Lara Abrams Communications
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The Abrams Clean Tech Report
Upcoming Events (Note Tonight’s Event!!) and Companies of Note
August 13th, 2008In 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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DOE’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) Launches w/Establishment of the National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT); CA Clean Tech Open Gets 100k from NREL
August 7th, 2008My 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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On Tendril
August 6th, 2008You 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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Toronto Part II
July 31st, 2008A 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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100% Renewable in 10 Years: It Will Come To Pass
July 17th, 2008Yep, 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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The Sustainable Refrigerator
July 15th, 2008Mind 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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My CleanTech Tour With The Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade
July 9th, 2008It 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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Targeting 10% Solar By 2025 - A Perspective from CleanEdge & Co-op America Foundation
July 3rd, 2008CleanEdge & Co-op America Foundation have just published the following report - “The Utility Solar Assessment Study”, with an eye toward reaching 10% solar by 2025. For those paying attention to smart grid stuff, and solar, and wanting to get a primer on what it’s going to take to get to 10% solar by 2025, as well as the who-what-and how much, you’ll appreciate the read. It’s a well written report. Quoting from the report, I noticed this sentence: “Within a decade, solar power will be cost-competitive in most regions of the U.S. on a kilowatt-hour (Kwh) basis.” That shouldn’t really be too shocking considering the abundance of sunshine we enjoy pretty much globally, but what’s really interesting is how quickly that’s predicted to occur. 10 years is just going to fly by.
The report goes into detail to provide a roadmap for electric utilities, describing how they can accelerate the growth of solar energy. More than 30 industry players and experts were interviewed for the report. Findings from the report include projections that solar PV will reach cost parity with conventional retail electricity pricing on a straight kWh rate basis through most of the US by 2015. Solar will be able to offer to utilities a peak-power hedge, for those ramping up their solar businesses. Quite correctly, the report’s authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder note that it’s the perfect time for utilities to figure out how to jump to rapid scale-up of solar technologies as a “key grid-tied energy source”. One interesting little fact from the report was this: “In 2007, the use of silicon by the world’s solar companies exceed silicon use by the semiconductor industry for the first time”. And the report also notes that in ‘07, more than 70 MW of new concentrating solar power (CSP) was installed worldwide. That’s astounding. What an opportunity to implement solar as part of demand response systems, as much as it is an opportunity to build out the smart grid and metering systems.
Of course, there are some challenges. The report also highlights the barriers to large-scale development and deployment of solar by utilities: how our power grid is out of date, and that its state of disrepair makes it difficult to integrate solar, i.e. Solar generated from rooftops; how traditional utility management structures aren’t adapted to exploit or understand the value of solar; that cost is still an issue; that technical standards for the integration of solar are lacking. Perhaps most interesting, the report notes the following: “To get beyond the ten percent number for solar will require significant breakthroughs in both central and distributed storage options.”
Won’t it be interesting to see what a utility looks like in another 10-20 years? I think so.
To read the report in full, please see this link.
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News, News & More News…
July 1st, 2008Either I have too little time most days or I’m not very effective in trying to do everything I want to do. There’s just so much that’s been popping up lately which has piqued my interest, so here goes — lots of news, and I still have more in my pile to report on…
-One of the first things I wanted to highlight first, which I actually find quite extraordinary (though it probably didn’t cause much of a blip across your screens) was this: last week I had the opportunity to sit in on a briefing by Spansion and Virident, and I was pretty fascinated by the whole thing. Spansion Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSN), a pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, on June 24th unveiled plans for a new class of memory, called Spansion(R) EcoRAM. Yup. Time to upgrade already. The nice thing is we’re talking about a technology that can significantly reduce energy consumption in the data center, i.e. otherwise known as the growing energy consumption crisis in data centers.
From what I gather, when Spansion’s EcoRAM is combined with Virident Systems, Inc.’s new GreenGateway technology, the combined technologies can help slash energy consumption by up to 75 percent in Internet data center servers, and offer four times the memory capacity of traditional DRAM-only servers for the same energy consumption. This is possible because DRAM in data center servers sort of has a replacement (read “next generation”) in terms of memory. So, as I said, you might not think that’s too big a deal, but think about it: it was only about 10 years ago that search engine technology was introduced. And here we are ten years later, talking about the need to upgrade the generation of technology that currently powers our web searches and data storage. That’s a lot of power that’s being consumed.
