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1. Earth2Tech Week in Review
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2. How Long To Expect the Loan Guarantee Process to Take
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3. Q&A: Vulcan Power's CEO on the Potential of Geothermal
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4. GreenRoad: Maxing Out MPG With Real-time Feedback
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5. CellEra Raises Cash for Cheaper Fuel Cells
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6. Proterra Names Green Bus Plant Site, Closes in on Funding
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7. Daily Sprout
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8. Chinese Motorcycle Maker Eyes Tech From Superbike Startup Mission Motors
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9. Report: If A Quarter of U.S. Power Is Clean by 2025 = Jobs
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10. Solar Startup 1366 Closes $5.2M, Signs New Customers
Earth2Tech Week in Review
Josie Garthwaite - Misc
Smart Grid Problem?: Smart at the Edge, Dumb in the Middle: Too much intelligence at the edge of a network, and not enough in the middle, makes for a volatile network, says Ray Gogel, president and chief operating officer of the Current Group.
Proterra Names Green Bus Plant Site, Closes on Funding: South Carolina's poised to get some skin in the game of the green bus rush, as Colorado startup Proterra has just announced plans to set up a new assembly plant in the state in 2011.
Aptera Faces More Than Leadership Troubles After Founders’ Official Exit: According to a newsletter Aptera sent out this week, Aptera co-founder Steve Fambro "will leave the day to day operations” at the startup. The departure itself shouldn’t overshadow the very significant hurdles that Aptera now faces, no matter who’s leading it.
Cisco to FCC: 5 Suggestions for the Smart Grid: The Federal Communications Commission plans to make recommendations for how the National Broadband Plan should help shape the fledgling smart grid industry, and this week Cisco submitted a couple of key suggestions to the FCC.
Boston-Power Plowing “Full Steam Ahead” on Saab EV Project: Boston-Power CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud told us this week its electric vehicle demonstration project is going "full steam ahead" with Saab, the loss-making auto brand that General Motors is selling to specialty car maker Spyker.
How Long To Expect the Loan Guarantee Process to Take
Josie Garthwaite - Uncategorized
More than a year — at least in the case of cellulosic ethanol startup Range Fuels. In January 2009 the company secured a conditional commitment for an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture out of the 2008 Farm Bill. And according to an SEC filing this week, Range Fuels has just filed to raise that $80 million in debt financing to build out its first commercial plant in Soperton, Georgia.
The Broomfield, Colo.-based company told us that the funds “will be used for both the current Soperton Plant project to be mechanically complete this month and for future phases at Soperton.” Range Fuels had completed half of its commercial facility at Soperton as of October 2009, according to the New York Times. Out of all the companies trying to reach commercial scale production of cellulosic ethanol in the U.S., Range Fuels is one of the farthest along.
But the commercial plant is still taking a long to build out. Range Fuels began construction of the planned 100-million-gallon-per-year plant in Soperton back in November 2007, with costs expected to reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Before the markets crashed in 2008, the company had been considering an IPO to raise money for the project, and raised $100 million in second-round financing from firms including Khosla Ventures and Passport Capital.
Scoring a loan guarantee is a crucial competitive edge for a company like Range Fuels, but it’s not money in the bank. As the DOE explained about its loan guarantee program last year, recipients still have to "secure their own share of financing — similar to earnest money in a home mortgage.” That fund raising takes time.
But a loan guarantee typically enables a company to finance projects with a better interest rate and at a lower cost than would otherwise be available to them. It serves essentially as promise by the government to back a loan if the company can't make good on it. The USDA as well as the Department of Energy have been using this type of award to help nudge forward emerging energy technologies in a time of difficult debt and tax credit financing for clean power projects. At the time the USDA announced Range Fuels’ guarantee, the lead lending agency on the guarantee was slated to be AgSouth Farm Credit, a provider of agricultural and rural loans that’s part of Farm Credit Services.
At this point, Range maintains on its web site that the first phase of the plant is on track for completion by the first quarter of this year, and production of ethanol and methanol in low volumes (less than 10 million gallons per year) will begin during the second quarter of 2010. Now the company needs to bring in the investors, raise the debt, and finish the plant.
Q&A: Vulcan Power's CEO on the Potential of Geothermal
Justin Moresco - clean power
We sat down with Robert Warburton, acting chief executive officer of Vulcan Power Company, to get his outlook for the industry. The Bend, Or.-based geothermal project developer, which announced earlier this week that it raised $108 million in private equity investment, has some 170,000 acres of geothermal properties in four Western states including California and Nevada. Vulcan is currently developing geothermal plants totaling 300 MW of power, and it has signed 180 MW of long-term power purchase agreements with utilities, with another 120 MW currently under negotiation.
