Green Wombat

The Prius of Power Plants

April 16, 2007 by Todd Woody

illustration: Inland Energy

The California Energy Commission has greenlighted an application to build the U.S.’s first solar-natural gas hybrid power plant in Southern California’s High Desert. The plant will be built on a former Air Force Base outside Victorville – about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles – and would integrate a 50-megawatt solar trough power station into a 500-megawatt natural gas-fired plant. Solar energy would produce 10 percent of the plant’s electricity during peak demand times to lower greenhouse gas emissions from the facility, according to the application. The project is being developed by Newport Beach’s Inland Energy for the city of Victorville. "We felt there was a direct analogy between the way renewable resources are used and hybrid cars," Inland Energy executive VP Tom Barnett told Green Wombat. "Electric cars have their limitations but hybrids have taken off. We felt same concept applied to a power plant. We have a solar power plant with the reliability of a combined natural gas cycle plant. We set out to figure out how to integrate solar thermal with gas."

The Victorville 2 plant will use solar trough technology. Fields of parabolic mirrors heat oil or another liquid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. Several solar trough power plants built in the nearby Mojave Desert in the 1980s and ’90s by Luz continue to operate. Some of those plants use natural gas to extend their operating time – say, when its cloudy or when the sun begins to set. So why did Inland Energy decide to make solar a relatively small part of its plant rather than the main power producer? Reliability, says Barnett. "We really didn�t like that idea because we wanted the ability to provide a baseload plant." In other words, Victorville 2 will generate power 24/7. While the plant will supply electricity to the local area, it also will connect to the grid operated by Southern California Edison (EIX), the utility that powers Los Angeles. "We have the best solar resources in world located in close proximity to one of world�s largest cites," Barnett notes. "The fact that we�re just over the hill from L.A. makes this a valuable resource."

And building a solar-powered conventional natural gas plant means that that it may qualify for a federal investment tax credit. The solar component will also be attractive to California’s investor-owned utilties, which must get 20 percent of their electricty from renewable sources by 2010 and 30 percent by 2030. "We hoped initially that we would have been able to put a much larger solar
facility in the overall plant, but we felt 50 megawatts was the optimal
ratio," Barnett says, noting it may be possible to eventually expand the size of the solar fields at the plant, set to begin operation in 2010. He sees opportunity to build more hybrid plants or retrofit existing plants that supply power to PG&E (PCG), San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) and other utilities. "There’s a land rush on for solar," he says. "Everyone’s looking at this."

Posted in alternative energy | 7 Comments »

The Green Grass Roots: National Climate Change Rally on Saturday

April 13, 2007 by Todd Woody

If you happen to be driving through Marin County, California, on Saturday, here’s the 411 on why people in polar bear suits are waving signs outside a San Rafael Chevrolet/Hummer dealership. As part of what is being billed as a National Day of Climate Action across the U.S., a "Clean Car Caravan" of hybrids and other green vehicles will cross the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and deliver petitions to the auto dealership urging General Motors (GM) "to plug in the hybrid and pull the plug on the Hummer." (Though around here you’re just as likely to see a ’72 Mercedes running on vegetable oil as an H2.) The national event is being organized by Step It Up, the brainchild of noted environmental writer Bill McKibben, to drive a grass-root movement to pressure Congress take immediate action on climate change. Earlier in the day, Bay Area organizers will hold a clean
car rally in San Francisco’s Presidio to show off plug-in hybrids, all-electric cars, bio-diesel vehicles and solar-powered buses. Kids can throw pies at a Hummer and make masks of polar bears – whose habitat, as we all know, is fast melting away as climate change intensifies. The San Francisco event is being run by a coalition that includes Working Assets, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Plug In America, NRDC and other environmental groups. Of course in the Bay Area, we’ll protest just about anything at the drop of a hat. But what intrigues Green Wombat is whether we’re seeing the emergence of a mass protest movement around global warming – a summer of green – one that demands, in part, green tech solutions to climate change.

