Green Options » ausra

VCs Expect Slow Recovery, But Cleantech Remains a Bright Spot

Jennifer Kho — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:02:08 +0000

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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First Solar Thermal Plant in 20 Years Launches in CA

Sarah Lozanova — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:53:28 +0000

By turning a long line of mirrors, the first solar thermal plant in nearly two decades was launched last week in Bakersfield, California. Unlike solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity, this plant will focus sunlight on tubes that contains water. The light heats the water, creating steam, thus turning turbines.

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Changing Locomotion in Midstream: California’s Ethanol Mandate (Part 5)

Alexis Madrigal — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:56:14 +0000

Editor’s note: Here’s the final installment of Alexis Madrigal’s series on California’s ethanol mandate. If you haven’t read the first four parts, you’ll find them linked at the bottom of the page.

V: Where the Khakis Meet the Carhartts

Dozens of companies up and down Silicon Valley are hard at work rethinking the gasoline that’s powered internal combustion engines since Henry Ford oversaw assembly lines. They’re designing and growing fatty algae whose bodies are filled with oil that just so happens to mimic diesel fuel. They’re using genetically-modified bacteria to munch tires and sugar cane into petrol. Anything that contains carbon, they reason, can be turned into a liquid hydrocarbon with the right combination of chemical process and engineered microbes. They call these experiments advanced biofuels, and they, we’re assured, will be better for the environment than ethanol.

And yet, for all the press, all the beautiful minds at work on the best science, the ultimate success of the enterprise might rest in the crusty industrial checklist of the logistics situation. Trains, trucks, and the people who connect one to the other could have as much of an impact on the market as the particular molecular manipulations that produce the right fuel.

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Business Can Address Global Warming… With a Level Playing Field

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:19:13 +0000

Can a cap and trade system for greenhouse gas emissions harness market forces to address climate change? As I noted on Monday, that’s the thesis of Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn’s new book Earth: The Sequel. To support this claim, Krupp and Horn focus on the innovative ecopreneurial efforts happening around the world in the broad field of clean technology. From thin-film solar to algae biodiesel to an Alaskan ice palace powered (and kept frozen) by geothermal energy, Earth: The Sequel tells the stories of scientists, business people, and outright dreamers experimenting with both current incarnations, and the next generation, of renewable energy technologies. A few of these companies include:

Australian solar thermal company Ausra
Solar thin-film company First Solar
Greenfuel Technologies, a pioneer in algae biofuels
AquaEnergy Group, the creator of technology for harnessing wave power

Of course, the technologies under development by the companies profiled in Earth: The Sequel aren’t cheap; in almost every case, major investors, such as Vinod Khosla and John Doerr, have backed these start-ups with significant funding. At one level, some might argue that the market is already working: capital is flowing to promising ideas.

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