Worth reading up on/watching the webcast. More here.
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In case you didn’t catch it, it’s Massachusetts’ Clean Energy Week, and this is probably THE regional event showcasing clean energy startup companies that you’ll want to go check out, if you’re in the area.
More on the conference here.
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I walked away from Always On’s Going Green Conference a couple of weeks ago with one fascinating company on my brain: Genomatica. I’ve been waiting sometimes patiently - and largely not so - for a company like Genomatica to show up on my radar, because I’ve wanted a bigger picture of how we’re really going to get off oil. That’s the truth. There are too many products within the retail chain that require oil as a feedstock in the manufacturing of them, for me to have had all my questions answered from the partial solution sets that have been put on the table, including wind and solar.
Then Genomatica popped on my radar. And I was really intrigued.
Genomatica’s figured out how to make a commodity chemical - 1,4-butanediol (BDO) - from a renewable (instead of petrochemical) feedstock. BDO, for those of you wondering, is one of the world’s most important commodity chemicals, with approximately 3 billion pounds produced annually from oil and gas, and it is a key precursor to specialty solvents, plastics, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, certain automotive components, electrical and elecronics components, and apparel fibers. So if you’re wearing it, sitting on it, drinking from it - there’s a good chance a petrochemical feedstock was used in the making of that “it”. So let me say this one more time, just so the enormity of the implication sinks in: the same commodity chemical that was used to produce your “it” can now be made withOUT a petroleum-based (i.e. Gas or oil) feedstock, AND it can be made at a lower cost than what manufacturers are paying for their current petroleum-based feedstock. [Currently, projected costs show that even with factoring in the cost of collecting the feedstock (cellulose to sugar), the process should be 30% cheaper than processes that use oil and natural gas.]
Not surprising to hear, Genomatica plans to offer a broad range of biologically produced industrial chemicals from a variety of renewable feedstocks, ultimately, though they’ve begun their process using sucrose and genetically engineered E. coli. (Yes, sugar and E. coli. No, not the kind of sugar on your kitchen counter. Industrial fermentation processes like Genomatica’s do not use the refined sugar that you have in your kitchen. Industrial fermentation uses what is commonly called “raw sugar.” And with Genomatica’s technology it is conceivable to use direct sugar cane syrup before it is even processed into “raw sugar.” It’s cheaper and less energy intensive; to create BDO a significant amount of energy as heat is required when using oil or gas.)
Genomatica’s new method using engineered bacteria is much less energy intensive because the BDO is made in fermentation tanks at normal temperatures below 105 degrees Fahrenheit or 40 degrees Celsius. The bacteria has been altered so that it can thrive in water with high concentrations of BDO, and this is interesting to know because the E. coli that Genomatica has genetically altered in this process secretes BDO - growing faster the more it produces more BDO. Even more interesting is that e. coli can only grow if it secretes BDO. The sugar water concentration, if you guessed, does indeed act to stimulate growth. The BDO is then purified, separated from the water.
I would expect this new method of creating BDO to become more and more conveniently available to the market; it theoretically should also dictate greater security of supply since customers shouldn’t face the same degree of sourcing challenges with sugar as a feedstock that they do with petroleum as a feedstock because the amount of sugar needed for the global chemicals market is very small relative to the global sugar market. For example, four world-scale BDO plants would represent about 1 percent of world sugar supply. Sugar is produced all over the world and can be grown in a wide range of places, so producers have the capacity to respond and increase production to match demand more easily than is the case with petroleum-based feedstock suppliers.
Granted, nothing’s a sure thing, and Genomatica is aware of the potential for market dynamics to shift such that sugar prices could rise significantly; I’ve been told that the company can re-engineer the micro-organism to use other more favorable feedstocks. That’s good.
I personally don’t think it’s going to take too long to convince BDO producers to use the process to create plastic. It’s a no-brainer for BDO producers, it seems to me, so prospective clients should be clamboring. The company just needs to execute flawlessly. And to that point, my sense is that Genomatica’s got a world-class CEO on board; and there’s something else special, too, obviously, as I’ve heard through the grapevine that people are begging to come work for the company, even if there’s no position open to fill. And the company has strong venture backing from vcs such as Mohr Davidow, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Alloy Ventures. This technology’s so disruptive from my humble perspective that even if there are a couple of other players in the market, Genomatica’s on its way. I expect this company to be a home-run for its investors, BDO producers and consumers, ultimately. It is, quite frankly, a company that gives me real hope for the future.
More on Genomatica here and here.
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More here.
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My friend Scott posted this the other day, originally for WorldChanging.com. I’m reposting, as I thought you might like to read…it’s also my way quiet of introducing the project Scott and I are working on together…
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More here.
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Lots to write about, lots behind on, and not enough time, as per usual. There are some great things moving forward —
Enhanced Geothermal Systems Research Awarded $43.1 Million by US Department of Energy
$1.6B smart meter program starts in California
CALIFORNIA SELECTED AS PARTNER STATE FOR CeBIT 2009
California’s Selection Marks First Time a State, Not a Country, Will Serve as Partner
And because I am certain there a few stressed readers out there today, for those of you needing something soothing to look at in the midst of this market mess - there’s a lot to be hopeful about, and many great opportunities just under one’s nose…
11 Buildings Wrapped in Gorgeous Green and Living Walls
And stay tuned for more. I’ll be writing about Genomatica next…as soon as I come up for air!
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In case you haven’t caught it — more here and here.
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I got this in my inbox this morning..
This comes as no surprise, really, as you know water cost increases are coming, but very interesting to track…
PARK RIDGE, N.J. (September 24, 2008) – The annual survey conducted by the NUS Consulting Group found that the average price of water in the United States soared by 7.3 percent for the period ending July 1, 2008. The survey, which includes 51 water systems located throughout the country, revealed the highest price paid was in Boston, MA at $5.76 per one thousand gallons (“KGal”) while consumers in Savannah, GA enjoyed the lowest water price at $1.09 per KGal. The average cost of water in 2008 for the US was $2.81 per KGal. When including related sewer charges, the survey found that the national average price rose to $7.08 per KGal – an increase of 6.8 percent from July 2007. Since 2003, average surveyed water prices in the US have increased by nearly 30 percent.
More than two-thirds of the surveyed cities had increased their water charges. Some of the more notable increases included New Orleans, LA (+51.9%), St Louis, MO (+32.4%), Fort Smith, AR (+29.6%), Sioux Falls, SD (+18.2%), Los Angeles, CA (+17.9%), Binghamton, NY (+16.6%), Kansas City, MO (+16.3%), San Francisco, CA (+15.8%), Hackensack, NJ (+15.4%) and Chicago, IL (+15.0%). Of the water systems surveyed, none reported a decrease in pricing over the past year.
“With so much attention being paid to oil and gasoline markets, Americans may neglect to notice the increases in their water charges,” remarked Richard Soultanian, co-president of NUS Consulting Group. “While US prices are considered modest by international comparison, this most precious commodity is truly our sleeping giant in terms of cost impacting each and every consumer.”
