Predictions Of A Booming Green Home Retrofit Market

November 9, 2009

There are more than 500 green home and building retrofitters in the United States, but few that can outmuscle Sustainable Spaces, soon to be Recurve, in California’s San Francisco Bay Area.

So when CEO Pratap Mukherjee reports that his company has seen record levels of sales in August, September and October, it is a good sign for the market as a whole. The San Francisco company is seeing quarterly revenue growth of 70 percent, he boasted during an interview last week.

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Sustainable Spaces, soon to be Recurve, has seen record sales.

Mukherjee says greater consumer awareness of home energy conservation is behind the industry’s emerging from the shadows. Buildings use about 40 percent of the nation’s power and ways to cut this consumption often aren’t complicated or high tech – better insulation, plugging air leaks, wrapping pipes.

Also giving the market its pop is an emerging confluence of public money and financing options, including a yet to be announced initiative to give more federal money to cities looking to retrofit buildings. In Berkeley, for instance, homeowners can tie the costs of green energy remodeling to future tax payments, drawing out the bill. The White House only last month added its stamp of approval to the market, releasing spending guidelines for $80 billion of stimulus funding.

Perhaps the new activity is verifying what studies have said all along. Green buildings have greater value. According to one report by the University of San Diego and CoStar Group, Energy Star rated buildings often sell for 15 percent more and that rental rates can be $2 a square foot higher.

More so, occupancy rates of retrofitted buildings are higher.

Perhaps an industry is finally coming of age – and the explanation comes down to dollars and cents.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Verenium Sees Billion Gallon Opportunity For Ethanol From Wood Pulp But Factory Plans Limp Along

November 9, 2009

Verenium continues to struggle for financial stability.

The company sold an extra $12.3 million of stock in recent months to raise badly needed money and floated 5.5 percent convertible notes to pay off debt. It also exchanged 1 new share for 12 old ones in a reverse split to strengthen its stock price.

Verenium struggles financially and as loan guarantee negotiations with the Energy Department continue

Yet significant opportunities face the Cambridge, Ma, company as it forges a path in the fickle biofuels market. Verenium is by some measures the U.S. company closest to producing ethanol in large scale commercial plants.

However, the challenges of building a business are monstrous – especially as quarterly losses continue ($2.3 million in the third quarter on revenue that rose an uninspiring 13 percent to $18.6 million). On a conference call Monday explaining the financial results, CEO Carlos Riva said the company remains in negotiations with the Department of Energy on a loan guarantee for its Highlands County, Fl, plant, its first commercial facility.

Those negotiations could end up with a deal being signed in the first quarter. Still, production at the plant isn’t slated to begin until 2012.

The company continues to hunt for land along the Gulf Coast for a second plant.

Wood pulp and paper mill residue could become the source of billions of gallons of biofuel, says Verenium

Despite the challenges, Riva was upbeat about the possibilities for biofuels, especially fuels derived from wood pulp and paper mill residue. Paper manufacturing is an established industry and its low-cost wastes are available enough can produce 1.5 billion to 2 billion gallons of biofuel a year, he said.

Verenium is just now beginning to test the materials at its demonstration sites. And while Riva didn’t predict the cost of the fuel he might make, he did say Verenium targets biofuel at an attractive $2.10 a gallon from its Highlands County plant.

“We believe there is a significant opportunity in the future to drive down that number,” he added. If so, the financial struggles may begin to ease in three years.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

STR Is A Hit But IPOs And Public Companies Are Down Big In The US

November 6, 2009

STR Holdings made a success out of the first solar IPO in 15 months.

The Connecticut company’s stock ended Friday up 31 percent. While the maker of thin-film, or encapsulants, did have to cut the initial offering price of its $13.10 shares (to $10 from a previously anticipated range of $13 to $15), the sizzle was enough to get investors to rush in.