Earth2Tech: Federal and state policies such as renewable portfolio standards and the Recovery Act largely fueled the U.S. geothermal industry's growth last year. Could the loss of some of these drivers mean the industry will struggle to expand?
Robert Warburton: From our point of view, renewable energy is a clear focus in this country now and we don't foresee that going away. The key is to bring the cost of [geothermal] down. There are firms out there — design firms and equipment suppliers –- who are working on more efficient geothermal technology and making projects more cost effective. So there are efforts going on, private and federally funded, to improve drilling techniques and the success rate of drilling. But geothermal on its own is already pretty cost competitive with grid pricing at this point.
E2T: How important is technology for the growth of the industry? Is technology the linchpin to making geothermal a large portion of the nation's energy mix?
RW: I think financing is probably the most critical piece because geothermal is a capital-intensive business. Technology would follow after that to the extent you can be more efficient with your drilling — lower cost of drilling a well –- and improve your ability to find the resources. Typically you may assume that you drill 10 wells and two or three will be dry. If you can drill 10 but only one is dry, you just reduced your upfront costs. But over the next several years the key component will be access to capital. The current technology is robust enough to support the growth projections by the [Geothermal Energy Association].
E2T: We don't hear as much about geothermal energy as we do about other forms of renewable energy, and it seems venture capitalists, with a few exceptions, have largely ignored the sector. Do you think the industry has failed to capture the imagination of investors and, if so, what needs to happen to change this?
RW: Its growth isn't as high as other renewable energy. People put up 1000 MW wind farms. Geothermal is pretty much confined to the Western U.S., and that has had an impact. Plants tend to be in sizes of 20-60 MW, and that doesn't capture the attention of the general population. Also, it hasn't been as evident in the marketplace that geothermal is a very reliable and cost-effective renewable energy strategy. But I think that is becoming more the case now, and there is a focus within the industry in making it known.
E2T: Do venture capitalists have a role in geothermal?
RW: I don't know that I'd call it an explosive new technology. There are steady advancements in technology but not what I'd call game-changing technology. But as investment firms get more comfortable with the drilling risk and the ability of firms to deliver, I think you'll see more investment.
E2T: Where do you see opportunities in geothermal for startups?
RW: Potentially on the drilling side, but there is a lot of competition. Also on the equipment supply side, maybe to come up with a more efficient system to extract that energy. There are a number of firms working on technology to extract energy from lower fluid temperatures [see for example, Raser Technologies' use of so-called Kalina conversion technology]. Right now, the main focus on geothermal is to find fluids typically above 275°F or 300°F but to the extent that you can use lower temperature fluids, it opens up more opportunities from a drilling point of view. You could use fluids that in the past weren't hot enough to be used by the existing technology.
Image of drilling rig courtesy of Vulcan Power.
GreenRoad: Maxing Out MPG With Real-time Feedback
Josie Garthwaite - Automotive
GreenRoad’s system uses sensors, an accelerometor, GPS and customized algorithms to calculate the relative risk of different driving maneuvers, then communicates that to the driver by illuminating either a red, yellow or green light. Installed mainly on commercial fleet vehicles (80 fleets so far), the device can have its algorithm customized according to a customer’s priorities, and it communicates information via cellular networks to GreenRoad’s data center. “The brains are in the vehicle,” GreenRoad marketing chief Eric Weiss told me this week, so even in areas without cellular coverage, drivers “always get real-time feedback.”
Weiss commented that the “preoccupation” with banning texting while driving (an idea that’s gaining momentum in certain states and among U.S. policymakers), and the “legislative approach of cordoning off all the things you can’t do…is not effective for converting wrong to right.”
It also obscures a larger opportunity, he said, to transform driving habits using technology, or more specifically: real-time feedback for drivers (both positive and negative), constant data gathering and an online display showing potential savings and areas for improvement — similar to the energy management tools rolling out that monitor homeowners’ real-time use of electricity, natural gas and water, and present it in web-based portals and in-home displays.
Based in Redwood Shores, Calif., with offices in the U.S., UK and Israel, Greenroad is not alone in trying to seize that opportunity. A number of smartphone apps and after-market vehicle retrofits have emerged in an effort to meet demand for the real-time and cumulative data about fuel efficiency that hypermilers have come to love in the Toyota Prius display.
