CleanTechnica

While cleantech investment appears to be on the rebound, it’s clear the recession isn’t over yet. Mark Jensen, managing partner for the venture capital services group at Deloitte & Touche, said Wednesday that about half of the largest venture-capital firms expect to reduce their overall investments in the next few years in response to the recession.

But venture-capital firms expect cleantech to fare better than most other categories. According to the Deloitte survey, a whopping 95 percent said they plan to either increase or maintain their level of cleantech investment, with 63 percent anticipating more investment and 32 percent expecting to invest the same amount as they do now.

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Solar venture investments hit a three-year low in the second quarter, the Cleantech Group said Wednesday. According to Brian Fan, senior director of research for the group, solar startups in North America, Europe, China and India raised a total of only $113.8 million for the quarter, which is down 7 percent from $365.7 million in the first quarter and down 86 percent from $834.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

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As stimulus funding leads some industry insiders to think of Washington as “the new Wall Street” for green energy, some investment experts say they’re concerned about the government’s new role. “I worry about the government as a dealmaker in this space,” said Tom Bratkovitch, director of LP Capital Advisors, a consulting firm for private-equity investors, at a Thomson Reuters conference in Palo Alto, Calif., this week. “I just don’t know if the government is the best one to make decisions in this space.”

After all, the federal government has supported some technologies that have not panned out, while missing some that have ultimately been successful. The government also has a reputation for moving slowly – though the Department of Energy certainly is trying hard to get stimulus money out as quickly as possible – and the applications for the grants and loan guarantees can be extremely time-consuming. Read the rest of this entry »

Cleantech startups have stopped seeing GE as an adversary and have started realizing the company can help them make a difference, Kevin Skillern, a managing director at GE Energy Financial Services, said in a keynote speech at a Thomson Reuters conference called “Financing the Cleantech Vision” in Palo Alto on Wednesday.

In spite of the recession, Skillern assured the audience that the long-term business opportunity for cleantech is still there, though it will require “a strong stomach and a lot of patience” to cash in on it. He also called climate change “one of, if not the biggest, societal challenges of our time” and said technology was an essential part of the solution.

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The prospect of green jobs has proven very attractive to Californian job seekers. According to a survey released this week by the Vote Solar Initiative, a solar advocacy group, more than 5,400 people are participating in solar job training programs this year in the state.

“It is clear that Californians of different economic and educational backgrounds are all looking to solar to provide much-needed career opportunities, and the state’s training institutions have stepped up to meet that rising demand,” said Claudia Eyzaguirre, the author of the report, in a press release.

But it’s not clear whether the state will have enough jobs to support these trainees. Part of that will depend on the kinds of jobs they are training for.

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There’s no question that China is a force to be reckoned with in the solar industry. The country is the largest silicon-based solar-cell producer in the world, with Chinese and Taiwanese production accounting for 39 percent of global production last year, compared with 28 percent from Europe, according to a report the Worldwatch Institute released last week.

But while China had long been considered a potential game-changer in solar, companies’ growth had previously been slowed by a silicon shortage that hit newcomers more dramatically than incumbents. Even so, Chinese manufacturers overtook German and Japanese companies in 2007. Now that plenty of silicon is available, could the country’s dominance grow even larger? Or will some Chinese manufacturers struggle to differentiate themselves and suffer more than the rest of the market during an oversupply of panels?

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Desertec has for years been just the pipe dream of an international network of scientists and engineers; an example of some seriously out-of-the-box thinking on climate change prevention. It is the ambitous plan to power Europe, the Middle East and Africa off renewable power strung along a giant new supergrid of High-Voltage Direct Current transmission lines connecting the two continents.

A key element of the concept has been to build a humungous 6,500 square mile concentrated solar power (CSP) hub in the Sahara and send the massive amounts of power generated to Europe.  To cut long distance transmission losses to well under 15% across the incredible distances involved, Desertec proposed to use existing technology to build a supergid of High-Voltage Direct Current transmission lines.

“With HVDC, transmission losses are about 3% per 1000 km and there are small AC/DC conversion losses as well.” according to Desertec. ” Taking both of these into account, electricity may, for example, be transmitted from North Africa to the UK with less than 10% loss of power. It is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity for 3000 km or more.”

This week Desertec is finally grabbing global headlines with an unprecedented colossal cash infusion for its project from a heavy hitter consortium of major European corporations. This would change the world solar industry. To say nothing of its impact on climate change!

Bringing Desertec to life would utterly change the face of solar energy generation for the whole planet.

It is truly a giant undertaking. Here, finally - is the serious action that we need to take to avert catastrophe.

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At a cleantech panel about business opportunities running up to the 2012 Olympics in London, Dallas Kachan, managing director for the Cleantech Group, said that the second quarter “looks a lot like the first quarter” for cleantech investing so far.

In other words, it’s still down from last year, but deals are still happening and money is still available, he said. “The amount of investment is not continuing to plummet; it’s stable,” Kachan said. “Some might say we’ve reached bottom.” Read the rest of this entry »

So we have all heard by now that Google is getting into the power management game, Cisco and IBM are coming to play too, but are the mega-stars of the VC and IT worlds going to be creating the new terms of energy management, or will local management solutions be more effective as the method for some markets? The easy answer is that it depends. Local grids can be made up of energy generation near recipient towns, cities or villages, just as energy can travel from another portion of a state or country, but increasingly there will be local power generation which will need to be brought intelligently to local customers on a block by block or building by building scale. ‘Micro-grids’ as they have come to be known, will likely serve most readily and immediately rural populations, who will bypass the need for state-electrification and develop power-management systems on their own because it is easier to implement than waiting for infrastructure build-out.

Many of the major players in the space have been basing their assumptions for growth not upon this notion, but upon a Western model of electrification. While the hardware developed by major California smart grid firms such as Trilliant and Silver Springs Networks will rightfully be applied toward the lucrative state or utility scale projects, these projects will only deal with the needs existing within the existing grid framework. The growth of the space will need innovation in power-management for those who either do not currently have access to an electrical grid or those who can benefit from opting-out of one altogether.

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The United States have already started down the path of Renewable Portfolio Standards.

There are now almost 30 states with their own RPSes, which require utilities to generate more of their power from renewable sources, like wind and solar and even landfill gas. Different states have set different standards, often with percentages based on years: 15 percent by 2015, for instance. It’s more catchy that way.

Now Congress is discussing a national RPS, which would set minimum standards for all states. RPSes, also known as Renewable Electricity Standards, can drive investment in renewable technologies. They can pave the way for new investment in turbines and panels, and associated jobs that come with the pay out. Sure, renewables may cost more for now, but you probably remember that economies of scale thing from high school.

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory looks at three proposed standards in a new 30-page report (.pdf). They’re the master plans — from Senator Jeff Bingaman and Representative Edward Markey, and jointly by representatives Henry Waxman and Markey — that have risen to the top for now, being discussed in U.S. House and Senate committees.

The bottom line: The report doesn’t really choose a “best plan.” But Markey seems to get the best marks for a 25% by 2025 RES target with no energy efficiency substitutions allowed.

“The Markey RES legislation requires significantly greater renewable power deployment and the construction of new transmission infrastructure in a timely manner,” it says on pdf page 22.

Browse the report, and tell me what you think. Which of these plans is best for America? Or is there a fourth plan that was left out?

Image Credit: Divwerf via flickr under Creative Commons License