Discovery Communication’s acquisition today of green blog TreeHugger – for a cool $10 million, according to the New York Post – is another sign of the shifting media landscape and how companies are turning to online magazines to reach green consumers. Not too many years ago a publisher seeking to ride a societal shift and rake in advertising would have started a print publication. After all, the great dot-com boom of the late ’90s inspired a passel of dead-tree – and now mostly dead – magazines like The Industry Standard and Business 2.0 (Green Wombat’s employer). Not anymore. TreeHugger launched online in 2004 to chronicle a growing interest in the environment and the green lifestyle. Stylishly designed and tapping a global network of correspondents, New York-based TreeHugger serves up a mix of news, advocacy and product reviews through its blog and pod-and-vodcasts. The purchase price might seem modest but Green Wombat bets TreeHugger’s overhead runs at a mere fraction of a print mag’s. TreeHugger’s reach – 1.4 million visitors a month – clearly appealed to Discovery (DISCA), whose cable TV holdings include the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, the Science Channel, and the upcoming Planet Green eco-network.
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As part of its Big Green initiative, IBM is replacing some 3,900 servers in its data centers with 30 mainframe computers – a move that the company says will result in a staggering 80 percent decline in energy usage. Ever more powerful servers were supposed to be the death of the mainframe but Big Iron is back – with a twist. Software will let each Linux-powered mainframe act as thousands of "virtual" servers, providing the same capabilities of individual physical servers while consuming significantly less electricity. IBM (IBM) will roll out the project at data centers in Australia, Japan and the United States. "The mainframe is the single most powerful instrument to drive better economics and energy conservation at the data center today," said James Stallings, general manager, IBM System z mainframe, in a statement. IBM’s greening of the server farm comes as tech companies like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) join Internet giants like Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YAHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) to slash computer energy consumption and combat global warming through such programs as the Climate Savers Computing Initiative and the Green Grid.
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The California Clean Tech Open startup competition has named 50 finalists, and this year companies vying for $600,000 in cash and services need to be as green as their products. Entrepreneurs will be judged, in part, on the sustainability of their business model and business practices. In other words, it’s not enough to come up with the killer enviro app, you have to be as carbon neutral as possible. To that end, the competition is providing finalists with "sustainability starter kits" to to put contestants on the green path from the get-go. The competition is backed by such Silicon Valley heavyweights as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Google (GOOG) and SunPower (SPWR) as well as more than a dozen venture capital firm. Other sponsors include the big three California utilities – PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE).
The California Clean Tech Open offers a look at where entrepreneurs – and the judges – think the green wave will be breaking next. This year, the contest named finalists in six categories: Air, Water & Waste; Energy Efficiency; Green Building; Renewables; Smart Power; and Transportation. Some of the finalists that caught Green Wombat’s eye include Friendly Cow Biogas, which is developing a methane digesters to turn cow poop into biogas; Civil Twilight, which is making streetlights that dim when the moon is full; Vertical Landscape’s system of transforming load-bearing walls of buildings to support vegetation; SolarAire, which has created a solar-powered air conditioning system; Grid Saver, whose home appliance remote control system allows utilities to manage power usage; and High Merit Thermoelectrics, which converts waste heat from heavy truck exhaust systems to electricity to run the vehicle’s alternator, power steering pump, and air conditioner pump.
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photos: green wombat
While reporting a feature story on Norwegian electric car company Think that appears in the August issue of Business 2.0 ("Have You Driven a Fjord Lately?"), Green Wombat had the chance to sit down with Ion Yadigaroglu, co-founder and partner at Palo Alto’s Capricorn Investment Group. Capricorn, the investment vehicle of former eBay president Jeff Skoll, has invested in both Think and Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric car company making the Roadster super car. "This is the first time in a very long time that there are two car companies – two real car companies – that are being launched," says Yadigaroglu. He believes there’s an opening for electric car startups to grab market share while Detroit and Tokyo dither. "The reason there might be a window is because, clearly, the incumbent car companies didn’t take this electric car phenomenon seriously," says Yadigaroglu. "They have, as always happens, big incentives to drag their feet and maintain the status quo."
Automotive history, of course, is littered with the rusting name plates of failed startups, from Tucker to DeLorean. But thanks to the economics of electric car production, companies like Think and Tesla are able to make cars for $100 million versus the $1 billion automakers will spend on just retooling an existing model. "Fundamentally, by going all-electric there is a radical design change involved," Yadigaroglu says. "The complexity goes down. Half the complexity of a regular car is in its drive train, its engine and transmission and all that. You have such savings by going all-electric in terms of what engineering is needed." Tesla and Think will use Tesla’s lithium-ion battery packs, piggybacking on the billions spent to create such batteries for laptops and cell phones. Think is also benefiting from the $150 million that former owner Ford (F) pumped into the company to develop a highway-ready electric car that met European and U.S. safety standards. And both companies are pursuing a classic Silicon Valley strategy: attract high-profile early adopters with disruptive technology and then popularize it for the mass market.