Phrases like “energy proportional processing”, “intelligent power management”, “service level flexibility” and “cluster & system management” were being used throughout the briefing. Not only can flash memory improve storage per square foot (in data centers) by requiring fewer pizza racks, but companies can achieve a higher density per square foot, too, and be more cost effective than DRAM over the long term. So if current server utilization is slower than it needs to be, and data growth is faster than Moore’s Law, due to current server architecture in part, then I’m quite appreciative of what was presented in that briefing. And if you consider that Google might need an extra 300-400,000 servers more a year going forward, and you factor in all the other organizations that continuously need to expand their server farms…well, this becomes a pretty interesting picture indeed. I’ll leave you with the press release here.
In other news…
2) From the WSJ on 6/26: “Oil Shock: Analyst Predicts $7 Gas, “Mass Exodus” of U.S. Cars: Over the next four years, we are likely to witness the greatest mass exodus of vehicles off America’s highways in history. By 2012, there should be some 10 million fewer vehicles on American roadways than there are today—a decline that dwarfs all previous adjustments including those during the two OPEC oil shocks.” That reminds me: telepresence technologies are going to be a very, very hot investment opportunity, if they aren’t already. I haven’t checked, but I should. (I mean, who’s going to be driving/flying to meetings anymore?)
3) I thought these deals were interesting from last week (per David Ehrlich’s note for the Clean Tech Group here):
- Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.’s Republic Services (NYSE: RSG) announced it would acquire Phoenix-based Allied Waste (NYSE: AW) for over $6 billion in stock, merging the country’s No. 2 and No. 3 waste and environmental services providers. The merger would bring together a portfolio of 86 recycling operations, as well as a growing list of waste to energy sites.
- Lehigh Technologies, a Naples, Fla.-based rubber recycling company, confirmed that it raised a second round of funding, announcing that it pulled in $34 million in financing. Investors included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Index Ventures, NGP Energy Technology Partners and Florida Gulfshore Capital.
4) CleanLoop launches in beta. Am kind of scratching my head as to why it took so long for this one to pop up, but hey…we’re happy they’re here.
5) Biosphere Industries’ [http://www.biosphereindustries.com/] CEO Elie Helou gave me an update on the company’s progress the other day. I had the good fortune to connect with Elie way back when, when he was trying to push the needle forward…we spent many an evening talking shop. I can’t say I feel that I was much of a help, but I can tell you that it’s with great pleasure that I see things moving forward as they are for Biosphere, and Elie…every step of success is much deserved because Elie has had a killer app of a product from the get go.
Biosphere just completed the first full production line for their PPM100 which is now going to be marketed under the trade name Renew-a-Pak in Carpinteria. Their initial product offerings are being targeted toward the bakeware replacement field, and the company is very competitive in both price and function in replacing disposable aluminum and CPET dual ovenable products. Some of the items Biosphere is now offering are dual ovenable trays, pie pans, muffin pans, and microwavable pizza trays. Renew-a-Pak applications can be manufactured in various color offerings and can also be applied to scented product offerings. Several large customers are testing Biosphere’s products and Helou expects PO’s once testing is complete. “It’s been a long road but so far, well worth it,” says Helou. Onward ho, Elie…
6) This looked interesting - FirstLook sells detailed reports to new-energy entrepreneurs and consumers who are serious about generating their own power. Those reports show just how much wind or sunshine an area is likely to receive, based on years’ worth of meteorological data, plus plenty of other important ‘have-to-knows’. The company advertises its reports via a free interactive map. Preliminary information from the map helps entrepreneurs determine whether a windmill or solar-panel installation at a chosen location would make good financial sense. For now FirstLook’s data appears limited to US locations. But the company has plans to expand to other nations, a move it hopes to help finance with country-based sponsorships.
7) Sweden’s Husqvarna has introduced the world’s first solar/electric hybrid robot lawnmower, which has no exhaust emissions and uses approximately the same amount of energy as a standard light bulb. From an ECO-ICONIC point of view, we obviously love its very visible solar panel, earning owners respect from neighbors, visitors and passers-by. Noted by Springwise.
And finally - because this is just conceptually all really cool to look at.
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The Th!nk Ox From Norway
June 25th, 2008My younger brother just called from Oslo. Business has him running all around Europe at the moment, it seems, though I know he’s happy to have a pitstop in Norway because it reminds him of home, where we both grew up.
We were talking about the Ox while chatting. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a look. I like it.
Maybe Think will let me eventually test drive one of these. I’m still not sure where my skis will fit, but I’d be willing to bet they’ll offer up a roof rack for those, bikes, kayaks, and surfboards…
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Cities Requiring Solar, Global Warming Scores for Cars, Vertical Farm Designs, and Water
June 22nd, 2008Because I found a few things of interest over the weekend, I thought I’d point you in the direction of each of those stories.
Solar Will Soon Be The Law - In One German City. More here. You know, I was recycling and buying milk in plastic bags in Germany back in my early 20s, so I’m not surprised in the least to see a move like this on the policy side coming from a German municipality.