Posted in global warming | 12 Comments »

Another Oil Giant Joins the Green Team

April 12, 2007 by Todd Woody

Big Oil is looking less monolithic today with the defection of ConocoPhillips (COP) to a coalition of corporations and environmental groups pushing for a mandatory national cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The oil company joins BP (BP) in breaking ranks with the industry over global warming. ConocoPhillips chief Jim Mulva said Wednesday that the company would become a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. The coalition includes the CEOs of such old-line industrial behemoths as Alcoa (AA), Caterpillar (CAT) DuPont (DD) and General Electric (GE) as well as financial services firm Lehman Brothers (LEH). Other companies in the coalition are utilities PG&E Corp. (PCG), FPL (FPL) and Duke Energy (DUK). Joining them are the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, World Resources Institute and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "In addition to taking actions in our own businesses, we believe it is important that business should step forward to help devise practical, equitable and cost-effective approaches to address the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at both a national and international level," Mulva said in a statement. "We believe that a mandatory national framework that links to international programs is most likely to achieve meaningful impact on global greenhouse gas emissions.�

Like his fellow Fortune 500 CEOs, Mulva probably hasn’t been born again green. But he, like a growing number of business leaders, have seen climate change bearing down on Corporate America like a Bengali Typhoon, Category 5. Better to have a seat at the table when it comes to regulating greenhouse gas emissions then be swept away by the whirlwind of global warming legislation now before Congress. That presents a dilemma for environmentalists: their new-found friends in pinstripes can provide the heft to finally get climate change legislation passed, if not enacted by this president. But what’s it going to cost?

Posted in global warming | 1 Comment »

BofA’s Green Home Equity Line

April 12, 2007 by Todd Woody

Tap your home equity and help save the planet? Well, kinda. Bank of America (BAC) said Wednesday that when customers take out a home equity line of credit and spend at least $2,500 by year’s end, it will donate $100 to green group Conservation International to preserve tropical rainforests. The program is a small part of the bank’s groundbreaking $20 billion green lending initiative announced last month. The nation’s second largest bank will use that cash to fight global warming over the next decade by financing companies creating low-emissions technology, lending money for green building projects and creating the ability for customers to trade carbon credits. While the green home equity line deal seems like another way for Mr. and Ms. America to greenwash their guilty conscience for remodeling their McMansion, BofA claims donating a Benjamin to the Amazon will "offset the impact from energy use in the average household for one year." (Though not, of course, the greenhouse gas emissions and resources consumed in the construction of the increasingly bloated U.S. home.) Bank executives say they hope homeowners will be inspired to use their home equity line of credit to green up their abodes. "Our research has indicated that many customers are using home equity loans and lines of credit to make home improvements that increase energy efficiency," BofA exec David Rupp said in a statement. "This program will enable customers to not only boost energy conservation at home but also drive environmentally sustainable efforts around the globe."

Posted in green financing | 3 Comments »

A Green Yelp

April 11, 2007 by Todd Woody

Go to eco-living sites like TreeHugger and Green Options – Green Wombat faves – and you’ll find a plethora of posts about green products. Trawl user-review sites like Yelp and you can tap the collective consciousness about your neighborhood restaurants or the local hair salon. Now San Francisco startup SustainLane has re-purposed the Web 2.0 features of a Yelp to create a user-generated review site and directory for green products and services to tap the growing interest in sustainable living. "We really saw some traction on Yelp, with people sharing experiences about dining and local businesses, and we said we want to create a space for people to share experiences about green products and businesses," SustainLane senior marketing director Haru Komuro told Green Wombat. The company seeded the site with reviews collected at a Washington, D.C., eco- festival in October and launched the service last week. SustainLane.com currently has about 3,000 reviews on everything from organic insect repellent to earth-friendly diapers. The site also sports some 10,000 green business listings from a directory the company previously compiled. Of course, evaluating the environmental attributes of a new household cleanser is a bit trickier than a rating a cappuccino at the corner cafe. Komuro says SustainLane will guard against greenwashing by companies making unsupportable claims. "People might submit McDonald�s organic salad and its up to users to decide," she says. "We hope to build ratings and communications tools and moderation tools so any greenwashing will become obvious."