Highest Water Cost (Per KGal) Highest Water & Sewer Cost (Per KGal)
1. Boston, MA $5.76 +5.6% 1. Seattle, WA $14.28 +5.1%
2. Huntington, WV $5.61 0.0% 2. Atlanta, GA $13.28 0.0%
3. Pittsburgh, PA $5.21 0.0% 3. Boston, MA $12.96 +5.6%
4. Newport, NH $4.86 0.0% 4. San Francisco, CA $12.76 +11.0%
5. San Francisco, CA $4.00 +15.8% 5. Portland, ME $11.67 +6.4%
Lowest Water Cost (Per KGal) Lowest Water & Sewer Cost (Per KGal)
1. Savannah, GA $1.09 +8.0% 1. Memphis, TN $2.43 +8.9%
2. Des Moines, IA $1.23 +2.8% 2. Chicago, IL $2.81 +15.6%
3. Biloxi, MS $1.26 0.0% 3. Greenville, MS $2.92 +6.3%
4. Greenville, MS $1.46 +14.0% 4. El Paso, TX $3.56 0.0%
5. Chicago, IL $1.53 +15.0% 5. Biloxi, MS $3.98 0.0%
NUS Consulting Group is the world’s leader in energy and telecommunications consulting services. Employing over 400 individuals in 11 countries, the company provides innovative and cost-effective expertise for its clients. Privately held since 1933, the company has redirected more than $4 billion in energy and telecommunication savings from utilities to its clients.
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More here.
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I sat on the press call for this, and will have more to add as soon as I have a moment to sit down and write. In the meantime - this report is very important. Please read on.
Washington, D.C. (September 9, 2008) — As America confronts the current energy crisis, a new report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and partner labor and environmental groups shows that the U.S. can create two million jobs by investing in clean energy technologies that will strengthen the economy and fight global warming. The report finds that investing in clean energy would create four times as many jobs as spending the same amount of money within the oil industry.
“This new report shows that investing in clean energy is a win-win solution. Shifting to clean energy will put more people to work, provide consumers relief at the pump, help reduce global warming pollution and revitalize our economy at a time when many Americans are hurting,” said Frances Beinecke, President of NRDC.
“Green Recovery – A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy” analyzes the potential for a two year $100 billion green investment program – which would be comparable to the size of the April 2008 federal stimulus package dedicated to consumer rebates – to be an engine for job creation in the U.S. This type of investment is a component of a broader clean energy strategy to create a low-carbon economy and reduce global warming pollutions.
The program could be paid for with proceeds from auctions of carbon permits under a global warming cap-and-trade program that will drive private investments into clean energy and raise public revenue through carbon permit auctions. A cap-and-trade program will enable America to reduce global warming pollution to the levels science indicates are needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
The package is illustrative of the potential for clean energy – and specifically green infrastructure investments – to create new jobs and strengthen the economy. The specific package would invest in six green infrastructure priorities: retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency, expanding mass transit and freight rail, constructing “smart” electrical grid transmission systems, wind power, solar power, and next-generation biofuels.
The report also shows that the vast majority of the two million jobs gained from this initial $100 billion investment in clean energy would be in the same areas of employment that people already work in today, in every region and state of the country; for example: constructing wind farms creates jobs for sheet metal workers, machinists and truck drivers, among many others. Increasing the energy efficiency of buildings through retrofitting requires roofers, insulators and building inspectors. Expanding mass transit systems employs civil engineers, electricians, and dispatchers.
In addition to creating two million jobs nationwide over two years, a $100 billion initial investment in our clean energy future would:
* Create nearly four times more jobs than spending the same amount of money within the oil industry and 300,000 more jobs than a similar amount of spending directed toward household consumption.
* Create roughly triple the number of good jobs — paying at least $16 dollars an hour — as spending the same amount of money within the oil industry.
* Bolster employment especially in construction and manufacturing. Construction employment has fallen from 8 million to 7.2 million over the past two years due to the housing bubble collapse. The Green Recovery program can, at the least, bring back these lost 800,000 construction jobs.
The report proposes that the $100 billion of initial investments fund:
* $50 billion for tax credits. This would assist private businesses and homeowners to finance both commercial and residential building retrofits, as well as investments in renewable-energy systems.
* $46 billion in direct government spending. This would support public building retrofits, the expansion of mass transit, freight rail and smart electrical-grid systems, and new investments in renewable energy.
* $4 billion for federal loan guarantees. This would underwrite private credit that is extended to finance building retrofits and investments in renewable energy.
The report was written by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, under commission by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and released by NRDC and a coalition of labor and environmental groups. The authors of the report are Robert Pollin, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, James Heintz, and Helen Scharber of PERI. For the complete report findings go to
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/pdf/green_recovery.pdf
For the 34 state fact sheets go to: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/green_recovery.html
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Beijing.
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I’m always fascinated by game-changing technologies and companies and their leaders - those companies that turn industries on their head, challenge the status quo, build solid businesses, and are those which you know will always be the instigators of change in industries that are traditionally slow to move to their next evolution of growth. And there’s always a company or two in every industry that really stand out when it comes to innovation…some company doing something really smart that inevitably causes others to follow suit. It takes quite a bit of courage to be that company, you might say, but that’s what change takes. One company that’s making a serious dent in the building materials world is Serious Materials.
Some may say Serious doesn’t need any more press or attention because of all the press they’ve already received. (Which I chalk up to great product, which makes it easy for a well-trained marketing and pr team to execute, combined with a well-trained team and something that just blows the socks off anything else around it). I say the company’s products and technologies aren’t getting enough of either. And Serious is concerned that that there isn’t enough awareness around the built environment, too, and what it’s contributing to global warming. And that’s really where Kevin Surace and I started our conversation last week, talking about the fact that the story that compelled Serious into existence isn’t one that’s well told, nor one well understood by consumers.
A little background info for you all:
The built environment is responsible for generating – and requiring – more energy than any other sector there is. 52% of CO2 worldwide each year goes just to making and occupying buildings (12% to make materials and 40% to operate buildings). Gypsum drywall, as most of us know, was designed almost 100 years ago. Gypsum drywall takes huge amounts of energy to manufacture. A large drywall plant uses 5 trillion BTUs of natural gas a year and generates as much CO2 as do 66,000 cars on the road. That’s just a mind-boggling set of numbers.
There are more than 85 dry wall plants operating today in the U.S., making 30 billion + square feet of product every year, and over a billion panels a year are manufactured in the United States alone. The market is huge. Note: the EPA doesn’t regulate CO2 today for drywall plants, or any other plants yet, as far as I know.
Contributing to that 52% in CO2 emissions is the energy which has to be generated additionally – due to inefficient windows which let our heat (or air conditioning) literally out the window. The window industry is a $22 billion dollar industry, roughly split in half: half in residential, and half in commercial. That half that’s residential is largely a retrofit market opportunity, but this is an industry that’s not the fastest-moving boat in the river. Current Energy Star window ratings actually desperately need to be increased if they’re to really make a dent in pushing CO2 emissions lower. And the majority of consumers don’t know enough about windows, window Energy Star ratings, or how their windows are contributing to increasing CO2 emissions to know they need to be voicing their concerns and pushing for change.
So with an eye on development of environmental products, and a mission to rewrite the book on building materials in order to reduce the amount of CO2 being generated in the production of these products, Serious Materials went to work first on redesigning gypsum using recycled materials and virtually zero CO2. The company today is getting set to launch the drywall technology they’ve developed called EcoRock, which is the first zero-CO2 drywall manufacturing process to come to market – made from 80% recycled material (pre-consumer waste combined with other raw materials. “It heats, cools and finishes itself in a long line, so there’s no need for dryers, calciners, natural gas…nothing,” says Surace, meaning that very little energy is used during the product’s core production, which translates to virtually zero CO2 emissions, and billions of pounds in C02 emissions saved each year. Additionally, Surace says, Serious Materials can add features into drywall that people could never get before. “Drywall is really a decorative product.” I can only think of lots of very inspired architects and interior designers suddenly.