California Rolls out Global Warming Score Labels That Show Emissions for Autos. Go CARB! More here. I love how progressive California is.
And because I’m fascinated by Vertical Farms…check out these designs. This is quite a hot little area of discussion right now.
And did anyone notice the news that a couple of analysts quietly initiated coverage of American Water Works the other week? And of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Happy Sunday to all…
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Sustainable Brands ‘08 - Conversations with Companies
June 18th, 2008Wrapping up the blog I started last week, I’m dribbling in this week snapshots from conversations I had during briefings while at Sustainable Brands ‘08…more below…
AMD – Green(er) Technology & The Greening of Data Centers
You might not know that the EPA recently honored AMD for its efforts to protect the Earth’s climate and stratospheric ozone layer. Or that the company is the Founding Member of the The Green Grid Consortium, an organization officially created in February of 2007 with 11 board members. With the support of its members, a whopping 185 member companies to date already globally, The Green Grid is creating and sharing best practices in data center power management, and developing the standards needed to advance energy efficiency in data centers and business computing environments. Last week, The Green Grid announced an MOU with the Country of Japan through METI for collaborative work around green grid standards and metrics. And last month, the company moved 3000 employees into a brand new campus that is looking like it’s on track to be LEED Gold certified, in Austin Tex.
AMD’s Larry Vertal would like to see the company penetrate more performance-per-watt products, so it’s no surprise to hear him say the company will be moving more into mobile. They’ve taken advantage of the fact that they’ve bought ATI, which has given them the option to dig into CPU and chip set design.
What I didn’t realize is that AMD, as Larry Vertal told me, started to produce a global climate protection plan back in 2001, well before most companies were doing anything of the sort. Vertal credits the company’s original founder, Gerry Sanders, and Hector Ruiz, its current Chairman, with always having a “sense of doing the right thing”, and this carrying over even today in the company’s culture. And you can tell that there’s pride in that fact: Vertal is proud of the company, and the fact that he’s been able to make such a significant contribution to it in his own right.
If you’re not familiar with the company’s technology, it can sound a bit technical, but what I was interested in was where the green aspect in the design was. As Vertal explained to me, the silicon insulator technology the company uses in its products, when you consider the company really focuses on the performance-to-watt ratio of its products, is actually quite environmentally friendly. It took making a change in substrates as well as a fundamental change in product architecture (“Direct Connect”) to help AMD make this happen, but now they can offer products that allow their clients to be far more energy efficient, while using DDR2 memory vs. fully buffered rams, which competitors, Vertal noted, are still using, in products for both the desktop and mobile processing. AMD’s latest Opteron processors and Phenon Quad Core product carries on a single chip four ‘brains’ - instead of the usual one…thereby using the same power and thermal envelope to process loads as would be processed using a single core processor, but with 4x the efficiency of the company’s previous product iteration. This capability is allowing data centers to cut down on both server footprint and server noise, as well as power costs. How the process works is as follows: Using the AMD Opteron processor, with AMD’s PowerNow! Technology, a company is able to reduce the heat in its data center. It reduces the heat in its data center because these processers require less energy to run, though they’re running at higher process speeds (technically “higher computing throughput”), so you get cooler servers, which in turn will minimize data center noise (and lower electrical load), since server fans can then be run at reduced speed, and because the cooling system has less heat to deal with, a company will also experience less noise (and lower power demands from data center air conditioners) from server air conditioners. The company’s Cool Core Technology allows a dual power chip to operate and control different power and frequency levels it’s dealing with vs. the power itself, and that change itself lowers the frequency, and therefore energy required, of a single core. AMD Quad Core Opteron processors have been out for about a year, and in full production for about six months.
By focusing on maximizing the performance-per-watt capabilities of processors used in servers in data centers, AMD has been able to create a solution that both increases performance while decreasing the amount of power, and energy, required, for companies to run data centers. Pretty cool. For more information, see this link and this link.
DOMANI - On Sustainability
I had a chance to talk to Will Sarni, DOMANI’s Founder & Chief Executive Officer, at SB ‘08. Sarni is a member of the Environmental Compliance Committee of the Chicago Climate Exchange, active with the Conference Board, authors a green business colum for Venture Magazine and provides editorial comments for the Sustainable Life Media Climate Change Management Weekly newsletter. Over a glass of water on a hot day, Sarni is mellow, down-to-earth, and humble. I ask him who’s on his wish list of clients. The oil and gas sector needs an opportunity-focused climate strategy, says Sarni. There are also a few private equity firms out there who could use a hand in developing their sustainability investment strategies, too, he says. Already among the firm’s client list? Cherokee Fund, http://www.cherokeefund.com/, a fascinating company, as well as Alcoa, BASF, The Coca-Cola Company, Grosvenor, Wrigley and several confidential Fortune 500 clients. Denver-based DOMANI, in case you didn’t know, is a wholly owned subsidiary of ENR 200 environmental consulting firm Roux Associates [http://www.rouxinc.com/clients.asp], a company not without it’s own impressive list of clients.
