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Archive for the ‘environment’ Category
Green Wombat is moving
Posted in environment on November 26, 2007| 2 Comments »
Report: California leads green innovation
Posted in environment, green tech on November 16, 2007| 1 Comment »
Just how green is California? Deep green. Very deep green, according to a new California Green Innovation Index compiled by Silicon Valley venture capitalist F. Noel Perry’s non-profit Next 10 foundation.
That might be taken as so much environmental chest-thumping by Golden State partisans, but the report — the product of Next 10 and public-interest consultants Collaborative Economics — offers some persuasive statistics about the role green innovation has played in California’s fortunes.
“The index analyzes key economic and environmental indicators,” writes Perry, “including energy consumption and efficiency, economic growth and carbon emissions, to help us better understand the role green innovation plays in achieving two goals critical to California’s future: 1) reducing the absolute level of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, and 2) increasing the state’s gross domestic product, which is the basis for our economic vitality ”
The conclusion echoes one repeatedly championed by green tech proponents, from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to Silicon Valley venture capitalists: environmental innovation and economic prosperity go hand in hand.
Here’s some interesting data points from the report:
- “If California’s annual statewide electricity bill was the same fraction of GDP as Texas…Californians would be paying almost $25 billion more for electricity.”
- California holds 44% of United States patents in solar technologies and 37% in wind.
- The Golden State has 36 percent of the U.S.’s green tech venture capital investment.
- “California utility efficiency programs….reduced the need for 24 power plants between 1975 and 2003….The California Energy Commission estimates that building and appliance standards alone have saved residents and businesses $56 billion through 2003 and are projected to save another $23 billion by 2013.”
- “More Californians recycle than vote” (More than 50 percent of Californians recycle.)
- “Per capita CO2 emissions in Texas are double those of California. Per capita emissions levels in California today are slightly lower than they were 15 years ago.”
- California has about 90 percent of the market for energy-efficient dishwasher and about 50 percent of the market for energy-efficient refrigerators and washing machines
Concludes Next 10: “The growing distance between the trend lines of GDP rising and emissions dropping represent the delinking of GHG emissions from economic growth.”
PG&E’s new Big Solar power deal
Posted in environment, green startups, PG&E, solar energy on November 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »
PG&E this morning finally consummated a long-expected solar power deal with Silicon Valley startup Ausra, agreeing to buy 177 megawatts of green electricity generated by a solar thermal plant to be built by the company on California’s central coast. As Green Wombat reported Friday, Ausra — backed by marquee venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — has filed a development and licensing application with the California Energy Commission for the project, called the Carrizo Solar Energy Farm.
With its latest power purchase agreement, PG&E (PCG) has committed to buying more than 1.2 gigawatts of greenhouse-gas free electricity from three large-scale solar power plants — enough to light nearly a million homes. Construction of the Ausra power plant is expected to begin in 2009 and go online the following year. Terms were not disclosed — they never are in power purchase deals — but Ausra revealed in its Energy Commission application that the agreement runs for 20 years. The company, which decamped to Silicon Valley from Sydney last year, claims that its Compact Fresnel Linear Reflector system — long flat mirrors that focus the sun’s rays on water-filled tubes to create steam that drives electricity-generating turbines — will produce power at costs competitive with natural gas-fired plants. A pilot power plant (Ausra photo above) is up and running in Australia. The Carrizo solar farm will be a boon for the San Luis Obispo County economy, employing 350 workers during construction and creating 100 permanent jobs, according to Ausra.
Carrizo will be the company’s first solar power station in the U.S., though in September Florida utility FPL (FPL) announced it would build 10-megawatt demonstration plant using Ausra’s technology as well as a 300-megawatt version if all goes as planned. Ausra executives have told Green Wombat they anticipate rolling out enough solar farms to produce at least a gigawatt of electricity over the next few years.
That might be taken as so much Silicon Valley hype, and only time will tell if the technology lives up to its promise, but regulatory and economic trends indicate that deals like the PG&E-Ausra agreement is just the beginning of a wave of Big Solar projects. California’s investor-owned utilities — PG&E, Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) — face a 2010 deadline to source 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, with the ante rising to 30 percent by 2020. Those utilities are actively negotiating gigawatts of solar power deals, sources tell Green Wombat. Meanwhile, California-based solar power companies like Ausra and BrightSource Energy, as well as a host of overseas competitors, are moving to license prospective projects, confident they’ll secure power purchase agreements with utilities as well as the financing to build their solar power plants. That Morgan Stanley (MS) has quietly invested in BrightSource — the company is negotiating a 500-megawatt agreement with PG&E — is but the latest sign that Wall Street is looking to profit from Big Solar.