The company is also coming out with a line of high performance windows – note their recent acquisition of Alpen Windows. Alpen was named a 2007 Top 10 Green Building Product by Building Green, and Alpen Windows and Alpenglass deliver center-of-glass R-values up to R-20. Current single pane windows have an R-value of R-1. Double pane glass windows with low emissivity coating have an R-value of only R-2 to R-3. “Consumers need to start asking for full frame R values on the windows they buy, and requiring R-5 or higher,” says Surace. (More on R-Values here: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-value_(insulation)].) “And the public should be demanding a carbon footprint on everything the public buys!” I couldn’t agree more.
I asked Kevin where he thought things would be in 10, or say even 20 to 50 years. He said to me, “Lara, in 30 years we’re out of oil and virtually out of gas; cars will go to the grid, and the vast majority of our materials are going to be made with zero energy. Now, everything has come out of the Industrial Revolution, which consumed tons of energy. But just because we said then that that was the right formula doesn’t mean it’s the right one today. One has to consider - energy costs have gone up, so the fact that we said we’d use lots of energy and hardly any labor might no longer be the right formula. There’s no business case for energy use today. And you really don’t want to be on the wrong side of the energy/carbon curve – it’s dumb. So not only are we doing the right thing regarding carbon emissions – we’re doing it better.”
As I said, when I see a company that’s an innovator, building a solid business, with a game changing technology/approach to an industry, I’m always fascinated – largely because I find it interesting to watch what happens to the rest of a ‘system’ when a catalyst of change is introduced into the dynamic. Change is interesting. It’s certainly not boring, and it means growth.
So if you ask me, I can think of two industries who I hope are up to the challenge to change: the drywall industry, which would be exceptionally smart to follow Serious Materials’ lead, and the windows industry. Somebody should put into motion an R-5 national window-retrofit program that a green corps can then go execute.
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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I pretty much needed the month of August to take a time out. I abstained from blogging. Instead I watched the Olympics, followed election coverage, watched the markets, sat and vegged in front of the tv and learned about things like bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), biked and walked around Park City on vacation with Jon, did some crosswords, tested some products that had been sent to me to try out (one, an energy-efficient vacuum [the new Eureka envirovac]; another was a Medport, LLC BPA-free ‘sports-bottle’ that has a water-sanitizing filter built in, called the LivePURE Fit & Fresh Filtered Water Bottle; and another was a Tersano Lotus Sanitizing System), took lots of hike-like walks and naps, and did a bunch of research. And here it is September and time to get back at it. Where the time goes, I don’t know, but August was very nice and interesting, with all that was going on.
Among other things Jon and I did this August was attend a dinner (for which the evening’s topic was discussion of green business issues) at the lovely SF home of Peter Kuperman, who I met through LinkedIn (as did everyone else at the dinner). Since that dinner, I’m of the opinion at this point that Peter has a good shot at becoming a professional chef, after eating my way through the dishes served that evening-all of which were delectable. About the event itself: everyone in attendance was fun to talk with. One guy was there from Treehugger.com, as was his girlfriend, who’s with Saatchi & Saatchi S; someone else showed up who incidentally is a friend of ours and also happens to be a Green Programs Specialist with the Department of Public Health, and she in turn brought along one of her friends, who handles Waste Diversion for Macy’s West (though she’s about to take on several of Macy’s stores’ waste diversion programmatic efforts). Then someone from KEMA showed up, as did someone from URS and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. And Ecounit’s CEO Kent Ragen was the night’s featured guest. He was there with his lovely wife Naoko, and he talked to us about what his company Ecounit is doing to connect eco-conscious companies with their environmentally-aware consumers. “We reward consumers for taking eco-friendly actions,” Ragen told me. “Today we offer green-themed surveys so that consumers can provide feedback to companies about green products and brand perception related to the environment. In the near future we will be launching programs with grocery stores that reward consumers for utilizing reusable bags; eventually the program will be extended to other industries that want to motivate their customers to take eco-friendly actions. EcoUnit participants are rewarded with EcoUnit credits which they can put toward carbon offsets, tree planting, and other eco-friendly products.” And we talked about Portland. Being at heart the Oregonian I am, and seeing that Kent’s from Portland, it was fun talking home state stuff, and by the end of the evening, Jon and I concurred that we’d had a lovely evening, and how refreshing a party it was. For the curious, I’ll tell you that Peter’s “Chef By Night” parties have become so popular that he’s wisely outsourced event management activities to the delightful Erin Reeser, who’s clearly a whiz at event planning, guest relations, and keeping things from burning on stoves as much as she’s good at keeping Peter from worrying about what’s happening to things on the stove. Guests are encouraged to roll up their sleeves and help out in the kitchen, too, which I always think is part of the fun. If you’d like to find out more, or to get on Peter’s invite list for the next “Chef by Night” dinner, I suggest you ping Peter via LinkedIn. So that was one very fun night in August.
Also in August I had an opportunity to speak to the guys at TechForward, which is a startup doing a great thing for consumers purchasing new consumer electronics: they’re working on a program with consumer electronics retailers to offer consumers a guaranteed buyback plan for their electronics, building for consumers a way to easily support a reuse/recycle process for all their consumer electronics (caveat: not mobile phones though). The company offers a guaranteed future trade in value for your electronics, free shipping as well as a box to put it all in, and then takes care of disposal in an environmentally friendly manner. We’ll see how the company progresses, but they’ve got funding, and I expect to see them grow. NEA and First Round Capital have put money in, and the company is talking to all the major CE retailers about putting guaranteed buy back plans – even talking to people on the extended warranty side, big box retailers. The company’s reached an agreement with SYX Services, a company that is an affiliate of, and provides management services to, TigerDirect.com and CompUSA.com, to offer Guaranteed Buyback Plans via their web sites and retail store locations. The plans will be offered through both TigerDirect and CompUSA. One thing that I think is most interesting about the organization is the concept they’ve coined, which is also the name of a Consortium they’ve launched, called “Ownership 2.0.” I think you’ll be interested to read more about it, and it hits a trend spot on. To quote their website: “Ownership is changing. Across all types of consumer products, people are realizing that long-term ownership often doesn’t make sense anymore. Ownership 1.0 basically says: buy an item, own it, then either 1) throw it away 2) recycle it, or 3) resell it; whereas Ownership 2.0 realizes at point-of-sale that you don’t want to own the item forever, and want to take steps to be able to reclaim value from the item when acquiring it. More here: http://ownership20.com/.
As I mentioned above, I also had an opportunity to test Eureka’s envirovac, and the BPA-free water bottle from Fit & Fresh and the Tersano Sanitizing System. About Eureka’s envirovac vacuum: is there anyone who WOULDN’T be interested to use a vacuum that a) works and b) is more energy efficient than your previous incarnations of vacuums have been? I don’t think so. Eureka generally makes very good vacuum cleaners, and their new envirovac uses an 8-amp motor instead of a 12-amp motor, comes in 100% recycled cardboard packaging, and includes a washable HEPA filter. The company tells me this vacuum uses 33% less energy than a 12-amp motor vacuum, and all I can say is “hey great!” It works, it worked very well, in fact, and you will likely only notice that your carpets get just as clean as they did before, if not more clean, depending upon what you use to vacuum at home. Something to consider, too: interestingly, according to Eureka’s media kit, the average American household vacuums about an hour/week using a 12-amp motor. According to Eureka, if only 25 million households in the U.S. Used an envirovac, 6.25 million kilowatt hours of energy would be saved – an energy cutback that would reduce CO2 emissions by a chunk as well. And anything we can do to reduce CO2 emissions we need to do. More info here: http://www.vacuumgreen.com.