DOMANI’s own track record speaks to things like educating senior executives in Moscow on the Equator Principles on how environmental and social performance would potentially impact their business operations, and providing advisory and technical solutions to companies such as Cisco Systems. It’s obvious that DOMANI is one of the sustainability strategy companies that companies are listening to these days. For a company started only 10 years ago, focused initially on climate change and educating executives about the fact that climate change was going to be a risk (or opportunity) to their businesses, the company is today, not surprisingly, working on much more: sustainable development and planning (brownfield redevelopment and sustainable remediation, for example) as well as resource reduction (energy, water, materials), and green strategies, products and markets opportunities for its clients.
DOMANI’s approach identifies and creates opportunities to decrease costs and risk in resource consumption, land, air and water impacts, as well as waste management. Areas of opportunity for clients include climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, energy and resource efficiency, and sustainable building & development, so the company today provides a range of services to address client needs, from straight forward advisory services, education and training, to strategy development around compliance/environmental management systems & their implementation, sustainability brand planning and communications, corporate social responsibility programs & reporting, to sustainable building development & design.
Under the company’s Climate Change & Greenhouse Gas practice area, for example, DOMANI provides clients with a carbon footprint evaluation, carves out for those who need it retail offset strategies as well as emissions mitigation planning, including GHG inventory management support. So let’s say I’m a client; that means I can request support for supply chain GHG Data Management as well as how to green my supply chain. I can also get an energy audit, in addition to an entire range of services to help me plan and design a sustainable development.
You should know that Sarni’s busy working on a book, entitled “Greening Brownfields: Remediation through Sustainable Development”. I’d expect to see it on a few companies’ bookshelves once published. Make sure you look for it. And if you’d like to talk to Will about your company’s sustainability strategy, email him at wsarni@domani.com.
Umbria On the BlogSphere
Umbria’s a really interesting little company. Unlike custom-developed research polls, Umbria’s technology monitors the spontaneous, unsolicited input that one finds in the blogsphere. Started in 2004, Umbria’s been mining data from the blogsphere – collecting, cleansing and analyzing the results, clustering consumer segments around topics of conversation, using algorithms to help predict age range, sex, and sentiment of bloggers. Why is this interesting? Why wouldn’t it be? Uncovering drivers of intent, sentiment or purchase behavior is of course of interest to big companies with products to sell to consumers. Today Umbria’s processing millions of blogs per week, and it doesn’t collect and keep blogger identities. Consider the numbers (from Umbria): a quarter of adults blog frequently or occasionally today. 60% read blogs in the U.S., while 75% do worldwide. 34% of bloggers opine on products. And half of bloggers are older than 30. Sustainability continues to be a very hot topic amongst bloggers, (75%) with more than 70% talking about energy and fuel, an increasing number talking about autos (42%) in one form or another, and food and beverage showing a 10 point + jump, comparing ‘07 conversations to ‘08 conversations 37%). Transportation and travel comes about 24% of conversations between bloggers. And, not surprisingly, news travels: 64% of bloggers are talking about news topics, while conversation in general has shifted from bloggers simply debating the issue of climate change and global warming to debating the solutions for change. 63% of authors are female, with 33% of those being Gen-Y. For more information contact Umbria at www.umbrialistens.com.
Steelcase - Sustainability From Within
Steelcase’s story is one that demonstrates well the kind of process ‘best in class’ performers in the trenches of sustainability are undertaking. Angela Nahikian, Director of Global Environmental Sustainability at Steelcase, calls the process they’ve been through “the house of seven doors”, and rightly so. The learning process doesn’t stop. For a firm that deals primarily with the F500, Nahikian has seen RFPs requesting information on sustainability go from being 30% of the pile a couple of years ago to 80 and 90% of the pile today. And Nahikian is quick to point out how much more sophisticated the RFPs are that are coming through the door. “We’ve gone from questions like ‘do you have an environmental statement’? to progressive companies asking us ‘can you tell us if you have any of these chemicals in your products? Nahikian’s been known to tell her team that “our job is to work ourselves out of a job – because the minute no one calls with a question or needs clarification, we’ve done our job.”