Even California’s green governator weighed in on the PG&E-Ausra deal. “Today’s agreement between PG&E and Ausra highlights how clean energy will create jobs in California while delivering a reliable source of renewable energy,” said Arnold Schwarzenegger in a statement. “I’m pleased to see California companies rising to the challenge of AB 32, California’s historic initiative to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. Clearly, California continues to lead the nation in clean energy research, development and generation.”
Big solar power plant planned for California’s central coast
Posted in environment, green startups, solar energy on November 2, 2007| 1 Comment »
Silicon Valley’s solar boom continues with Ausra, a Palo Alto startup backed by venture capitalist heavyweights Vinod Khosla and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, filing an application to build a 177-megawatt solar power plant on California’s Central Coast.
Ausra’s lodging of its 1,000+ page “application for certification” with the California Energy Commission last week is another sign the company, which relocated to Silicon Valley from Sydney last year, is about to sign a major deal with a California utility. Khosla has previously said Ausra is negotiating with PG&E (PCG). In its application, the company stated that the San Luis Obispo County project, called the Carrizo Energy Solar Farm, would begin providing greenhouse gas-free electricity to “a major California utility” by June 2010 under a 20-year power purchase agreement. If the Commission licenses the project – at least a year-long process – construction would begin in 2009. In September, Florida utility FPL (FPL) announced it would use Ausra’s technology for a planned 300-megawatt solar power plant.
While there’s no shortage of solar startups with big plans for Big Solar, only three companies have actually taken the expensive and time-consuming step of filing a construction application with the California Energy Commission. (On Wednesday, Oakland, Calif.-based solar company BrightSource Energy cleared a major regulatory hurdle when the Commission signed off on its application for a 400-megawatt Mojave Desert power plant and began the licensing process.)
The Carrizo solar thermal power plant will deploy 195 long rows of flat mirrors to focus the sun’
s rays on tubes of water suspended over the arrays. The superheated water creates saturated steam that will drive two electricity-generating turbines, to be supplied by either GE (GE) or Siemens (SI). While the efficiency of Ausra’s compact linear fresnel reflector system is lower than competing technologies, company executives claim they will able to drive down the costing of producing solar electricity to make it competitive with natural gas. (For more on Ausra, see Green Wombat’s previous post.) Unlike most solar power plants in the works for California, Ausra has chosen not to locate its facility in the Mojave Desert, where solar sites are sun-drenched but are often on government land and far from transmission lines. Instead, the Carrizo project will be built on 640 acres of old ranch land on the Carrizo Plain, where Ausra will just need to construct a 850-foot transmission line to connect to the power grid.
“Ausra Inc.’s (Ausra) proved, proprietary technology significantly reduces the cost of a solar thermal power plant and is thus capable of significantly reducing global carbon emissions by generating low-carbon electricity on a commercial scale at competitive prices,” the company stated in its application.
California’s first Big Solar power plant in 16 years clears hurdle
Posted in environment, green startups, solar energy on November 1, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Green Wombat happened to be chatting with BrightSource Energy CEO John Woolard yesterday at the solar power startup’s Oakland, Calif., offices when an executive burst into a conference room with big news: the California Energy Commission had accepted BrightSource’s application to build the first large-scale solar thermal power plant in the Golden State in 16 years. “We were found data adequate this morning by the CEC,” said Doug Divine, vice president of project development. “That’s huge,” replied Woolard. “It’s a big step.”
Indeed it is. In Commission-speak, being declared “data adequate” means the expensive, year-long process of assembling hundreds of pages of documents detailing the proposed 400-megawatt power plant and its environmental impact had passed bureaucratic muster. Now the Commission begins a 12-month process to review and license the project. If all goes well, ground could be broken in early 2009 on BrightSource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, to be built in the Mojave Desert just across from the Nevada border in San Bernardino County. (BrightSource’s artist rendering above.)
BrightSource is currently negotiating a 500-megawatt power purchase agreement with California utility PG&E (PCG), and Woolard says the company is in talks with other utilities to supply another 1,000 megawatts from seven power plants. BrightSource has applied to lease a site from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for a second solar power plant, a 500-megawatt project to be built near Broadwell Dry Lake in the Mojave. The company has relied on venture capital for funding but Woolard revealed Wednesday that the company has also secured investment from Morgan Stanley (MS).
There’s a certain historical symmetry in the Commission’s decision. BrightSource was founded by American-Israeli pioneer Arnold Goldman, whose Luz International built the last big solar power plant in California in 1991. That was Solar Electric Generating System IX, the last of nine solar trough power plants constructed by Luz in the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles and that today are mostly operated by FPL (FPL).
BrightSource has developed a new solar technology, dubbed distributed power tower, that focuses fields of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats on a tower containing a water-filled boiler. The sun’s rays superheat the water and the resulting steam drives an electricity-generating turbine. BrightSource is now building a 7-megawatt pilot power plant in Israel to show investors the distributed power tower is ready for prime-time. “The technology is locked down,” Woolard says.