And more automakers are starting build these tools right into the vehicle. Ford, for example, has developed an instrument cluster that, as Grist put it recently, tells “the driver (nicely) whether to ditch the lead foot or keep the good times rollin’.”
For GreenRoad, backed by Virgin Green Fund and Benchmark Capital, among others, one of its main selling points to fleet operators is that the real-time risk assessments of different driving maneuvers help to improve safety, reduce wear and tear on vehicles and slash the number of accidents. But Weiss said that the company’s system has been installed in “two of the country’s largest truck fleets, primarily because of fuel saving.”
We’d like to see bigger cuts in fuel consumption than the 10 percent noted on GreenRoad’s web site, and the up to 15 percent that Weiss said the system can deliver (depending on the route, vehicle and driver). But the system represents one tool that’s relatively easy to implement and, in combination with other technologies, could help to reduce emissions from the transportation sector — the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country since 1990, and also one of the largest.
CellEra Raises Cash for Cheaper Fuel Cells
Jennifer Kho - Automotive
Israeli fuel-cell startup CellEra has kept its activities under wraps since it raised $2 million from Israel Cleantech Ventures last year. But a German press release from angel investor group BrainsToVentures has revealed the company has raised another $2 million, from BrainsToVentures and Israel Cleantech Ventures, and has developed its first prototype. CEO Ziv Gottesfeld confirmed the news, telling us the cash represents part of a larger round.
Gottesfeld also told us CellEra already is working with a major manufacturer and is integrating its fuel cells into backup power systems. CellEra plans to use its new cash to turn its working prototype into its first commercial product, he said, adding that the company aims to have products ready for the market in two years.
According to the release, CellEra believes it can cut fuel-cell development and manufacturing costs by more than 70 percent by eliminating the most expensive material – platinum. The precious metal, which is by far the costliest part of a fuel cell, is normally used as a catalyst to create the electrochemical reaction that converts hydrogen, air and water into electricity.
The key to CellEra’s platinum-free fuel-cell technology is its proprietary electrodes, Gottesfeld said, which are the positively and negatively charged areas where the reaction takes place. The company isn’t developing the platinum-free catalysts itself, instead working with partners that use raw materials such as iron, cobalt or silver, he added.
CellEra’s plans to initially target stationary applications, such as providing backup power for hospitals, which already spend more than $3 billion for lead-acid batteries each year. CellEra also plans to target the diesel-generator, telecommunications and information-technology markets.
Further into the future, the company also seems to be considering the elusive vehicle market. Christian Schütz, a partner at BrainsToVentures, told the Financial Times’ German edition that he expects CellEra to introduce fuel cells for hybrid cars by 2015.
Gottesfeld shied away from giving a date, saying that “given the flux in this market today, I would not venture to make any projections.” Still, he added that the technology could work “very nicely and cost-effectively” with batteries to extend the range of electric vehicles in the future.
If CellEra succeeds in significantly lowering costs, it could help fuel cells overcome one of its key obstacles. Fuel-cell companies, delivering huge promises and few mass-market products for decades, have long been an easy target for skeptics. The technology’s ability to convert fuel, such as hydrogen, into electricity with no emissions other than water vapor has led automakers to tout fuel cells as the next big thing for vehicles since at least 1993, when Ballard Power Systems originally demonstrated a fuel cell in a vehicle and planned to make it available in just a few years. But high costs, as well as infrastructure issues and some technical challenges, have kept the technology in the wings.
The CellEra announcement is part of a spate of recent news, including advances from automakers, customer announcements (see here and here) and new government programs in the U.S. and the UK, that may help to bring back a bit of optimism about the potential for fuel cells.
Proterra Names Green Bus Plant Site, Closes in on Funding
Josie Garthwaite - Automotive
All well and good, but will this project sit in limbo, awaiting a green light on funds from the Department of Energy, like so many other green vehicle manufacturing plans? No, spokesperson Sarahjane Sacchetti told us today. She said a private equity investment is “being finalized,” and incentives have already been secured at the state and local level for the project.
Sacchetti said Proterra will likely pursue federal funding to help with integration of Proterra’s energy storage and drive systems into certain classes of vehicles. Proterra could also see benefits federal support for greener transit projects. Sacchetti tells us 21 transit agencies around the country have requested government funding for the purchase of more than $400 million worth of Proterra vehicles.