Steelcase embraces a Designing for Environment program composed of three legs - Materials Chemistry, Lifecycle Assessment, and Recycling & Reuse otherwise known as [MC + LCA + R(squared)]. Ultimately these platforms have allowed Steelcase to Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certify their products. Materials Chemistry is the foundation of the work. To date Steelcase has gone back and assessed over 400 categories of materials in North America. The company is now working on assessing its international portfolio of materials, exiting any materials of concern, like PVC, internationally, as it has done with its domestic portfolio. To give you a feel of what that kind of undertaking has been like, Nahikian told me that about 30 suppliers and about 1500 parts are involved just to get rid of PVC, which will be phased out of the company’s product lines by 2012. Something as simple as eliminating an edgeband can involve changing 12 different profiles offered on various worksurface shapes and finishes. Every one had to be color matched, and laminates and edges had to be redone and coordinated concurrently – and that’s just to take the PVC out of each part of the wood product. The entire process includes research, testing, and then proof of concept — performance testing to make sure that material changes could run at large scale in the manufacturing process. Steelcase started with PVC because it is not allowed in C2C certifications. How is Steelcase getting it out? “It’s really an opportunistic and strategic approach we’re using – what doesn’t need to be fit and finished is where we started first,” says Nahikian. So, for example, PVC will be replaced by propylene. The company’s C2C process is accepted as a LEED innovation point currently, and Steelcase has also gone so far as to develop a C2C tool that is being piloted with the University of Michigan as an upfront tool for developers and designers who are inhouse, designing and developing products.
Perhaps it’s my age, but I was completely surprised to learn that already 15 years ago Steelcase had developed a compost-able DesignTex fabric. An eco-intelligent fabric 15 years ago? That probably wasn’t news you recall making headlines back then, but today that’s just the sort of thing that would make headlines.
Interesting products from the company? ‘Answer’ and ‘Think’. ‘Answer’ is a Steelcase system that received the first C2C certification and ‘Think’ is a chair in Steelcase’s seating line that is comprised of 99% recycled content). ‘Think’ is Steelcase’s largest selling seating product globally. ‘Answer’ is the company’s largest selling furniture systems product globally. [http://www.steelcase.com/na/steelcase_answer_workstation_r_News.aspx?f=21532]
Nahikian’s advice to companies seeking to improve their sustainable performance? “Think big.” Makes sense. That’s what Steelcase is surely doing with what it’s undertaken.
The Designers Accord - “The Kyoto Treaty of Design”
I didn’t have a chance to talk to Valerie Casey about this, but John Creson told me during our interview that Designers Accord wants to change consumption habits, and so I sat in on Valerie’s talk at SB ‘08 to learn more. Perhaps singularly indicative of how quickly the mainstream design market has moved green, this “Kyoto Treaty of Design”, the Designers Accord, has seen its membership skyrocket, globally. From an idea conceived by Valerie Casey (who heads the global sustainability practice for IDEO) the Designers Accord today has seen its membership go from few to many, from 3500 designers from various disciplines around the world joining in by January ‘08, to seeing 100,000 designers from 100 countries around the world, representing all design disciplines, joining as members by June ‘08. 3500 to 100,000. That is something. Btw - 70% of the 100,000 designers are from OUTside the U.S. The guidelines set by the Accord, and adopted by these 100,000 members are as follows: http://www.designersaccord.org/da_guidelines.html. If you don’t know about it – it’s worth reading up on and familiarizing yourself. The Design Accord commits corporations, educational institutions and designers to - instead of project by project commitments to sustainability – to general principles of sustainability. Members must publicly declare participation in the Designers Accord; initiate a dialogue about environmental impact and sustainable alternatives with each and every client; rework client contracts to favor environmentally responsible design and work processes; provide strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design; undertake a program to educate their teams about sustainability and sustainable design; measure the carbon/greenhouse gas footprint of your firm (includes operations and client engagements), and pledge to reduce their footprint annually; and advance the understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective by contributing actively to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design.
Addis Creson
While at SB ‘08, I spoke with Addis Creson Partner John Creson, and it’s obvious from the conversation that this father of 3 has found a company and business partner who lets him be himself. I’m not surprised a guy like John has ended up at an independently owned firm. He strikes me as the kind of guy who can’t do work that doesn’t matter or make a significant difference in some fundamental way, who’s learned enough about himself, and knows enough about his own value set to understand that for him, it’s about creating positive change, positive experiences, and doing work that has a positive outcome.
He’s interested in figuring out how to meeting people’s economical, psychological, and emotions needs in more sustainable ways.
Steven Addis and John Creson are today leading the helm at company that is today quietly helping to position companies like Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place, which will offer, among other things, for road trips, a network of stations from which you can swap your car battery – which you’ll pay for on a subscription basis – very much like your cell phone plan. Additional info here. Other companies they’ve worked with: Sungevity, Johnson & Johnson, Elevance, ThinkProducts, Kashi, RAB Motors Smart Car, Intel, Nano-Tex, Turn and Capital One.