The Fit & Fresh LivPURE water bottle intrigues me, because it’s got the portability I would want, and it would keep a lot of bottled water drinkers from buying bottled water potentially, and therefore keep a bunch of plastic bottles out of landfills, though it’s not quite as far along the purification spectrum as I look forward to seeing something like this eventually be. That it’s made out of a non-toxic material, serves as an alternative to bottled water, yet still is a portable little water purifier, is nice. The bottle’s been tested and certified by the Water Quality Association, too, though again, don’t expect it to purify everything out of water. Right now, Fit & Fresh can really only remove up to 50% of the aesthetic chlorine (and therefore the associated negative taste and/or smell from the chlorine) from the water it filters, meaning you’ll generally get better tasting water than you might from some taps. And it does some other minor filtration stuff, from what I can tell, but what I really want is a portable bottle purifier that can purify what this one can (up to 75 gallons of water), but goes so far as to remove metals like lead or arsenic from the water being filtered. Maybe it does, and I just don’t know, but it doesn’t appear to do so. It’s got a carbon-activated filter. More info here: http://fit-fresh.com/products/livpure/.
Tersano’s Lotus Sanitizing System is one of those things that some of you will likely want to check out. Aside from Tersano being a winner of Canada’s 2007/2008 Top 10 CleanTech Competition, and a TIME Magazine Best Invention 2006 winner, this St. Catharines, Ontario-based company is also interesting because it gives consumers and cleaning professionals a way to clean and sanitize chemically-free. The company’s technologies use a company-patented progressive ozone technology process called Oxyshield that enables you to reduce bacteria and pesticides on foods, or sanitize surfaces. I’m finding myself using the Lotus a lot, and since I clean all the time with water, I happen to like this a lot. We’ve also tried it on strawberries and it really extended the shelf-life of the strawberries.
I’ll have more later this week, but for now, I’ll sign off with the following quick additions, since, as always, there are some upcoming events to make note of (and as always, I’m certain I’ve missed some very important ones, but the list for now will have to suffice…):
Aquatech Amsterdam
Always On’s GoingGreen San Francisco
West Coast Green
The Green Manufacturing Summit on October 16-17, 2008 in San Francisco
And the Urban Revision competition.
Other news that at least I found interesting:
-Borealis and Uponor Study Water Footprint Of Plastics Industry
-RoofRay Your Building’s Solar Potential
And lastly, I was asked to post the following, which I said I would do, since I’m a fan of Robert Redford’s. I’ll leave you with FIGHTING GOLIATH: TEXAS COAL WARS.
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In case you have missed it, the California Clean Tech Open has some interesting finalists this year. Be sure to check out what’s happening. More here.
Tonight, thanks to Nick Allen from Morgan Stanley Research, here’s the latest on this evening’s Renewable Energy Forum: The Obama and McCain campaigns will present their positions on energy policy and the role of renewables, followed by a moderated discussion of attendees’ questions in an event entitled ‘Renewable Energy Forum - Presidential Campaign 2008′.
Details
- Wednesday, August 13 at the Marine Memorial Association, 609 Sutter St. San Francisco. Doors open at 5:30pm, the event starts promptly at 6pm, will end around 7:30pm, and be followed by a wine & beer reception.
- Sign up today while there are still seats.
Surrogates from both campaigns and a moderator will engage in a collaborative discussion of their candidates’ positions. The presidential campaign surrogates are Tim Carmichael, Senior Campaign Advisor for Obama ‘08, and Kurt E. Yeager, California Chair of the McCain Energy Coalition. The event will take place at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre on Wednesday, August 13 @ 6:00 PM and is sponsored by the Marines’ Memorial Association, the Renewable Energy Business Network (REBN) and the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Written questions will be solicited from the audience during the speaker presentations to be presented by the moderator, James L. Sweeney, Director, Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency and Professor, Management Science and Engineering, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Stanford University. Mr. Carmichael is Senior Director of Policy at the Coalition for Clean Air. Mr. Yeager is the former President and CEO of the Electric Power Institute of Palo Alto.
The Renewable Energy Business Network enables researchers and business professionals with an interest in renewable energy to connect with one another to promote the growth of the renewable energy industry. REBN provides opportunities for networking, collaboration, education and business creation. For more information visit www.rebn.org
Something else has caught my eye: Dow Jones’ Alternative Energy Innovations 2008. The list of presenters at this year’s conference includes a long enough list of companies to keep you reading and researching for a while. Worth checking out.
Social Capital Markets 2008 is also upcoming. Certainly you can’t separate the social contribution cleantech as an industry is making to society - whether we’re talking water technologies or solar, or whatnot - and certainly there’s a real need to re-think the metrics that used in creating financial valuations of companies - where metrics may include measurement of the intangibles as well as tangibles. Anyway, I figure you can learn a lot at a conference like this. A list of speakers for Social Capital Markets 2008 is here.
And World Water Week in Stockholm’s upcoming, kicking off on Sunday.
Re. companies…if you haven’t seen it, check out what Bluesign is doing. Good for them. And I’m rather fascinated at the moment by Solarbee. More research to do on them, but I’m intrigued…you might be, too.
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My Tuesday afternoon this week I was busy scribbling notes in a press briefing, caught up in an announcement that should have sent some shock waves reverberating across the country, certainly, if not elsewhere. The backdrop for the announcement? The California Clean Tech Open.
Significantly, a new National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT) has been formed by the Directors of the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories (Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) and the Department of Energy. The announcement was made by outgoing Assistant DoE Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner, who, in conjunction with an announcement of the Collaborative, also announced the launch of the DoE’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) at the latest California Clean Tech Open Event Tuesday. In addition, NREL, as a DoE-sponsored National Lab, is providing $100,000 to the CCTO on behalf of DOE/NLCBT to facilitate initiation and development of a green building awards category under the competition.
Let me spell that out a little more clearly: as a result of the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007 (Note: EISA, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush into law in December, calls for all new commercial buildings to be so efficient in energy consumption and in on-site renewable energy generation that they offset any energy use from the grid), there are statutory authorizations of up to $250 million a year going to green building initiatives. [(1) $20,000,000 for fiscal year 2008; (2) $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010; (3) $100,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2011 and 2012; and (4) $200,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2013 through 2018.] The first $40 million is going to green buildings; and the very first $100,000 of that $40 million is going to the California Clean Tech Open. This should give you a sense of the importance and critical role that the CCTO is playing in making all this stuff ‘go’. And this news comes on the heels of hearing that the CA Clean Tech Open is going to be blowing out the Program in a wider scope, with a regional Clean Tech Open coming soon - Denver having been picked as the next stop, if I have my facts straight. (NREL’s in CO, so it makes sense.)
Per Marc Gottschalk, a Co-founder of the Clean Tech Open and a partner at the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, “The fact that the Department of Energy and its National Labs chose sponsorship of the California Clean Tech Open Green Building Prize as one of its first acts of collaboration under this new initiative underscores their commitment to and recognition of critical importance of public/private cooperation. We are committed to working alongside them and our intrepid entrepreneurs and inventors to catalyze new clean tech enterprises that can achieve Net Zero energy buildings as rapidly as humanly possible.”
The day marked also the very first time all members of the Collaborative met formally, and to follow on this historic meeting, in the press room for the briefing were Karsner; David E. Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency, Office of Technology Development, EERE; Steven Chu, Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Bobi Garrett, Associate Director, Strategic Development & Analysis, NREL; Michael Kluse, Director of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Robert Rosner, Director, Argonne National Laboratory; and Tom Mason, Director Oak Ridge National Lab.
The urgency in the room was palpable. Karsner was clear: “We have no time to lose. This is about galvanizing the leading minds and the leading resources to solve this problem.”