Think and Tesla will roll out their cars this year from from opposite ends of the market – Think with a two-seater urban runabout called the City and Tesla with its two-seater $100,000 Roadster. The challenge will be ramping up to get costs down so both companies can expand production to more mainstream passenger vehicles. "The real game here is how are we positioned in 2009," says Yadigaroglu. "There will be two electric car companies in the world that will have significant numbers on the road with the knowledge and assets in order to be competitive with Toyota. Car company incumbents are maybe slow but they’re not stupid. I guarantee you in two years there will be interesting vehicles coming out of even the U.S. automobile industry."
Whether an electrified Toyota (TM) or General Motors (GM) will attempt to crush or co-exist with the upstarts in the great unknown. To help drive down the cost of electric cars and boast Think and Tesla, Capricorn plans to start a battery leasing company. Think, for instance, will sell the City but lease the battery, which accounts for half the cost of the car. When you buy an electric car you’re essentially paying upfront the fuel costs for the life of the vehicle. (It would be like buying a $20,000 Honda and then having to pay a $20,000 surcharge for the gasoline the car will consume over the next decade.) Capricorn’s lease might be sold as a "mobility" fee that could include insurance and other services. Utilities like San Francisco-based PG&E (PCG) are interested in buying thousands of used electric car batteries to store renewable energy and ease demand on the power grid. "
Yadigaroglu met Think CEO Jan-Olaf Willums last year when he invited Willums, an expert in corporate sustainability, to a meeting at Capricorn. As the two were driving back to San Francisco – in a Prius – Willums mentioned he and his investment group had just bought Think. "He’s a very interesting person and delightful to be with and very generous," says Yadigaroglu. "They’re not in it just for the money. They really aren’t. One thing that always keeps me optimistic about the world is that sometimes when you try not too hard to make every last dollar of profit is when you actually create companies, organizations or ideas that are truly worth an outstanding amount of real value."
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The green tech investment boom continues, with Silicon Valley venure capital firm Technology Partners announcing this morning that it has raised $300 million for its latest fund. The cash will be invested in clean tech and life sciences startups. "We think the convergence between life sciences and clean tech represents the next wave of opportunity," Ira Ehrenpreis, a general partner at Technology Partners, told Green Wombat. To Ehrenpreis, a leading green tech guru (or "cleantech" in the nomenclature preferred by some valley VCs), that means everything from bioengineering new biofuels to deploying advanced material sciences to develop new drug delivery systems. The new fund has already invested in electric car company Tesla Motors, NFocus Neuromedical, which is developing technology to treat brain aneurysms, and laser hair-removal startup SpectraGenics. The Palo Alto firm’s lastest fund has also invested in a "stealth solar company" that Ehrenpreis declined to identify in any way. It’s de rigeur these days to ask whether the big bucks being poured into such ventures herald a green tech bubble a la the dot-com bubble of yesteryear. Sure, some people will inevitably lose their shirts but the global warming-driven political and regulatory changes spurring such investments are unlikely to subside anytime soon. "I think this is just the beginning of another industrial revolution," says Ehrenpreis.
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Green Wombat had lunch Friday with EnviroMission’s Roger Davey and Kim Forte, who flew into San Francisco from Melbourne, Australia, to promote their solar tower project. (Green Wombat chronicled the company’s six-year quest to build the solar tower in "Tower of Power," which appeared in the August 2006 issue of Business 2.0 magazine.) Of the various Big Solar technologies out there, the solar tower is one of the most out there: A tower between 1,600 and 3,000 feet is surrounded by a glass canopy a mile or two wide, which heats the air underneath. Hot air rises and the tower operates as a vacuum. As the air is sucked into the tower, it produces wind to power an array of turbine generators clustered around the structure. The turbines in turn generate electricity. EnviroMission had purchased 24,000 acres of land on the edge of the outback in south east Australia to build the tower but got knocked back last October when it lost a bid for $57 million in government funding to cross-town rival Solar Systems. Since then, EnviroMission CEO Davey has focused on the U.S. market, studying potential sites in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. In April, the company put in a bid to El Paso Electric (EE) in response to the utility’s request for proposals to supply 300 megawatts of renewable electricity. Davey says the company also has had contact with Arizona’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service (PNW), and California utilities like PG&E (PCG) and Southern California Edison (EIX). "Right now, the best market in the world for large-scale solar is the United States," says Davey. He says EnviroMission is currently reconfiguring the tower’s optimal size, having downsized it to qualify for the Australian government funding. But the first solar tower may well be built in China. EnviroMission’s joint venture with a Chinese development and construction company is close to receiving approval to build a kilometer-high solar tower outside Shanghai, Davey told Green Wombat. "I just got an email from China last night. Things are moving forward."