Obviously, you have to be pretty good to have the opportunity to work on an idea as big as Agassi’s. And one look at Addis Creson’s client list and you understand that they have access to a deep pool of talent.
My suggestion? When it comes to talking to a firm about integrated brand strategy and design approach, it’s worth having a conversation with these guys. Especially if you want to do something really game-changing.
Constellation Energy
For Constellation Energy, to be sure, SB ‘08 wasn’t their typical audience, but that’s where I met with Constellation’s VP, Renewable Products, Carrie Cullen Hitt. Constellation Energy is a large conglomerate of power and gas and other associated services and commodities, and owns about 8300 megawatts of assets; serves 75 of the Fortune 100 companies, including many national retail brands and REITs, as well as hospitals, cities and towns. And Constellation came to SB ‘08 to take the pulse of the market because it’s seen a spike in companies asking for renewable energy packages. “We went from having 10 accounts to having 100,” Cullen Hitt told me over coffee while at the conference.
But more to the point, my conversation with Cullen Hitt pointed to something interesting: Constellation is seeing buyer roles shift, where packaging energy services for clients has become more complex in the sales cycle. It’s not just the energy procurement folks Constellation speaks to now on the client/prospect side, but also often CSR/sustainability folks. That would generally be fine, but, as Cullen Hitt notes, “These two departments, or individuals – they’re just not talking, and there’s no combined policy between the two groups internally, either, we’re finding,” she says. “The various ways in which you can today bundle energy services for customers are just plain ‘clunky’, and not very consumer-friendly at all,” Cullen Hitt told me. “[So] we’re trying to bring the combined package to consumers — energy management (for example, using demand response), and renewable energy, while also serving a clients’ total electricity and gas requirements.” That’s quite interesting insight from a company that’s not a pure-play energy company, but one that carves an existence out of managing risk and portfolios.
Constellation is a FORTUNE 125 company with 2007 revenues of $21 billion, and it’s the nation’s largest wholesale power seller. The company manages fuels and energy services on behalf of various energy-intensive industries and utilities, and owns a diversified fleet of 78 generating units located throughout the United States. The company delivers electricity and natural gas through the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE), its regulated utility in Central Maryland.
Hmm. So Constellation’s seeing a noticeable shift in who the ‘buyer’ they’re now dealing with is within sales cycles. Interesting indeed.
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Greener World Media Secures Series A, Announces Management Team Additions
June 17th, 2008From Greener World Media’s website - news I was happy to hear:
Greener World Media Announces Series A Round, Expansion of Management Team
K Group commits to $1 million investment round; publishing vets Hugh Byrne and Alan Robinson join executive ranks
OAKLAND, Calif., June 5, 2008 - Greener World Media announced today the closure of a $1 million Series A round with the K Group.
The investment round will help Greener World Media build on its leading position in green business media. It will include development of new online products around its GreenBiz.com brand, research build-outs around the State of Green Business report, and new events to complement the company’s Greener by Design conference, June 12-13 in Alexandria, Va.
“We believe there is tremendous growth potential in both green business and online-driven media,” said Ronen Kalmanson, Managing Partner of K Group. “Greener World Media, with the management team of Joel Makower and Pete May, represents the perfect intersection of those two trends.”
“In this round, we were looking for the right
partner and investment to complement the running start we already had from GreenBiz.com’s brand and existing revenue base,” said Greener World
Media Chairman and Executive Editor Joel Makower. “And we were looking
for a patient, well-connected, committed investor with access to follow-on capital. Ronen Kalmanson and the K Group is the ideal partner on both fronts.”
Greener World Media Hires Two Seasoned Media Executives to Accelerate Growth
Greener World Media also announced the hiring of two senior executives, Hugh Byrne as Senior Vice President of Product Development and Marketing, and Alan Robinson as Vice President of Sales and Business Development.
Byrne will be responsible for building out product extensions on top of GreenBiz.com and other Greener World Media brands. Byrne brings more than 20 years of marketing and product management leadership at such companies as Primedia, Krames, and Oracle.
Robinson will be responsible for revenue partnerships, and expanding an advertiser and sponsor base that already includes such brands as Autodesk, GM, IBM, Intel, Steelcase, Waste Management, and Xerox. Robinson brings more than 20 years of experience in both established media and startups, most recently as Publisher of Reed Business’s electronics design and strategy property, EDN.
President and Publisher Pete May said: “Joel and I are delighted to have two seasoned pros join our fast-growing team.