The Commercial Building Initiative [CBI], includes
The National Laboratory Collaborative for Building Technologies – a network of lab experts
Supporting Consortium – a public/private partnership to provide “arms and legs”
Partner Consortia – building sector groups with which the DOE will consult
Commercial Building Integration R&D – congressionally funded R&D efforts
Commercial Lighting Solutions – partnerships to accelerate commercialization of advanced lighting
Commercial Building Energy Alliances – key partners from major sectors sharing best practices
- Retailer Energy Alliance (launched in February 2008)
- Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance (forming steering committee 08)
- Institutional Energy Alliances
Hospital Energy Alliance (forming steering committee 08)
Higher Education Energy Alliance (09)
State and Local Government Energy Alliance (09)
- Commercial Building Industry Alliance (09)
National Accounts (NAs) – key industry partners conducting cost-shared RD&D
So on a national level, the Laboratory Collaborative will serve as the platform from which to accelerate transformation of the biggest energy consuming sector in the United States: commercial buildings. Specifically, the Collaborative’s mission is to make Net Zero buildings commercially viable and profitable. (In case you’re not familiar with the term, Net-Zero Energy Commercial Buildings are grid-integrated buildings capable of generating as much energy as they consume through advanced efficiency technologies and on-site generation systems such as solar power and geothermal energy.) That means making profitable the technologies that will support Net Zero Energy Efficient commercial buildings. So technologies such as building envelope technologies, solid state lighting, smart electronics, intelligent grid technologies, building simulation software, etc., all come into play here.
Why our commercial building infrastructure, you ask? Because commercial buildings and homes account for such an enormous percentage of our domestic energy use. The buildings sector consumes more energy than either industrial or transportation, surpassing industrial as the number one consuming sector in 1995. Buildings account for 72 percent of U.S. electricity use and 55 percent of natural gas use, including the gas used at power plants to generate electricity. Commercial buildings represent over one-third of electricity usage and are big contributors to peak usage. By dramatically reducing building loads through advanced design, intelligent building operation, and innovative smart technology, buildings will require less electricity overall and have reduced peak demands, including peak cooling demands. And where much of a medium or large building’s cooling energy use is actually due to “internal” heat gains - from equipment and lights - as well as from windows, more efficient lights and equipment and better windows dramatically reduce the cooling and therefore energy demands of buildings.
NREL’s Bobi Garrett quietly noted, “This opportunity represented here is a very significant one…it’s not often that the Department brings the total system to bear on a problem.” So why address the problem just now, and not earlier?
“This has been a time of evolutionary understanding of the challenges we face, and simply put, the point of discovery was not the point of action. Everyone has failed abysmally to galvanize and address the problem.” There’s truth in that. It has taken “a broader societal motivation” for things to reach a tipping point.
Karsner himself noted the historic significance of a Collaborative finally coming together around the issue. “I can’t emphasize enough how special it is, in terms of the U.S. Government’s capacity to, at scale, and in a timeframe that’s consequential, have this kind of firepower on the same stage, now postured to perform. We can now be a force greater than the sum of its parts.” Kluse concurred. “The improvements we’re trying to make are bigger than any one lab alone,” he said. Kluse’s lab has a long history in supporting the DOE’s mission in energy efficiency, not unlike the other labs in the Collaborative. Steven Chu is clearly a man concerned. “This is an emergency that’s as visible as the iceburg a mile away,” he noted during the press briefing, emphasizing that it only requires just a mere 5 degree shift higher in temperatures to wreak havoc on life on earth in very many ways. “We need everybody to pitch in. Essentially, we have to make this profitable. If buildings represent more than 40% of all the energy we consume, then including transportation – this is a very big deal. You can get rid of 3/4 of the energy we use just in buildings alone.” Chu expressed to me after the briefing that he was very concerned that the American public doesn’t grasp the enormity of the situation.
The new Collaborative, by the way, is backed by the DoE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Building Technologies Program.
The roll out goal is development of a multi-year plan and time table to achieve Net Zero Energy in new commercial buildings by 2025. All climate zones in the country will be included in the plan. The 5 labs mentioned will be responsible for developing the multi-year plan in the context of both policy and business plans that bring solutions to the table, such as those being developed by CCTO competition entrants and alums. Simultaneously investment will be made in a multi-year plan for existing buildings under the existing statute. The National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT), will allow the DOE and the five above mentioned of its national laboratories to work closely on the research, validation, and commercialization priorities that are critical to the success of Net Zero energy buildings, essentially pushing political gating factors aside, and combining the scientific resources of the five Laboratories to tackle the problem.
This is huge, folks…
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You know, if Boulder were closer to an ocean, and the West Coast, and the world of nanotech, Jon and I would probably be there. My younger brother loved his time there, and there are definitely some cool companies there.
Take, for instance, Tendril. I had the opportunity to sit down with Adrian Tuck, Tendril’s CEO, and a few members of his staff a week or so ago, to learn more about the company and the market-transformational things they’re doing. Over hot chocolate, we talked about Tendril’s Residential Energy Ecosystem, affectionately known as TREE.
Founded in 2004, Tendril this year shot from 17 employees at year’s start to the 60+ it’s at today, and there’s no sign of growth slowing for the company. With 20 million raised thus far (12 million in their B round raised), and plans to raise more later in the year, CEO Tuck is in ‘go’ mode. He’s leveraging his expertise in large scale wireless sensor and control networks to build solutions for the energy market – specifically residential energy management systems (REMS) today. The goal? To deliver a comprehensive and innovative residential energy management system (REMS) that will interactively engage consumers in energy efficiency and demand response – all in collaboration with utilities. With residential energy demand 30% of demand and growing, and with the insight into customer consumption patterns that TREE will be able to provide utilities with, the timing for Tendril couldn’t be better. We all know consumers are being pinched by high gas prices and soaring food costs, and there isn’t a one of us who doesn’t want to be able to control how much energy we use and when. And just think: if you’ve ever been one to not understand how to read your monthly energy bills, well – this could fix that problem.
Tendril’s got a whole range of products that will be made available to consumers through their utilities – ( I had a chance to play with Tendril’s in-home display, and also got a look at the company’s outlet product, Tendril Volt, which will tell consumers exactly how much it’s costing them to use various appliances by outlet): the Tendril Insight (in-home display), Tendril Transport (gateway), and Tendril Set-Point (thermostat). Tendril will also be able to recognize and support for certain third party products.
Tendril’s REMS is a platform that supports all utility programs, with the idea being that an open, extensible software platform will simplify and expedite the deployment and management of REMS. The server is designed to scale, and interfaces with utility back-office apps. Consumers will have access to real-time energy consumption and financial information through a web portal or window, which will allow for a predictive, personalized, and intuitive experience (since the company has developed an intuitive install and interface component for measuring energy consumption by appliance). In end-to-end fashion, Tendril’s Energy EcoSystem Server supports broadband and AMI meter backhaul network environments as well as having that front end connection to the consumer.
What do you have to do to install TREE? Just plug in the display and gateway to your power supplies, then take the cable that’s supplied to plug the gateway into an existing Internet router. And your Tendril devices take care of the rest, to form a home-area network. To see your handy work, you will then just logon to Tendril’s consumer portal, register your devices, and that’s it. You’re good to go. Pretty smart, I think. The bonus for utilities? They don’t have to spend the money to build more power stations, and can instead leverage Tendril’s TREE to monitor and reduce energy consumption in tims of high demand or peak pricing. And for consumers - just like you can access your cell phone bill online, and monitor your usage, as well as change your monthly spend based on usage, you’ll have access through a web-based portal to do the same sort of thing in terms of shaping your own energy consumption load with Tendril’s web interface. It’s really pretty easy sounding, if you ask me. And that’s what it’s going to take to get consumers on board. Ease of use.