Founded in 2004, Proterra isn’t the only startup working to deploy next-gen hybrid and electric vehicle technology in a bus market that has been buoyed by stimulus funds in the U.S. and a government push for electric buses in China. Transit agencies and private bus fleet managers can dare to be early adopters because of their predictable demands. As Terry Copeland, CEO of battery maker Altairnano told us back in 2008, “They go out on fixed routes and come back to the same place every night where they can recharge."
Proterra plans to lease a 240,000-square-foot building at Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) in Greenville County, with the option to expand in coming years. According to a release from Clemson University, Greenville beat out competing sites in more than two dozen states. The area stands to gain some $68 million in investment and more than 1,300 jobs through the project over the next seven years, with construction expected to begin as early as this spring.
Daily Sprout
Katie Fehrenbacher - Misc
Hack-A-Credit: Last week hackers broke into online accounts and stole and resold carbon credits, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel — Wired.
The Yes Men @ Davos: Ha, ha. Supposedly the Yes Men put up this dubbed video of ADM CEO Patricia Woertz speaking from World Economic Forum — Grist.
Power Plants As Cap & Trade Guinea Pig?: “[S]enators are studying whether power plants should be the guinea pig industry for the nation’s first cap-and-trade system designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.” – New York Times, ClimateWire.
BYD’s E-6 Emerges As Chinese Cab: BYD fulfilled most of 100-vehicle order for the Shenzhen Taxi Company — AutoblogGreen.
It Was The Software!: Ford says it will upgrade the braking software on its Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids after a problem was discovered with braking according to Consumer Reports. Cars aren’t so good with beta releases. — Wall Street Journal.
Chinese Motorcycle Maker Eyes Tech From Superbike Startup Mission...
Josie Garthwaite - Startups
Mission Motors, the San Francisco startup working on high-performance electric motorcycles with lithium-ion batteries, has caught the eye of Chinese motorcycle maker Zongshen Power Machinery. The motorcycle blog Asphalt & Rubber this week picked up a translation of Chinese reports saying the firm has signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate with Mission Motors on development of electrical engine systems, and possibly invest in the startup.
While the investment and partnership have not been finalized at this point (the memo is more of a road map of how the pair will proceed if talks go well), the deal could be an important step for Mission Motors as it works to build a viable business model in a market that not too long ago sent pioneering electric scooter maker Vectrix into bankruptcy.
Mission Motors CEO and co-founder Forrest North told us last fall that the startup, angel-funded so far with at least $2.2 million, needed to raise less than $30 million over the next 3-5 years, and it had “really strong interest” at the time in discussions for pre-Series A financing. China Knowledge reports that part of Mission Motors and Zongshen’s memorandum of understanding calls for the startup to deliver a three-year development plan by the end of this month.
Mission Motors gave us a statement this morning from chief operating officer Jit Bhattacharya describing the arrangement with Zongshen, which the startup has identified as a “potential partner.” As part of an ongoing discussion, he said a strategic investment is under consideration, and, “We are exploring how we can leverage Mission Motors’ technology with Zongshen’s strengths in high volume, low-cost manufacturing to create a lower cost electric powertrain for the Chinese market.”
If the deal goes through it could support Mission Motors’ long-term goal of expanding beyond the luxury market (where Vectrix floundered) and into lower-priced commuter models. According to North, the company already has a larger trend working in its favor, with new opportunities opening up for electric motorcycle startups with the right technology. The industry has shifted, he told us last year, from large manufacturers showing general disinterest in startups’ plug-in technology to a point where they increasingly “see value in working with a startup" that's nimble and "technologically focused." North didn’t mention Zongshen at the time, but he told us many manufacturers were calling up the startup amid a rush to develop electric models. “Building up the technology internally,” he noted, “will take them much longer.”
Report: If A Quarter of U.S. Power Is Clean by 2025 = Jobs
Jeff St. John - clean power
A nationwide standard would result in 274,000 more jobs around the country than sticking to the status quo, and will be needed to help stave off job declines expected to come in the short term as tax incentives and stimulus funding for U.S. renewables start to slack off, the report found.
It isn't the first time someone has talked about a national goal for renewable energy. President Obama has called for a 25 percent national RES by 2025, and the Union of Concerned Scientists said in March that this would create 297,000 jobs and save consumers $64.3 billion in electricity and natural gas bills. While not quite so ambitious, the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill now cooling its heels in the House of Representatives, calls for the nation to get 20 percent of its power from renewables by 2020.