Hugh’s background in product management, technology marketing and premium information products will allow us to introduce a suite of new product extensions on GreenBiz.com’s leading brand. Alan will play a key role in growing on our base as the leading advertising platform in green business.”
About Greener World Media
Greener World Media Inc. is the first media company focused exclusively on the greening of mainstream business and technology. Centered around the acclaimed GreenBiz.com, its online properties also include GreenerBuildings.com, ClimateBiz.com, and GreenerComputing.com, as well as these sites’ respective e-newsletters.
About K Group
The K Group is an investment group comprised of successful USA and Israeli entrepreneurs focusing on investing in high-growth, privately held companies. Among the members of the group are Larry Levy, founder and Chairman of Chicago-based Levy Restaurants and real estate development company Levy Organization, and the Kalmanson Family, who are investors and entrepreneurs in technology and media companies. In addition to its capital, K Group provides access to its strong international network of relationships in the areas of technology, media, real estate and hospitality.
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Sustainable Brands ‘08 Draws a Crowd
June 13th, 2008Sustainable Brands ‘08 was an interesting place to be this year. I did about 8 briefings in the two days I was able to stay at the conference, and though I missed some great sessions while doing interviews, as well as the first day of workshops, clearly last year’s early adopters who showed up to present their strategies and thoughts at the very first SB conference have been overtaken by the next wave of interest from a more mainstream market wrangling for a foothold in the marketing of, and being, green and ‘sustainable’. My sense was that the herd was at the watering hole, but many companies are still trying to really figure out what the boundaries of their ‘social contracts’ should be, and how to execute on that idea ‘sustainability’. However, already the word is out that the low hanging fruit in sustainability is soon going to be gone. As one attendee put it, “it’s going to take some drastic moves to reach the rest.” And that set the tone for the conference – drastic measures are needed now.
So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that I had the sense there were a few companies struggling to justify to themselves that their brands were already green enough, more comfortable talking about present-tense actions than past sins, and perhaps that was why…they’re already feeling the low-hanging fruit is indeed gone. In general, I’d say it feels like a lot of companies are in a very introspective phase, with a lot of peer review going on, which could be summed up as said by one company exec I spoke with, who said, “this is as much about intent, and who we are, as it is about what we stand for.” For some brands, this whole green paradigm shift amounts to a mid-life crisis, while for others, it’s just a great starting point. I heard from several attendees that the message they were really taking away was that corporations need to start “from the inside out” in defining brand and sustainability strategies that make sense. Those who already have it figured out see the sustainability wave as merely logical extensions of an existing corporate and lifestyle mindset, and such companies - those already environmentally-conscientious, such as Seventh Generation and New Belgium Brewery, were there, and I think the crowd was invigorated hearing them speak; though having said that, there are so many more good examples of such ‘stand-out’ companies today than there were a year ago.
Dow’s Julie Fasone Holder, Corporate Vice President, Chief Marketing, Sales and Reputation Officer, presented an absolutely beautiful, totally compelling-to-a-younger-generation-ready-to-save-the-world ad campaign, one that would inspire pretty much anyone, including me, to want to be a chemist to solve the world’s problems, not to mention work for Dow. The idea behind the ad was “To get people to stop and listen, because you can’t talk to people if they don’t stop and listen”, said Holder. Smart. That said, Dow, btw, has recently been ordered to clean up dioxin-contaminated soil in and around residential neighborhoods near its plant in Midland, Michigan. And they’re not alone in carrying with them the legacy of past sins. It’s something many companies are struggling with. As Dow’s Holder put it, in 2005, the company set 4 goals for itself, at a high level. At the top of the list? “To do less bad”.
That one statement alone pretty much sums up a key issue that SB ‘08 spoke to, and that is the following: it’s clear that an increasing number of companies are trying to change their brands’ perceived negative behavior(s) and “do less bad”. It’s an attempt to shift gears and grow to a more sophisticated level of doing business, which includes a higher degree of corporate responsibility. And honestly, from the time I started researching cleantech and the greening of supply chains, it’s quite remarkable to see the progress that’s been and is being made. It’s astounding the number of companies just trying to do better, and that is remarkable in and of itself.