Berkeley to finance solar arrays for homeowners
Posted in environment, solar energy on October 31, 2007| 5 Comments »
From my perch in the Berkeley Hills I look down on a sea of roofs stretching toward San Francisco Bay. A glint here and there in the California sunshine telegraphs that someone has installed a solar array. But even in this most ecologically self-conscious of cities, homeowners face a familiar conundrum: cutting the utility cord and your home’s greenhouse gas emissions means coughing up some serious cash. A residential rooftop solar system can cost anywhere between $15,000 and $30,000, and it can be up to a decade before the array pays for itself in electricity savings. Rebates through the $3.3 billion California Solar Initiative help and the program has been a great success so far, but its goal of a million solar roofs by 2017 will cover just a fraction of the state’s households.
Now the city of Berkeley has devised an innovative plan that could dramatically increase that number and turn the nascent solar industry into a mass market if replicated. Under a solar initiative to be considered by the city council on Tuesday, Nov. 6, Berkeley would finance the installation of solar arrays and solar hot water systems (more on that later) for any homeowner or commercial building owner. You choose an installer from a city-approved list and retain ownership of the solar system, paying back the cost over 20 years through an assessment on your annual property tax bill. “Over next decade we could have solar on 25 percent of the buildings in Berkeley,” Cisco DeVries, chief of staff for Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, told Green Wombat. The federal government is supporting the Berkeley initiative — the first of its kind — and California’s largest utility, PG&E, backs the plan.
Here’s the game-changing aspect of Berkeley’s proposed Sustainable Energy Financing District: When you sell your home the solar array and the tax surcharge stays with the property, passing on to the new owner. In other words, there’s little risk that you’ll lose money by going solar. And given that a solar array generally boosts your property value — in California, at least — you’ll likely to come out ahead. (When Green Wombat’s Fortune magazine colleague, Michael Copeland, installed solar on his new Berkeley home, the appraised value immediately jumped nearly $13,000.) What’s more, as a property tax the solar assessment is a deductible on your federal income tax return. Banks now offer solar home equity loans that similarly allow property owners to install an array with no upfront costs. But the catch is that when you sell your home, you pay back the loan from the proceeds. With the city financing your solar array, you’re just on the hook for the annual property tax surcharge for the time you own your home.
Given that the city will likely put up a bond to borrow millions of dollars, DeVries expects to obtain a lower interest rate than what would available through a solar home equity loan. “Because this is an assessment on your property bill, effectively a lien, it’s a very secure position for financing,” he says. “In event of foreclosure, it’s paid before the mortgage.”
The program also will finance the installation of solar hot water systems, which for Berkeley and other temperate zone cities could be a real environmental and economic boon. Solar thermal systems that tap the sun’s rays to heat water are widely used in countries like China but have not caught on in the United States. But they make perfect sense for cities such as Berkeley, where moderate weather means that much of residents’ utility bills is not for electricity used to power energy-sucking air conditioners but for natural gas that heats water for bathing, cooking and running dishwashers. “You would be able to displace natural gas and get a much more direct environmental benefit,” says David Rubin, PG&E’s (PCG) director of service analysis, who helps run the utility’s solar rebate program. Solar hot water also will help Berkeley meet a voter-approved mandate to fight global warming by reducing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
Just how much extra homeowners will pay on their property tax bill depends on the size of the solar array they install and the terms of the financing the city is able to arrange. But DeVries says some preliminary calculations show that a $15,000 solar array might add $1,300 to a homeowners’ annual tax bill. (It should be noted that Berkeley residents are accustomed to such surcharges. Green Wombat just got his 2007-2008 property tax bill and counts 18 local surcharges, ranging from fees for mosquito control to school classroom-size reduction.) While it will hit them in the pocketbook at tax time, Berkeley homeowners, if they install the appropriate size solar array, can count on free electricity year-round. California is a so-called net-metering state, which means that electricity produced from a residential solar panels is fed into the power grid; in return homeowners receive a credit that can zero out the cost of the energy they consume.
No surprise that the solar industry is enthusiastic about the Berkeley’s initiative, which has the potential to provide a big boost to their business if other cities copy the program. Among those that stand to benefit are installers and solar cell makers like SunPower (SPWR) and Sharp. “It just seems like it’s a great model for other cities to look at and hopefully to emulate because it really advances homeowners’ access to solar,” says Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Solar, one of the world’s biggest solar panel makers. Sharp supplies arrays to many of the installers Berkeley is likely to include in its program. “We found that solar powered homes are easier to sell and move faster on the market. And they gain value over time.”
Says Barry Cinnamon, CEO of solar installer Akeena Solar: “It’s going to raise awareness of solar. I think there will be a big spill-over effect, especially if starts to work. If they can aggregate the financing, it definitely helps lower the cost of solar.”