One of EnviroMission’s more interesting strategies is to work with Native American tribes. The company currently is conducting a site assessment of land owned by the Fort Mojave tribe that spans Arizona, California and Nevada. As the New York Times reported Friday, some Native American tribes in the Southwest are being riven by plans to build heavily polluting coal-fired plants on their land to take advantage of the rich mineral deposits. Clean technologies like the solar tower might provide a green alternative.
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Green Wombat’s feature story on Norwegian electric car company Think appears in the August issue of Business 2.0 and is available online. A startup acquired by Ford (F) in 1999 and now owned by a group of Norwegian entrepreneurs backed by Silicon Valley and European investors, Think is revving up the production line for its zippy two-seater City coupe. (Alas, the convertible City on the Business 2.0 cover is a prototype.) The company, which has attracted the attention of everyone from Google (GOOG) and Tesla Motors to inventor Dean Kamen and PG&E (PCG), will begin selling cars in Europe in 2008 and hopes to bring the Think to selected U.S. markets in 2009. Like Tesla, Think is attempting to upend a century-old automotive business model as it rolls out the first highway-ready production electric car since General Motors (GM) scrapped the EV1 in 2003. Over the next few days, Green Wombat will feature bonus material that didn’t make it into the Think story.
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photo: FateOne
Overshadowed by PG&E’s 553-megawatt solar power plant deal this week was the California utility’s agreement with PPM Energy to buy 85 megawatts of wind energy from its new Oregon wind farm. That means PG&E now has 711 megawatts of wind power online with nearly a gigawatt under contract, according to PG&E (PCG) spokesperson Jennifer Zerwer. Tapping wind energy from border states like Oregon lets PG&E avoid the transmission obstacles that have bedeviled wind-rich Southern California where needed and expensive upgrades to power lines are slowing new projects. PG&E already obtains a large amount of hydro power from Oregon so it can piggyback new wind energy sources on to existing transmission lines. This week’s announcements underscores how the United States has become a rich market for overseas green energy companies. So far PG&E’s big solar power deals have been with Israeli companies while its latest wind energy agreement is with a subsidiary of the U.K’s ScottishPower, which recently agreed to be acquired by Spanish energy giant Iberdrola. PG&E, meanwhile, is investigating getting wind energy from British Columbia and is talking to U.K. wave energy company Ocean Power Delivery about building a wave farm off the Northern California coast.
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The non-profit Environmental Integrity Project has released a list of the most planet-warming power plants in the nation. The watchdog group, headed by former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforcement official Eric Schaeffer, analyzed EPA records to rank the 50 power plants that emit the most pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity generated.
The plants contributing the most to global warming in terms of total tons of C02 emitted – electric utilities account for 40 percent of the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions – are concentrated in a dozen states: Texas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Wyoming, Florida, Kentucky, and New Mexico. The nation’s dirtiest plant in total C02 emissions is Southern’s (SO) Scherer facility in Georgia, according to the report. Texas is home to the most dirty power plants – five – including two owned by TXU (TXU). The study reports that CO2 emissions have held steady over the past five years but notes that "a wave of new coal-fired power plants are being permitted and built across the country" that will result in an estimated 34 percent spike in greenhouse gas emissions between 2005 and 2030. "If any new coal plants are built, they must be required to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from current levels," the report’s authors state. The study also tracks the most polluting plants in terms of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions.
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photo: toastforbrekkie
Bank of America is getting into the solar power business in a deal with Chevron to install five megawatts of solar arrays at schools in San Jose, California. Chevron Energy Solutions (CVX) will build and operate the solar systems while BofA (BAC) will finance and own the arrays and sell the green energy back to the San Jose Unified School District at "significantly" below-market rates. Bank of America is just the latest financial giant seeking a piece of the growing solar financing business. Wall Street powerhouse Morgan Stanley (MS) is financing solar arrays to be installed at Wal-Mart stores by SunPower (SPWR) while other players include GE Energy Financial Services (GE) and MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA). It’s an attractive market, particularly in California. The San Jose project, for instance, will qualify for $4.2 million in state incentives from the California Solar Initiative as well as federal investment tax credits. The school district expects to cut demand for utility-supplied electricity by 25 percent, saving $25 million over the life of the arrays. The project also includes a program to improve the energy efficiency of the school district’s buildings.
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