SustainLane was founded in 2004 by James Elsen, a Netscape veteran, and funded by angel investors. The company initially focused on developing a database of government sustainability policies and practices but has more recently morphed into a media company, producing a cartoon series called The Unsustainables. "We decided with all the trends going on in the Web 2.0 space it really made sense to give people a voice so they could contribute," Komuro says. "We struggled with what this information should be – should it be about sustainable cities or what – and then we had an epiphany that since around the office we’re always talking about what green products to use it should be about that." SustainLane plans to make money off the site through advertising and sponsorships and by connecting consumers to eco-friendly businesses. Komuro says the company has also been approached by green businesses that want to upload their inventories to the site. "Management believes this is the direction to go," she says. "It�s scalable and we’ve heard for years that this is what the community wants."

The site’s success, of course, will depend on attracting enough citizen-reviewers to create a critical – and credible – mass of information to make SustainLane useful to would-be green product purchasers. Komuro says the company plans to get the word out through grass roots marketing and via the ever-growing green blogosphere.

Posted in enviro capitalism | 4 Comments »

Silicon Valley’s Nuclear Option

April 10, 2007 by Todd Woody

photo: patryck.net

Silicon Valley may be the solar technology capital of the country but some tech execs here harbor warm feelings for that green bete noir, nuclear energy. Global warming, of course, has helped revive the fortunes of the greenhouse-gas free nuke industry, which all but died in the wake of the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters. The question of whether a new nuclear boom is a possible solution to global warming caused some frisson, if not fission, yesterday during a love fest between valley execs and California Senator Barbara Boxer at an alternative energy summit hosted by Advanced Micro Devices. "I absolutely agree it is part of the solution," said AMD senior strategist Larry Vertal when asked about nuclear energy during a panel session, eliciting applause from the audience of some 300 tech executives and local government officials. He said a new generation of nuclear technology has made moot the meltdown risks of the Three Mile Island era. But Boxer, who chairs the powerful Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, remains resolutely anti-nuke. She told the execs that the long-standing problem of how to handle radioactive waste must be resolved. "I’m one of the strongest worriers about the safety question," she said. Noting that the last Congress gave the nuclear industry $8 billion in subsidies and has limited plant operators’ liability in the event of catastrophe. "Nuclear should compete without subsidies," she said to applause. "Let them compete with everyone else on an equal footing." She acknowledged nuclear power’s carbon-free emissions gives the industry "a leg up," but said that building billion-dollar centralized plants is not a long-term solution to global warming. "The future is decentralization." While California has banned new nuclear power plants until the waste issue is solved, Congressional sentiment, Boxer notwithstanding, is favorable to the industry’s expansion plans. Just today, Texas utility TXU (TXU) announced it’s abandoning coal plants to make a big push into nuclear energy.

Posted in nuclear energy | 2 Comments »

Earth Day in Silicon Valley

April 10, 2007 by Todd Woody

Earth Day is April 22 and enviro
mania is in full swing. The magazine racks are chock-a-block with special "green issues" – Vanity Fair, Outside (the cover boy is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), Newsweek (Arnie again) and Time. (Always looking ahead. Business 2.0, where Green Wombat is an editor, did its green thing in February.) Meanwhile down in Silicon Valley, Earth Day weekend kicks off April 20 with Applied Materials (AMAT) CEO Mike Splinter talking about "Unlocking the Potential of Solar Energy: Silicon Valley’s Next Big Opportunity to Change the Way People Live" at Santa Clara University. The same day over in Palo Alto you can learn about "Options to Reduce C02 Emissions at the Electric Power Research Institute.