In these hardship days, STR is the exception. IPOs have been rare in recent years, not only in green tech but across the information-technology world. The consequence is that since 1997, the number of public companies in the United States is down 39 percent, or 55 percent when adjusting for GDP growth, according to a new study.

Keeping pace is jobs – 22 million of which have been lost because of the “broken” IPO market, according to the research from Grant Thornton.

Other developed and developing markets have gone in a different direction. Hong Kong listings have doubled since 1997. Germany’s are up 36 percent and Japan’s rebounded 28 percent.

Acording to the new work, the U.S. needs 360 new listings every year just to maintain its base of public companies. Since 2001, the average has been 166.

The study points the finger of blame at low cost stock trading, which has quality Wall Street research, capital commitments and the stock-broker industry.

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Listed companies in worldwide exchanges. Source: Capital Markets Advisory Panel and others

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Posted by Mark Boslet

The Zero Energy Home

November 6, 2009

Almost two decades ago, Marc Porat captured the imagination of Silicon Valley with a radical idea and a hot new start-up, General Magic.

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Spray foan insulates an attic space at March Porat's California home

The radical idea was to develop software agents – or virtual genies – able to carry out the wishes of computer owners, such as booking a flight to Phoenix.

General Magic’s dream never came to be. Now Porat has turned his interests to green tech, launching several start-ups and serving on the board member of green building materials maker Serious Materials.

He also turned his Palo Alto home into a showcase for environment conservation – a so-called zero energy home. Only a few homes in the country can truly claim that distinction.

“I wanted to go all the way to the edge,” he said during a Thursday evening tour of the home. “In the future, this will be the new normal.”

Porat acknowledges that his $100,000 home redesign is out of the reach of middle class homeowners eager to conserve energy. But prices are expected to fall by as much as 50 percent in the next year, and many projects don’t need to go to the same extremes to achieve significant energy reductions.

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Magnetic storm windows add a second layer of glass to Tudor style windows

Still, if mastering home energy use is your goal, here is a list of the innovations Porat brought to his 1936 two-story all-electric English Tudor. They work was carried out by Sustainable Spaces, a retrofit firm planning to change its name to Recurve:

*The installation of an air-to-water heat pump in place of a furnace to transfer the heat in outdoor air to water for interior heating and hot water. The pump also produces cold water for air conditioning;

*The installation of magnetic interior storm windows to add a second pane of glass to the home’s original leaded panes;

*Spray foam attic insulation applied to the inside of the roof for an airtight seal;

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The basement becomes an environmental labyrinth of systems designed to conserve energy and resources.

*Cellulose wall insulation made from recycled newspapers and thoroughly insulate walls;

*Force air heating to manage air circulation. The air changes within the home every three hours;

*Radiant floor heating in the foyer and sunroom. Heat is provided by hot water produced by the air-to-water heat pump. The remainder of the home uses forced air heating;

*Compact fluorescent bulbs in lighting fixtures;

*Induction range in kitchen provides 30 percent greater efficiency than an electric stove;

*Energy star appliances, including refrigerator;

*Bathroom pumps to bring hot water to showers and facets more rapidly.

The result is a 62 percent reduction in energy use. With 8 kilowatts of solar on the rooftop, the home becomes a net zero energy user, generating more juice than it needs in the summer and consuming energy from the grid in the winter when the sun’s rays are less intense.

With new technologies, materials and know-how coming to the buildings industry, the U.S. should be able to cut building and infrastructure energy use by 50 percent, says a determined Porat.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

The Big Opportunity For Green Business Software

November 5, 2009

Greenhouse gas regulations exist in some countries (the U.S., Australia and EU block members) and are coming to others (Japan, for instance).

So what are law-abiding companies to do? Buy business software to report on and manage their carbon footprints.

IN five years, sophisticated green business will be the rule not the exception

That is the assumption of those who predict a coming boom in green business software to mirror the meteoric rise of big ERP suites a decade ago. One such believer is ERP market leader SAP. The German company is rapidly integrating key carbon-tracking features into its expansive package of enterprise resources planning software, a collection of programs that automate functions such as accounts payable and supply chain management.