Expect to see some partnerships with major appliance manufacturers and various providers of energy efficient solutions. The company’s offering their services in a SaaS model to utilities, making it easier than ever for utilities to give consumers a way to take charge of their energy consumption habits as well as influence consumer energy consumption behaviors. The company’s go live is slated for sometime in August. They’re currently doing live and piloting testing in about a thousand homes, and will be in the field with five utilities by the end of the year.
Tuck told me the company’s in active discussions with 20 odd utilities. That’s roughly 56 million homes. And the company will be making some major customer and partner announcements shortly.
Let’s home Tendril comes to a utility near us all – soon.
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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog about the clean tech media tour of Toronto I had the privilege of attending several weeks ago, under the auspices of the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade. I’d mentioned that I had more to share in subsequent posts, offering further insights into Ontario’s cleantech endeavors. So here we are…post #2.
In between the two posts, the State of California offered to Tesla a tax break to incent the company to maintain operations here. And that brings me to the point of this blog post. It’s interesting to see what other parts of the world are doing to incent companies, municipalities, and people to speed the way to a cleaner, greener tomorrow…There’s a lot going on and a lot to still be done. And since clearly the purpose of our tour of Toronto and the surrounds by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade was one that very pointedly wanted to emphasize all the Province is doing to make green and cleantech happen for its economy and population, I’d like to take the time on the blog post to highlight those things being done. Clearly Canada – and the government of Ontario clearly wants a piece of cleantech business – and they should. Everybody has to step up to the plate and do something significant. Not surprisingly, the Province’s incentives for companies considering relocation were pointed out to us, and from what I can see, Ontario is doing all it can to make it very attractive for cleantech companies to relocate their operations to its geography.
That being the case, I have to admit that I knew nothing of Toronto, really, before going on this tour, except to say that I have this blanket view that all Canadians are The Nicest People In the World, (which they all were while I was there in Toronto) and that Toronto had and has a famous hockey museum -The Hockey Hall of Fame. I wouldn’t have even known that little fact about Toronto, except for the fact that soon after we got married, post-honeymoon, I mentioned to Jon that I wanted to find time in the year to go work on my tan somewhere warm, and his top 2 choices for vacation spots were Toronto and Alaska (the former for the Museum, I soon discovered, and the latter for all the obvious reasons one would want to go to Alaska, which I don’t think I need to go into. My husband loves hockey, so this should not have come as a surprise to me, (though it did), this mention of two very cold places where you have to get very, very high up to get a good tan. But it did point out my lack of awareness of all things Toronto. I’ve been since spending time getting up to speed.
However – let’s assume that, like me, several of you reading also didn’t or don’t know a lot about Toronto. Forgive me if this isn’t the case; and even if you know quite a bit, here are some fun facts that might interest you, as well as some background information for those of you ready to move to Canada, should the elections not go as you would like them to, and wanting a bit of a “what-to-know-before you-go-guide-for-clean-techies”:
-Ontario is a province that, by 2020, has set itself a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 15 per cent below 1990 levels - a reduction of 99 megatonnes relative to business-as-usual, and by 2050, their target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is set at 80 per cent below 1990 levels. The province announced its GHG reduction targets in June and is continuing to deliver on commitments such as closing coal-fired plants by 2014, phasing out inefficient light bulbs by 2012 and investing to increase renewable energy to reduce the province’s GHG emissions, both in the short and long-term.
-Ontario has three international airports.
-It ranks sixth in terms of Fortune Global 500 cities. In fact, as a province, Ontario is the ninth largest jurisdiction in North America, by GDP.
-Ontario serves as headquarters for six of Canada’s top ten insurers who manage more than 90 percent of the industry’s assets, and headquarters for Canada’s five largest banks. And it is ranked fourth in North America in competitiveness ratings of global financial center. It is home to just under 40 percent of all head offices and 59 percent of foreign-controlled head offices in Canada.
-The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway is accessed via 40 provincial and interstate highways and nearly 30 railway companies, as well as ocean-going vessels. The province shares 15 border crossings, all integrated with the U.S., facilitating just-in-time delivery; daily total two-way goods trade between Ontario-USA is valued over C$800 million.
-During the past ten years, foreign direct investment in Ontario has climbed as multinational companies have begun to recognize the advantages of doing business in Ontario.
-KPMG studies have shown that Canada maintains an advantage over other developed countries with regard to core business costs in the auto, chemical, and advanced manufacturing industry sectors. An overall business costs index shows that the overall cost of doing business in Ontario is higher only than the cost of doing business in Mexico. Employee health costs, for example, are more than 50% lower than the cost of employee health benefits in the US. Equally attractive are provincial and federal tax credits that can cut the after-tax cost of a US$100 research and development expenditure to less than US $41.
-And corporate taxes are relatively low. Just Monday, The Toronto Star reported that companies doing business in Canada face the third lowest tax burden among 10 countries surveyed by leading accounting firm KPMG.
-$300 million in new investment and tax incentives is going to support the startup and growth of innovative firms under the Next Generation of Jobs Fund, and that includes a 10-year Ontario income tax exemption for new corporations that commercialize intellectual property developed by qualifying Canadian universities, colleges or research institutes. Included are enhancements to the Ontario Innovation Tax Credit as well as $250 million, which is going to the Ontario Research Fund for investment in research infrastructure at Ontario institutions over the next five years, and $42.5 million, which is being put in strategic investments to boost innovation in Ontario’s economy.
-In 2004, Mayor Miller gave a speech entitled, “Toronto the Beautiful: Revitalizing our Waterfront” at Arcadian Court, mentioning the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation , highlighting the city’s vision for sustainable 21st century green communities - ones that would showcase cutting-edge technologies like deep lake water cooling, district heating, solar and wind power, and green roof initiatives, public transit, diversity in land-use, population, and housing forms, community and recreational facilities. Also in 2004 - the Ontario government set two renewable energy targets: to obtain an additional 5 per cent (1,350 megawatts) of our overall generating capacity from renewable sources by 2007 and 10 per cent (2,700 megawatts) by 2010. In April 2004, the government began initiating a series of renewable energy Requests for Proposals (RFPs).
-By the end of 2005, the government had contracted for over 1,300 megawatts of clean renewable energy from wind, water, landfill gas and biogas projects. Current renewable energy projects include 12 wind projects, 3 hydro projects, 2 landfill gas projects and one biogas project.
-In 2005, Toronto signed a communique put together under the Clinton Climate Leadership Group (http://www.c40cities.org/about/), which recognized the need for cities to take action and to cooperate on reducing climate emissions. Toronto was one of the signing cities that promised a number of action points, including most notably the creation of procurement policies and alliances to accelerate the uptake of climate-friendly technologies and influence the market place. Toronto Mayor Miller challenged his fellow mayors at the C40 summit to adopt the Zerofootprint model in their own cities. ["Cities are where change is happening the fastest and we must seize the opportunities we have been presented with to make that change significant and permanent," said Mayor Miller.
-In 2007, The Cleantech Group held a Cleantech Forum in Toronto. Companies presenting included
* HY9, developer of membrane-based technology for hydrogen purification for industrial, cleantech and fuel cell applications
* Environmental Operating Solutions, using liquid carbon to remove nitrogen in wastewater
* Aldis, developer of hardware and software for transportation logistics
* Prism Solar, maker of photovoltaic solar cells
* Diversified Energy, maker of biofuel, gasification, and algae production systems
* SeQuential Biofuels, a retailer of biofuels
* Synodon, developer of gas detection technology for the airborne hydrocarbon detection industry
* Simbol Mining Co., extractor of valuable commodity minerals and metals from geothermal brines
* Benefuel, producer of biodiesel microrefineries
* Novazone, producer of organic products that kill food-and water-borne pathogens such as E. coli and Salmonella
* Performance Plants, developer of crop development and gene discovery for biofuels production
* 6N Silicon, producer of solar grade silicon for solar cells
* Global ID, food tracking and certification
* CarbonFlow, carbon credit monetization, and
* SyncWave Energy, developer of technology to harness ocean wave energy
Cleantech investment is clearly on the rise in the Province; one look at the websites for the Canadian GeoExchange Coalition, Canadian Geothermal Energy Association, Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, Canadian Solar Industries Association, Canadian Wind Energy Association – and you get a picture of how much activity is going on. You can even see it in the number of cleantech/sustainability-oriented mutual funds popping up for investors, most of which are so new they don’t publish figures on year-over-year performance yet.
