s first mass-produced electric vehicle is expected to roll off the assembly line. Ecotality will build and manage the charging stations and has launched what it calls its EV Micro-Climate program, which includes installing charging infrastructure at homes, stores, and public locations.
Drivers won’t not have to wait long to charge up their electric vehicles. The company said its Minit-Charger technology, which it bought from Edison International in December 2007, can recharge an electric vehicle in 10 to 15 minutes, although it’s unclear if Nissan’s highway-speed sedans will be able to charge up that fast.
Nissan has made a number of deals over the past year, through the Renault-Nissan Alliance, to set up car charging networks around the world, often teaming up with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Better Place. Earlier this week, Renault-Nissan said it would work on an electric car project in Yokohama, Japan, although the carmaker has yet to name a partner for the project.
Pima County follows other cities and counties in the U.S. that are angling to be early testers of EV charging networks. In San Francisco, where Better Place already has some big plans in the works, competitor Coulomb Technologies installed a small number of charging stations in February, following a similar small-scale installation by Coulomb in San Jose in January.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
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