But Navigant's report — which also assumes shorter-term national RES's of 12 percent by 2014 and 20 percent by 2020 to get things going, and doesn't include energy efficiency as part of an RES, as Waxman-Markey does — says that its more aggressive framework would create about three times the number of jobs that would come from the House proposal.
About 30 states now have their own renewable energy mandates in place, with California's call for one-third of its power to come from renewables by 2020 among the most ambitious. But "Contrary to popular belief, a strong national RES will have major impacts in every state," Jay Paidipati, a Navigant managing consultant, said in a Thursday conference call. In fact, sticking with the status quo is likely to lead to job losses in 10 states over the next 15 years, compared to a 25-percent RES scenario, which would lead to job gains across every state, the report contends. About half of those jobs would be in manufacturing, and another quarter or so in construction and craft trades, but a fair share of white-collar jobs would also be created, the report found.
The idea of a national standard has traditionally faced opposition from states seen as lacking in the natural resources behind renewable energy — most notably, states in the Southeast, which lack the sunny skies of the Southwest or the strong winds of the Midwest to capture for power generation. But the southeast could make up those deficits by turning to hydropower, waste-to-energy and biomass energy in a big way, according to Navigant.
Much of the growth in biomass jobs — 60,000 by 2025, the report says — could come in states such as Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia. Robert Cleaves, CEO of the Biomass Power Association, said the Southeast was "unequivocally the future of this industry" — a clear call to Southeast states to get behind a renewables push they've so far been slow to adopt. (By the way, a national RES isn't quite as simple as each state getting 25 percent of its power from in-state renewable sources, as states and utilities could trade renewable energy credits with each other to reach the goal).
There's a lot that Navigant didn't tackle in its Thursday report, including just how much capital investment would be involved in getting a quarter of the nation's power from renewable resources by 2025, and what effects it would have on the price of electricity. Another question left unstudied was the impact of having — or not having — a price on carbon over that time. Of course, with President Obama publicly saying this week that carbon cap-and-trade is less likely to be included in ongoing work on national energy legislation this year (see Wall Street Journal), it might be wise to avoid making any assumptions on that point.
Images courtesy of Navigant.
Solar Startup 1366 Closes $5.2M, Signs New Customers
Jennifer Kho - Startups
The new cash comes after 1366 raised $4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, becoming the first (and so far, the only) photovoltaic startup to be selected. The MIT spinoff, founded in 2007, also previously raised $12.4 million back in March.
1366 is developing technologies to boost the efficiency – and lower the cost – of manufacturing conventional multicrystalline solar cells, starting with two machines: one that “texturizes” solar cells, giving them a surface texture that increases internal light refraction and boosts solar panel efficiency, and another that produces thinner conductive metal “fingers” on the cells, which cut costs and reduce shading, again increasing efficiency.
Craig Lund, director of business development for the Lexington, Mass.-based company, tells us the company is about to sign on its third customer for testing these tools and plans to install them in its customers’ pilot lines in the first half of next year. The company has signed confidentiality agreements and can’t yet disclose the names of its customers, Lund said, adding that all three are based in Europe. The company last year had expected to deliver a machine for its first customer this March.
In September, chief technology officer Emanuel Sachs said 1366’s technologies have already produced cells of almost 18 percent efficiency, and the company expects to hit 19 percent this year, at a cost only pennies per watt more than that of producing cells with 16 percent efficiency. Standard multicrystalline cells average approximately 16 percent efficiency, although the most efficient multicrysalline cells, such as those made by Kyocera, already have exceeded 18 percent efficiency.
With its ARPA-E money, 1366 also is researching a new way of making wafers by molding them directly from molten silicon, cutting out many steps in order to potentially cut costs by 70 percent, reduce silicon waste by 50 percent and further boost panel efficiencies to up to 20 percent, Lund said. Such low costs could make it more feasible to produce wafers in the United States instead of in China, especially if the U.S. market takes off, he added.
If the technology works as 1366 hopes, the company plans to manufacture wafers – instead of supplying equipment as it is with its other technologies – and sell them to solar-cell manufacturers, the same customers that it’s targeting with its first machines. It hopes to have a factory up and running by 2012, Lund said, adding that the company is hoping to help fund the manufacturing facility with a federal loan.
1366 also is hiring, Lund said. The company has grown from 12 to 26 employees and expects to reach 30 employees by next month, he said.
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