Yesterday, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group hosted an "Alternative Energy Solutions Summit" at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)’s redwood-studded corporate campus in Sunnyvale. The event, which attracted some 300 tech execs, government officials,
California Senator Barbara Boxer and Stanford University president John Hennessy, showcased the speed and fervor with which the valley has embraced green tech and the fight against global warming. (It wasn’t all that long ago, after all, when the big environmental issue in Silicon Valley was toxic pollution from chip and hardware manufacturing plants, with tech companies facing off against green groups.) "Win not whine!" exhorted Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Leadership Group, the main lobbying group for valley tech companies. PG&E (PCG) exec Bob Howard, who brought the utility’s plug-in hybrid Prius to the event to demonstrate how such cars can power the grid, captured the mood in the valley these days: "Addressing climate change can serve as an economic opportunity, not an economic burden," he said. "There’s no better region positioned to make a difference."

Companies like SunPower (SPWR) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) obviously see a big opportunity to profit from the war on global warming as well as cut their own operating costs by going clean and green. Sun Labs executive director Mark Monroe said the computer company had saved $70 million in recent years as half its employees took advantage of its work-anywhere program that lets them telecommute from home or satellite offices near where they live. AMD senior strategist Larry Vertal said the chipmaker is building a new 2,500-person facility in Austin that will run completely on renewable energy. The valley’s embrace of solar energy was also on display. "Solar is really the only big solution out there," said Charlie Gay, general manager of Applied Materials, which is retooling its chipmaking equipment to manufacture solar cells. "If we lower the cost of solar by a factor of 2 or 3, solar will be competitive with coal. This doesn’t require any magical technological leap. We just need to scale up."

The valley’s alliance with giant utilities like PG&E and powerful politico’s like Boxer, the

chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is creating a new political
dynamic to counter the influence of the oil, coal and auto industries. "This whole issue of global warming has taken on a life of its own," Boxer told the assembled tech execs, some of whom were to travel back with her to Washington, D.C., to lobby Republicans to enact a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

Posted in enviro capitalism | Leave a Comment »

PG&E Unveils a Plug-In Hybrid Car That Powers the Grid

April 9, 2007 by Todd Woody

photos: green wombat

At a Silicon Valley alternative energy summit attended by 300 tech execs, local government officials and Sen. Barbara Boxer, PG&E (PCG) today demo’d the first plug-in hybrid car that can power the electricity grid. The modified Toyota Prius was plugged into a into a standard PG&E meter outside Advanced Micro Devices’s Sunnyvale headquarters. As the car’s lithium ion battery powered a bank of lights and a portable heater, the meter began to run backwards. PG&E envisions hundreds of thousands of plug-in hybrid cars being charged at night, when electricity demand is low, with power produced by wind farms and other renewable sources. Then on hot afternoons, when demand peaks and electricity rates soar, a plug-in hybrid parked at the owner’s workplace would feed the grid to minimize the use of greenhouse gas-emitting power plants. "At
250,000 cars you’re reaching the equivalent of a small power plant," PG&E exec Bob Howard told Green Wombat as the blue Prius with yellow racing stripes was surrounded by television crews. PG&E is developing vehicle-to-grid technology that would identify where a plug-in hybrid car is being charged or providing power to the grid and then bill or credit the owner accordingly. For instance, you might agree to sell PG&E power from your car when electricity prices reach a certain point during the day. You leave your car plugged in at work and when that price point is reached, the grid begins drawing power from the car’s battery, leaving enough electricity for the commute home. "This makes the electricity grid more like the Internet," Howard says. "Our dream is to see something like this by 2012." Plug-in hybrids could also be used to keep a home’s lights on during a power outage and to help avoid blackouts.

The PG&E Prius uses a 9-kilowatt battery that lets it run longer on electricity while relying less on its gasoline engine. That means the car gets the equivalent of about 100 miles per gallon. The California utility paid $40,000 convert a standard Prius and expects that
production models would cost $5,000 to $6,000 more than a conventional hybrid. However, the lifespan of the car’s lithium ion battery is a big unknown. PG&E’s best guess is that it would last between six and eight years before needing to be replaced. One PG&E official said that the utility might consider buying back old batteries, which still have storage capability, and using them as backup power sources. Monday’s event was the latest effort in a campaign to persuade automakers to put plug-in hybrids into production. General Motors (GM) has said it will begin selling a plug-in hybrid by 2010. PG&E has been talking to Toyota (TM) and other automakers about manufacturing plug-in hybrids and is collaborating with Ford (F) to develop a PHEV truck for the utility’s fleet. PG&E is also converting two DaimlerChrysler (DCX) vans. "We believe it is possible to merge the electricity grid with plug-in hybrid vehicles," Howard told the assembled tech execs.