When reputation is, as one speaker put it, “both doing and telling, not just touching hearts and minds, but also rising to society’s expectations”, it’s not a surprise to see people, and the businesses they embody, trying to be better on a very deep level in the aftermath of the excess of the ‘90s. I saw branding execs practically tripping over each other to see what peers and other players had to say, and how they were saying it, as well as those proffering up services and support for the companies still trying to decide what to do and how to do it. From this perspective, SB ‘08 can be considered a very solid success for a company that’s just secured its Series A. Koanne and her team are a baby in Silicon Valley terms — most companies in Series A don’t get much interest from the rest of the world unless they’re in a really hot sector or there’s a good buzz, for good reason. But in a sign of the times, this conference was much more heavily attended than last year’s, and there were some really interesting companies there. There’s only one thing I would have changed. What needs to be done the next time a bunch of talent like that gets in the same room? (And this goes for anyone putting on a conference of this sort these days): Put all that talent to work. We all know we have a job to do, so take your audiences, put some groups of people together, and make everybody sit down and work on an assignment of some sort. Take 3-5 companies and get people working on the fixes they need in terms of ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ Why? We have no time to waste on sitting back and listening in the old way anymore. Everyone needs to do something. And part of me couldn’t help but feel like I was right back in the Internet bubble, at a conference that it left me wanting more, expecting more, wishing we’d done more. I’d almost give my right arm to get to sit in on a spontaneous gathering of talent like the kind that was there, at such a conference, to see if we could ‘fix’ a problem a company was having. I mean, wouldn’t that make such conferences that much more valuable for us all? I can think that for a company like Agilewaves [http://www.agilewaves.com], which was there, to have had some ‘group’ feedback would have been superb.
The key thing though, is that brands have to start getting their consumers to consume less - about 20% less, actually. In fact, Jacquelyn Ottman told the room it was time to start thinking “like a beer marketeer on New Year’s Eve.” Brands have to demonstrate environmental stewardship now through and through. That’s the bar that’s been set. [Full text of Jacquelyn’s talk here.]
This call for a reduction in consumption is quite an earful when you’re the head of marketing for an organization, and your task is to help drive sales through strategic marketing initiatives (in other words - to get consumers to consume more of whatever it is you produce). But that was indeed the message. As was the call for radical, not just incremental, change.
So what’s a brand to do? To quote Gil Friend, of Natural Logic: “Keep it simple.” Focus on primary benefits and transparency, and act from a place of integrity and authenticity. Demonstrate responsible supply chains. Develop product take back programs to make recycling easy for your customers. Create energy efficient products. Be environmentally conscientious as well as health and safety focused in your use of materials. Demonstrate a higher caliber of being and acting, and your consumers will reward you with their loyalty and purchase behavior. The benefits of doing these things? Happier, healthier employees and customers, better retention of employees, and an improved ability to attract and recruit better employees, the ability to attract more patient capital (if you’re in the fund-raising mode), improved community relations, reduced waste, a better understanding of inputs and outputs, sourced materials and your suppliers, a smaller environmental footprint, and a smarter way to manage and meet business challenges and growth. Ottman, for example, cited Toyota and Timberland for excellence in sustainable branding, noting that Toyota’s focus on the primary benefits of their product’s quiet ride and fuel economy were far more meaningful than just saying ‘we are saving the planet’; and Timberland’s transparent “eco metrics’ process for carbon-identifying shoes was in itself example of great transparency. And there are other companies doing similar things. The top named green brands, as noted in an unaided consumer awareness poll by C&W noted the following: Whole Foods, which topped the list, followed by Burt’s Bees, Trader Joes, Toms, Toyota, 7th Generation, Honda, Whirlpool, Aveda and Method. Btw - 95% of those polled in a recent survey said they think companies use too much packaging. 45% said they want to see recycled materials in packaging.
With the help of a weak economy, consumers are already on the track to consuming less. Just look at how consumers’ driving habits are changing. A recent national survey commissioned by Access America asked Americans if they have made changes to their driving habits as a result of rising gas prices. I’m taking out a lot of other information in here, but the results of their survey showed that by $5.00 per gallon, 85% of all Americans will have changed their driving habits. Just think of the burden placed on commuters and the companies that employ them, alike.
With the economy clearly affecting consumers’ ability to do much more with their pocketbooks in the way of ‘saving the planet’, it’s truly now incumbent more than ever before for companies – large companies at that – and governments - to step up to the plate and offer clear solutions. A March ‘08 Gallup poll cited at the conference shows 80% of those polled to be first most concerned about the quality of the economy, secondly most concerned about affordability of health care, and lastly most concerned about the environment (40%). Global warming as a topic now comes in third behind energy and carbon emissions pollution as topics of interest to consumers polled by Cohn & Wolfe recently. Kraft had a representative there for the first time and told me their mac ‘n’ cheese was flying off the shelves.
With that, I’ll switch gears. I’ll be sending out (am just waiting for fact-checking to be done) some insights gleaned from conversations I had with various companies over the two days I spent at SB ‘08 in a follow on blog. Happy reading, and happy Friday… and thank you to everyone who offered up some of their time for a briefing. More here: http://www.sustainablebrands08.com/ and Press Center Materials here [http://www.sustainablebrands08.com/press].
Posted in The Abrams Clean Tech Report |