And the news about Canadian cleantech continues to build. In May, Ottawa-based Menova Engineering began manufacturing a system that combines solar power, heating and lighting in a single product. Wal-Mart plans to test the system atop one of its stores. And Solar PV maker Arise Technologies is building a solar silicon pilot plant near its headquarters in Waterloo, with construction planned for the fall. The aim, by 2010, is to expand it to a full commercial plant. Their Germany-based cell plant is now manufacturing 24/7. Last year’s winner’s of Canada’s Top 10 Competition in the cleantech category were almost all from Ontario, in case you missed it, and Ottawa-based Iogen, and Conserval Engineering have made the news, too. Iogen, which specializes in cellulosic ethanol, just announced a commercial alliance with Shell, and Conserval will benefit from being under the intense spotlight of the Olympics, as written about by Tyler Hamilton in The Star last month: “A new rooftop solar-energy system installed recently in Beijing Olympic Village didn't come from some hot new Silicon Valley start-up, or an established player in Germany's world-leading solar industry.... It came from the Toronto area, baby!” Conserval Engineering has been making a solar heating product — currently called SolarWall — for nearly three decades. More recently, the company has added power-producing solar photovoltaic panels to the system so customers can get both heat and electricity.
And just last week, I got a press release from the Ministry that the province of Ontario was announcing funding for 6N Silicon, the first recipient of a NGoJF investment. The Ministry is intent on creating new jobs in green industries by supporting innovators in cleantech – in this case, an innovator in solar power energy, with the Province investing nearly $8 million in 6N Silicon. 6N Silicon is a company that’s drawn interest for using a manufacturing process that turns low-grade silicon into the form needed to produce solar cells. The company is opening a new manufacturing plant in Vaughan, Ontario, and creating 84 news jobs; so the investment on the part of the government is intended in part to create jobs for skilled workers, while also supporting 6N’s $50 million expansion plans. The investment itself, btw, for those of you interested, comes from the government’s Next Generation of Jobs Fund [NGoJF], which supports Ontario-based companies looking to invest in clean cars, fuels, technologies and products. The fund is part of a broader plan to retool workers and stimulate Ontario’s change economy.
About The Next Generation of Jobs Fund [NGoJF]:
This is a fund $1.15b in size, aimed specifically at supporting companies whose products reduce pollution, save energy, make transportation more efficient, or help the environment in other ways over the next 5 years. The program specifically supports Ontario’s Go Green Plan, [http://www.gogreenontario.ca/home.php], a five point action plan that the Ontario government is building on of action fighting climate change with an ambitious plan for the province to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The five points of the plan include:
-MoveOntario 2020, the largest transit investment in Canadian history. A $17.5 billion plan, it includes 52 rapid transit projects in the GTA and Hamilton, the country’s largest urban area. It calls for 902 kilometres of new or improved rapid transit, creating 175,000 jobs during construction.
The Next Generation of Jobs Fund program to secure the next generation of high-paying jobs for Ontarians by supporting businesses’ commercial development, use and sale of clean and green technologies and businesses in Ontario.
-Green Power - A $150 million investment will help Ontario homeowners fight climate change, conserve energy and adopt green technologies. In addition to a world leading standard offer for renewable energy, the Province has set long-term targets to double the amount of electricity from renewable sources by 2025. In the short term Ontario has gone from 10 to nearly 700 windmills, in place or planned. It now has a standard offer for clean energy to enable power users to improve their efficiency through cogeneration (combined heat and power electricity production), and the Ministry is working to remove barriers that prevent more widespread use of cogeneration.
-Green Targets - As per the Ministry’s website, “From phasing out inefficient light bulbs to rebates for energy audits to provincial sales tax breaks for energy efficient products, there are new programs and incentives for Ontario consumers, businesses, and municipalities to get green.”
-Grow Green - In addition to the Greenbelt Act, which ensures there will always be nature and open spaces around Ontario’s most populated areas, 50 million new trees will be planted in southern Ontario by 2020. Under the Places to Grow Act, the province is growing more sustainable, energy-efficient, transit-friendly communities and bringing in new programs to promote locally grown Ontario food.
Ontario is providing $2.6 million to support 24 community-based greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction projects across the province. The support is from the Community Go Green Fund, a new, four year $6.6 million funding program. Successful recipients vary across the province from community groups and small municipalities to environmental groups. Every project is tailored to meet the local needs of the community to help residents switch to a lower carbon lifestyle and reduce their climate change impact.
Other organizations you should know about:
OCETA
OCETA is an interesting organization. When OCETA’s CEO spoke to us on tour, I felt like I was talking to someone from Silicon Valley…these guys work with a lot of entrepreneurs, one can just tell. OCETA’s got the challenge of engaging SME manufacturers to adopt innovative practices that will improve their environmental performance and competitiveness, by providing technical and financial assistance as well as site-specific opportunity assessments. It was established in 1994 as one of three Canadian environmental technology advancement centers focused on the private sector as a not for profit organization. Core funding support comes from Environment Canada at a federal level and more recently, in 2006, the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation provided funding to OCETA so the organization could deliver a program to drive the use and adoption of green technologies throughout the Province, targeting SMEs - which dominate the sector, with the majority having fewer than 50 (more like 10 on average) employees. OCETA includes approximately 2500 clean tech oriented companies, while Ontario’s clean tech industry employs roughly 63,000, with annual revenues of approximately $7B. OCETA is the intermediary between developers and users of clean tech, and as such, sees a litany of opportunities for growth, from greenhouse gas emission reduction to air polluction emission reduction, alternative energy, bioplastics, fuels and other bio products, small scale sewage treatment, remediation and reclamation, green buildings, and advanced municipal waste management. Clients include environmental technology developers, end users, and governments, local authorities, and associations. OCETA Programs of note include the Toronto Region Sustainability Program; The Region of Waterloo Business Water Quality Program; The Ontario Wine Industry Energy Benchmarketing and Best Practices; The SW Onario Business Air Quality Program; and Ontario’s Industrial Energy Efficiency Programs. The organization is also working on one global project that addresses arsenic contamination in drinking water.
The Toronto Region Sustainability Program (TRSP) presents an opportunity for small-to-medium sized manufacturers located in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to conduct a pollution prevention (P2) assessment and to develop a pollution prevention action plan that will address priority environmental issues (i.e. toxics, sewer discharges, smog precursors, greenhouse gases, and hazardous wastes) targeted by three orders of government— Environment Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MOE), and the municipalities. The program is aimed at fostering sustainable behavior among SME manufacturers by providing technical and financial assistance to enhance their environmental performance while improving competitiveness. Program funders include: Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE), Environment Canada, Toronto and Region Conservation (TRCA), Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF), the Regional Municipality of Durham, the City of Vaughan, and the City of Toronto. Manufacturers with fewer than 500 employees at any one facility are eligible to have a multi-media pollution prevention assessment undertaken by a pre-qualified pollution prevention consultant from OCETA’s roster. The consultant will identify the root causes of priority pollutants and wastes, and recommend improvements in technology, processes and the operating practices for the facility. Participants receive a funding incentive of up to 50 per cent (maximum $5,000) to help offset the costs of a pollution prevention assessment conducted by a pre-qualified pollution prevention consultant.