Posted in green cars | 4 Comments »

Bidding War for Green Energy

April 5, 2007 by Todd Woody

photo: ririchen06

The corporate headquarters of a state-regulated utility would seem to be an unlikely place for green tech entrepreneurs to strike gold. But as global warming worries grow and regulators require utilities to obtain more electricity from renewable sources, the industry is turning to startups to meet those mandates. And so the scene this week at PG&E (PCG) in San Francisco, where California�s largest utility held a bidder�s conference for companies wanting to make offers to provide between 80 and 800 megawatts of clean, green energy. Like the other investor-owned California utilities � Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) – PG&E must get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The quote rises to 30 percent by 2030. What�s more, California regulators – laying the groundwork for the state�s coming cap on greenhouse gas emissions – have barred the utilities from signing long-term contracts for the purchase of �dirty power� from out-of-state coal-fired plants. That means another 20 percent of California�s electricity will have to be replaced. No surprise there�s a land rush on to lock up solar, wind, biomass and geothermal resources.

�We�re open to any and all offers,� a PG&E exec told about 60 people from a host of renewable energy companies who gathered in the utility�s auditorium on Tuesday to hear the opportunities � and not insignificant hurdles � to winning a contract. Want to build a solar power plant in Arizona and ship the electrons to Northern California? Not a problem. PG&E will also consider signing long-term power purchase agreements with the option to buy your wind farm, solar power station or biomass plant. It will also accept proposals for �turn-key ownership� � you build it, the utility buys it. Got a good piece of land for a renewable energy project? PG&E might purchase the development rights.

This is PG&E fourth annual request for offers � last year it signed a 500-megawatt solar power plant deal with Bright Source Energy � and it will finalize contracts by the end of 2007 after narrowing applicants to a short list this summer. The upside for green tech startups: a guaranteed price for the electricity produced over the term of a 10-to-20 year contract. The downside: the time and cost of securing approval for a wind farm or solar power plant from an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies � the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission, the CEC (California Energy Commission) and FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)- to name a but a few. Not to mention the penalties you�ll incur from the utility if your technology doesn�t deliver the power as promised.

Still, there appears to be no shortage of interest from green power companies in doing business with your local monolithic utility. Green Wombat recognized a few faces in the San Francisco audience from a renewable energy bidder�s conference utility Arizona Public Service (PNW) held in Phoenix last month. APS was looking to contract out only about 10 megawatts of green energy but it attracted a standing-room-only crowd.

Posted in renewable energy | 2 Comments »

Feds Give $14 million for Plug-In Hybrid Research

April 5, 2007 by Todd Woody

The U.S. Department of Energy said today it would hand out up to $14 million to promote the development of batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles. And the beneficiaries of this federal booty? A Silicon Valley startup toiling on the next Tesla, perhaps? Of course not. The money is going to the United States Advanced Battery Consortium, which is an alliance of the people who brought you the planet-warming, gas-guzzling SUV – Ford (F), General Motors (GM) and DaimlerChrysler (DCX). The former Big Three are kicking in another $14 million for the effort. To be fair, the consortium is soliciting proposals from outside companies to develop a plug-in hybrid battery – the feds want one that would allow a car to travel 40 miles on a charge. Still, the idea of taxpayer money going to Detroit automakers to research ways of killing off the SUV is a bit like writing a check to Peabody Coal to develop solar power plants. And as we recall, back in the ’90s GM developed a battery that let an electric car go more than 100 miles on a single charge. But we all know who killed the EV1.

Posted in green cars | 6 Comments »

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