SAP says the nascent market is shaping up to be tens of billions of dollars in size.

Many global 2000 companies already allocate resources to measure their carbon use – some with sophisticated software they developed in house and sensors attached to smoke stacks. Most don’t yet use more than cumbersome manual processes and spreadsheets.

“This market opportunity goes far beyond $10 billion,” says Anirban Chakrabarti, vice president and general manager of SAP’s Carbon Impact product. “There is a transformation that will take place.”

That transformation will change the way business gets done. Instead of just monitoring and measuring, companies will take complex steps to optimize energy use and analyze whether partners are becoming as green as they are, taking a cue from what Wal Mart and Intel are doing today.

SAP says it has major plans in the green software space. In June, it purchased Clear Standards, a developer of carbon management software. The Clear Standards technology is the foundation for SAP’s Carbon Impact product and already integrates with its ERP suite.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, more aggressive steps are planned. The company will build carbon-tracking features directly into the business processes, or work flow procedures, in each ERP module. Also being developed are tools designed to help companies optimize their spending on energy.

In five years, most major economies are going to be regulated for carbon, says Chakrabarti. There is no time for a software developer to wait.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

The Debate About Green Jobs And Cap And Trade

November 5, 2009

I came across a thoughtful article discussing how many jobs we can expect to lose or create due to a cap-and-trade bill.

The article appeared in the most unexpected of places: a site called FactCheck.org, and it highlighted the wrestling match opponents and supporters are having on the topic.

Two sides, two dramatically divergent claims. On one end of the debate is the National Association of Manufacturers, which asserts a U.S. will cost the country 2.4 million jobs. These are projected losses by 2030.

The European Union expects 400,000 new jobs from cap and trade by 2020

On the other end is President Barack Obama and proponents of the legislation, who say 1.7 million jobs will appear. Their forecast assumes $150 billion of annual business investment in clean energy.

So who’s right?

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, slow job growth is the more likely outcome. The CBO in a September report anticipates a small decline in employment as labor markets adjust. Over time, jobs will shift from the fossil-fuel dependent industries to companies serving or taking advantage of the growth of alternative energies.

A similar assessment came from the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration. The organization laid out several best-case and worst-case scenarios. In the best case scenario, employment grows very slightly in the early years of a cap and trade bill, but ends up down 388,000 jobs by 2030 due to the legislation.

In the worst cane alternative, 2.3 million positions will be killed by 2030 due to the bill.

The European Union’s experience with its own cap and trade systems appears to suggest more optimism. The EU anticipates the creation of 400,000 jobs by 2020, or a 30 percent increase in its renewable energy industry. Investments by convention energy companies, on the other hand, have fallen and the economy has had to live with the reduced competitiveness of higher energy prices.

Conservatives also complain that wildly fluctuating prices in the region’s $59 billion carbon trading market cause confusion. During the first years of the system, rapidly falling energy prices did truly create havoc.

However, the EU did achieve as much as a 5 percent reduction in CO2 emissions, which the Congressional Budget Office points out is important.

A strong consensus is building that the impact will be potentially serious and costly if nothing is done, the CBO says, with the viability of some economic sectors in question.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Solar Entering New High Volume Stage

November 4, 2009

Photovoltaic science is maturing. Panel prices are falling, making the energy they produce steadily more competitive with fossil fuel. And now manufacturing volumes are on the rise.

The solar industry is entering a new more mature stage.

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Solar factories once produced 50 to 100 MW of panels. Now they are churning out 500 MW or a gigawatt.

“Companies are moving from manufacturing tens of thousands of solar panels to hundreds of thousands of solar panels,” says Mark Schenecker, high tech industry principal at software maker SAP. “The scale of manufacturing is changing dramatically.”

This expanded manufacturing is likely to have a lasting impact on the industry. First it will bring even lower prices. As production volumes grow, factory costs are spread over an increasing number of products.