Canada’s Top 10 Competition
And for those companies looking for a way in, check out Canada’s Top 10 Competition. Eligibility requirements are pretty straightforward:
* Must be a Cleantech (see definition of Cleantech) company incorporated in Canada with head office in Canada .
* Must be either a private company or a public company with a market capitalization no more than $150 million.
* Must be actively seeking financing (equity or debt) between $2 million and $50 million and/or strategic alliances.
* Must submit a complete application including business plan summary and financial information.
That seems to me to be a lot of information for one day, and since I don’t want any eyes glazing over, and the sun is shining, I’ll sign off here by saying stay tuned for more on Ontario cleantech next week. This should be enough info to get you going, if you’re interested in Ontario and cleantech. Stay tuned for more very soon.
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Yep, Gore threw the gauntlet down today at D.A.R. Constitution Hall in an event hosted by the “We” Campaign
While I took lots of notes, I don’t type quite as fast as I’d like so I’m enclosing a transcript of Gore’s speech here.
A couple of key quotes:
Gore noted - “I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.”
I’ll second that.
“It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.”
I’ll second that as well.
I can assert that in 10 years, we will see this statement come to pass just based on the kinds of companies and the entrepreneurs I know are out there, and with whom I have the privilege of speaking weekly. The technologies are there, and the tide is only rising faster to push aside outmoded thinking and thinkers. Just this morning I had a briefing with a company that is going to change the way you think about energy usage and management in your homes, here in the U.S. It won’t take ten years even for this company to get where it needs to go, actually…it’ll happen faster. Much faster. And there is a WHOLE step-change in technologies available today, that you will indeed see transform energy markets as we know them, and dramatically so, within these 10 years. Why?
Because we have a whole global economy stepping onto carbon-free fuels. And doing so in record time.
So Gore’s right about ten years. Why? That’s about all we need to make this happen. It’s very, very, very doable.
Anyway, I must insist that you read this speech by Gore. It’s worth it. If for nothing else than to cheer you up, if you’re having a bad day.
And with that - I’ll leave you with one last quote from Gore’s speech: “To those who say the challenge is not politically viable: I suggest they go before the American people and try to defend the status quo. Then bear witness to the people’s appetite for change….”
I think that about says it all. Hope everyone has a good Friday.
About the “We” Campaign: The “We” Campaign is a commercial-scale organizing and mobilizing effort using paid advertising, grassroots partnerships and online activation to build strong support for solutions to the climate crisis. The scale of the campaign is unprecedented: it is on track to be the largest public policy advocacy campaign ever and expects to reach 10 million members within three years. For all of you who haven’t joined, please visit www.wecansolveit.org.
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Mind you, this isn’t very big. But this particular iteration isn’t meant to be big, as it’s meant to store vaccines, really. However, could we not make a bigger refrigerator with this kind of technology? From TED.
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It was with a seeing-eye dog that I attended the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade’s first ever clean tech media tour several weeks back, and the irony of having an animal share this cleantech tour with us has not been lost on me. Here we are - a global society trying to better learn and connect to the rhythms and teachings of the natural world, and who accompanies us? A dog. Man’s best friend indeed. Let me tell you - that dog went places with us that no dog has ever gone — a water treatment facility, a solvent reclamation plant, the underbelly of a university - specifically the geothermal plant part — anyway…you get the picture.
So back to the point. Though it’s taken me a what feels like a long while to put my thoughts together for a blog after having gone on this trip, I’m finally making some headway, and have decided after staring at what has become a 13 page draft blog over the past several weeks, that I’m just going to do this piecemeal, and blog about things piece by piece. So I’ll start by sharing with you one of the companies we had an opportunity to meet with, and continue to do the same in subsequent posts. I’m also going to be sharing with you some further insights into Toronto’s own cleantech endeavors, not just the companies themselves, including a visit to North America’s largest brownfield remediation site.
The first company I want to talk about is a company called Fielding Chemical Technologies, Inc. It’s not everyday that I get a trip to a solvent recycling and refrigerant reclamation facility, and I can say I’ve now had a chance to look at the innards of a company that, in its business, was the first in North America to be registered to ISO 9001, the first in the world to be registered to ISO 14001 Environmental Management System, and the first dedicated solvent and refrigerant recycler in the world to be a member of Responsible Care. Add to those accolades, btw, that it’s one incredible woman (Ellen McGregor) who’s running what was her father’s company today.
So - on Fielding:
Fielding is Canada’s leading solvent recycler, and a company that’s been in operation since 1955. They make a living pulling value out of otherwise spent solvents, emphasizing reuse to ensure the most economical and environmentally sound treatment available. The company offers solvent recycling and toll processing, as well as QA and analytical services, with a state of the art lab onsite dedicated to solvent and refrigerant analysis, which includes a gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, COD, pH meter, inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometer, and wet chemistry instrumentation.
Fielding’s onsite storage capacity tops 3 million liters, with fractionation towers, thin film evaporators, vacuum trucks and stainless steel tankers. All Fielding refrigerant products meet ARI 700 specs - the same standards as virgin products. In addition, the company is a service provider to Refrigerant Management Canada (RMC), operating the largest collection center in the country for CFCs destined for safe destruction. Fielding handles most common solvents and their mixtures, including spent gun wash, acetone, ethylene and propylene glycol, MEK, MIBK, IPA, NMP, toluene and xylene. Lab services are available for all CFC, HFC and HCFC refrigerants. Fielding is Canada’s leading refrigerant recycler. As such, they offer a Buy-Back Program for used refrigerant, leveraging a national network of wholesale distributors in Fielding’s Refrigerant Reclamation Service. Refrigerants of
interest include R22, R134a and R123.
As a member of the Ontario Environmental Leaders Program, Fielding is implementing something called a Provincial Priority Reduction Plan (PPRP) to address VOC emissions, energy, hazardous waste, waste water and non-hazardous waste reductions. Just to give you an idea of the kind of things Fielding is doing to tackle the targets it’s set out in its PPRP, Fielding is installing vapor return lines on loading/unloading stations; eliminating emissions from product transfer; and, to reach its target of a 5% reduction in energy consumption per liter of material processed in the first year, the company is upgrading insulation throughout its facility, designing and installing a new boiler control system. Additionally, to deal with conversion of 750,000 liters of hazardous waste to a sellable product, Fielding is segregating candidate waste streams that is currently sends to primarily US cement kilns as alternative fuel and instead blending this to customer spec to sell the product as an ingredient for fence and barn paint. The company makes paint out of their own still bottoms, so wherever possible, their residuals become a product to further honor the waste management hierarchy.
As if this weren’t enough, the company has also developed and patented a technology it uses to extract water from its products. Fielding can recover spent IPA to 99.9%, and uses
the pervaporation plant to reach that specification. The technology is presently being spun off into a separate company called Drystill. Fielding maintains rights to license, sell or transfer the technology anywhere in the world for the purpose of recovering solvents. Drystill will introduce it in upstream chemical manufacturing processes to reduce energy and production costs.
On the 16th of June, Fielding was awarded a Technology Award from the Province of Ontario and the City of Mississauga. This marked the first time this particular award has been given. Ellen couldn’t be happier. “Finally my dad’s dream is getting recognition. He would have been so so excited,” Ellen recently wrote me.
We’re excited for you, too, Ellen. Keep up the good work.
Look for more on Toronto upcoming…
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