DeVries has been meeting with solar installers and already has had discussions with PG&E about what support the utility can provide to the program. For PG&E, a big spike in residential and commercial solar could potentially ease the cost and environmental impact of peak power demand. “Having the city finance solar through a property tax assessment is a good idea,” says Rubin. “Additional amounts of solar do help reduce demand.”
Lest you think this is just another wacky notion from Berkeley’s left-winging politicos and social engineers, consider that two Bush administration agencies have lined up in support of the initiative. The U.S. Department of Energy has given Berkeley a $200,000 grant that can be used in part to promote the Sustainable Energy Financing District while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to sign off on another $160,000 to get the program off the ground and create a guide for other cities.
If approved by the city council next week, DeVries expects to begin signing up homeowners and business owners by June 2008. “I just got an e-mail from a large-scale commercial property owner interested in the program,” he says.
Solar startup GreenVolts scores $10 million
Posted in environment, green startups, solar energy on October 30, 2007| 1 Comment »
Last year’s California Clean Tech Open winner GreenVolts is a poster child for how a startup can capitalize on the startup contest to bootstrap itself into some major deals. Working from a San Francisco office provided by utility PG&E (PCG) as part of its contest winnings, GreenVolts earlier this year scored a contract with its benefactor to build a 2-megawatt solar power station using the solar startup’s high concentration photovoltaic technology. The company’s microdishes track the sun and focus its rays on small but highly efficient solar cells. Rotating platforms each hold 176 of the dishes.
So it was appropriate that GreenVolts CEO Bob Cart announced last night at this year’s Clean Tech Open ceremony that the company had raised $10 million in its latest round of funding. The company also said that its demonstration solar power plant for Spokane, Wash.-based utility Avista (AVA) had begun generating electricity. Avista had made an earlier investment in GreenVolts and participated in the latest round, which was led by Greenlight Energy Resources.
The most promising green tech startups
Posted in environment, green startups, solar energy on October 30, 2007| 1 Comment »
If you want to know what enviro startups Silicon Valley movers and shakers think could be the next big green thing, the California Clean Tech Open is a good leading indicator. Last night in San Francisco the Open named six winners in its second annual startup competition. Each winner receives a $100,000 “startup in a box” package that includes $50,000 in cash from such sponsors as Google (GOOG), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Lexus (TM) and California’s Big Three utilities – PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE). The winners also get $50k worth of legal, marketing, accounting and public relations services from such heavyweights as Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. The opportunity to mingle with the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and potential clients who judge the contest probably represents the biggest win of all for these startups. Now the winners:
AMD Smart Power Award
The Lucid Design Group of Oakland, Calif., takes a Web 2.0 approach to environmental monitoring, providing real-time feedback on a building or home’s energy and water usage through an online dashboard. The idea: people will be motivated to cut their electricity and water consumption when they see how much and when power is being used by various appliances.
ENVIRON Foundation and Grundfos Air, Water and Waste Award
Overland Park, Kan., startup Microvi Biotech is using biotechnology to treat waste water, sewage and control pollution.
Google Green Building Award
BuildFast of San Carlos, Calif., makes environmentally sensitive prefab housing kits to erect buildings in disaster zones or in low-income areas.
Lexus Transportation Award
Los Angeles’ Syncromatics is developing technology that uses GPS and mobile phone networks for real-time online tracking of buses to improve efficiency and cut fuel costs.
PG&E, SCE and SDG&E Renewables Award
Rohnert Park, Calif.-based 1-Solar is designing lower-cost and longer-life power inverters for solar arrays and other renewable energy systems. Inverters convert the direct current produced by such systems into the alternating current used in households and businesses.
PG&E, SCE and SDG&E Energy Efficiency Award
Nila of Sherman Oaks, Calif., makes LED lighting systems for Hollywood that it says consume 50 to 75 percent less electricity than traditional lighting used in the entertainment industry.
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Green Wombat is Back
Posted in environment on October 21, 2007| 4 Comments »
Sorry for the radio silence, folks. Green Wombat has been literally off the grid in the Australian bush the past couple weeks but is back online. Posting will resume on Monday.
Business 2.0 RIP; Fortunate Wombat
Posted in environment on September 10, 2007| 10 Comments »
As you may have read, Time Inc. is closing Business 2.0 magazine, where I work as an editor and which publishes Green Wombat. While it is exceedingly sad to see the end of B2, I’m happy to report that I’m joining Fortune magazine (along with eight of my Business 2.0 colleagues) and that Green Wombat is coming with me. We will remain in San Francisco as Fortune’s West Coast bureau – the biggest of any business magazine. I’m looking forward to working at Fortune and continuing to report on the environment and technology at Green Wombat.
Green Wombat 