The new maturity also is likely to ignite the price sensitive consumer market. As solar panels become commodities, more installers enter the business and installation options grow.

A third impact will be focused on the manufacturers themselves. “What we’re seeing in the solar industry is companies fully committed to 100 percent utilization of their factories,” says Schenecker.

This crush is pushing facilities to expand from 50 to 100 MW of panels in a year to 500 MW or even a gigawatt. Accompanying the change is a demand for greater internal controls to manage inventory, monitor supply chains and constrain costs. To meet these needs, a tier of service and software companies is emerging.

One manufacturer eager to improve internal controls is Evergreen Solar of Massachusetts.  The company is using software from SAP to better manage inventory and monitor operating costs, factory tool by factory tool, says Mark Fidler, vice president of finance.

The industry is growing up.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

High Cost Slowing Carbon Capture

November 3, 2009

High costs are holding back the deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies designed to clean the emissions of coal and other fossil fuel plants.

Carbon transportation costs are a big piece of the carbon capture cost puzzle.

The slow place of deployment is creating doubts about the G8 goal of having 20 carbon-capture large-scale projects in place by 2020.  Only 7 on these large projects are presently operating. Another 55 are at various stages of construction.

However, cost is a major obstacle. According to the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, carbon capture technology can amount to 78 percent of the cost of producing electricity at a fossil fuel plant. One major component of this is the cost of transporting and storing carbon washed from a plant’s smoke.

it is ‘arguably’ possible to achieve the G8 objective of deploying at least 20 commercial-scale CCS projects globally by 2020, the institute says. However, things will have to start moving faster for this to occur

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Chinese Power Grab: Wind Energy Typhoon Continues This Year

November 3, 2009

China has added wind energy at a shocking pace this year, despite the slowing global economy.

Chinese wind farm construction maintains a rapid pace

The country added 93 wind farms through the first three quarters of 2009, according to Industrial Info Resources. That brought generating capacity of 15.9 GW. Another 5 GW is possible by the end of the year.

The nation is catapulting itself to a global leader. At the end of 2008, it was number four in the world with 12 GW of capacity. That position isn’t likely to last. The target is to reach 300 GW by 2010 and 1,000 GW by 2020.

Analysts say the expansion of wind energy has been 100 percent annually over the past three years.

It also has been benefiting local companies. The country has required that 70 percent of wind turbine components be produced in Chinese factories.

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Not The Bogeyman Cap And Trade Could Stimulate Economy

November 3, 2009

The cap & trade bill making its way through Congress has been called most every name in the book: job killer, factory outsourcer, economic disaster.

But the legislation is unlikely to produce any of those outcomes, if experience in Europe is a guide. In fact, many companies in the states could find economic benefit, says David Hone, senior climate advisor at Shell.

Many companies in the U.S. could benefit, says Shell's David Hone

Shell, an oil company, is one of a handful of firms facing million in higher costs if a cap & trade bill limiting carbon emissions is passed. So Hone’s favorable comments should carry particular weight.

In an interview on an MIT Technology Review Webcast, he said one particular benefit to companies such as Shell is the creation of a market price for carbon. That will enable companies to invest in new technologies – carbon capture, for instance – knowing the long-term costs.

Hone said he anticipates a bill will be approved. Republicans have raised a wall of opposition in Congress, with some opponents having claimed they disbelieve in global warming and its impact.

“If 27 very diverse countries in Europe can reach an agreement, then 50 states can do the same,” he said. “If we don’t pass a bill, the issue is not going to go away.” In fact, the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will likely fall to the EPA, a less appetizing alternative to businesses.

In Europe, cap & trade has proved an efficient method for creating a price of carbon at the “lowest cost to the economy,” Hone said. At Shell, this has served to accelerate efficiency projects and the use of carbon capture technology.

“Cap & trade sends a price signal to the market,” he said. An established price should have a positive impact on many companies in the U.S., he added.

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