If this statement is being represented accurately, it would not only put Chu directly at odds with Obama administration policy, it would mean that he doesn’t really believe in how his department is distributing their $36.7 billion dollar slice of stimulus funds. The statement would also contradict Chu’s previous stances on biofuels development. Comment from DOE was not immediately available, but I’ve got a request in to confirm or deny the statement as accurate. I’ll update as soon as I hear word.

Update 8:00 PM Pacific Time 10/13/2009: DOE’s Director of Public Affairs, Dan Leistikow, responded to my request from earlier today in an email, saying “I can’t verify the quote the blogger is using from an undisclosed source at an undisclosed meeting, which is at best wildly out of context.” He also added, “Anyone who has spent five minutes listening to Secretary Chu also knows he is one of the country’s staunchest advocates for pursuing a broad portfolio of clean energy research, and has warned against investing all our resources in a single technology to the exclusion of all others.”

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No, this isn’t some crunchy, organic non-profit’s local food campaign or a new Slow Food slogan.  This message comes to us fresh from our United States Department of Agriculture.  “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” is a national effort collectively launching this week, designed to build vibrant local and regional food systems that provide healthful food and build the economic base of rural communities.  It showcases the importance of the connection between us and our food sources and includes $65 million in new funding initiatives.

The fact that this message comes from the USDA represents the fresh crop of vision under the Obama Administration.  Thanks to the efforts of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, there’s a new ingredient at the USDA that has the potential to cook up something big:  leadership.  Harvesting inspiration from back in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln established the USDA as the “People’s Department,” this week’s collective efforts takes a transforming perspective on the relationship between our food and us:  personal responsibility.

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Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electricity provider, has secured $70.5 million in stimulus funds to expand an innovative project that turns carbon dioxide emissions from a coal power plant into biofuel using algae. While part of the funds will be used to scale up the algae processing portion, some of the funds will also be used to investigate the potential benefits of turning the coal into a gas prior to burning it for power.

The concept of creating two products — electricity and fuel — from the same process is known as cogeneration. In this case, the cogeneration also helps to reduce environmental pollution. It’s an idea that has been gathering support as a way to make coal less polluting while finding an additional revenue source to pay for the pollution control itself. In fact, a while back I reported on a similar pilot project in Oregon.

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So, what do you do when you have a poorly-conceived and ill-managed project winding down (Clunkers expires at 8 p.m. EST on August 24)? Kick off another one, even more poorly thought out, and gloss it with an equally catchy name: Cash for Refrigerators.

Beginning in the fall, consumers will have access—through existing state-level energy efficiency incentive programs —$300 million in stimulus funds made available as rebates for energy efficient appliances.

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Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is proposing a bill that would lend $30 billion dollars to American small and medium sized manufacturing companies who specialize in clean technology.  The bill would make American manufacturers a player in the clean technology market which faces stiff overseas competition.  It is estimated that 70% of the components for clean technology (much of which was invented in America) are made abroad.  So far, 150 businesses have come out and endorsed the Senator’s legislation.

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I’m such a geek. This week, I’m headed to the legendary Red Rocks Park in Morrison, Colorado, for four sold-out nights of music from the Vermont-based band, Phish, at what is arguably one of the greatest outdoor music venues in the United States, if not the world. And I will, at some point or another, be thinking about the New Deal.

That’s right, in the middle of some twenty-minute swirling, epic jam, my mind will undoubtedly stray a little and wonder about the millions of unemployed Americans that were employed during and after the Great Depression building thousands of roads, bridges, post offices, schools, dams and, well, amazing places like Red Rocks.

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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.

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Editor’s Note: The is a guest contribution by Ian Rogoff, Chairman of the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization, and Chairman and CEO of The Helio Group (parent company to HelioPower). This is the sixth post in a series from the CEO’s of major solar companies. You can follow the complete series here.

There is a long overdue debate underway in industry and political circles regarding the merits of federal funding for renewable energy (RE) commercialization.

Distinct from RE projects and RE deployments, commercialization involves identifying specific technologies and entrepreneurs based on their perceived commercial potential and financing the respective project teams along a vector towards commercial success.

The types of commercialization activities typically funded include scaling benchtop prototypes to meet market requirements, characterizing technologies to understand performance and limits, testing boundary conditions, designing for manufacturability, testing for real world conditions, scaling refinery processes, among others.

• » See also: Property tax solar energy financing coming to San Diego
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Commercialization is quite distinct from basic research, and expressly does not seek to fund pure science or unproven claims. Typically, commercialization funding stops at a point where the private sector steps in and either assumes the next funding milestone or market acceptance/rejection obviates the need for additional financing entirely.

Two types of barriers exist today in the commercialization of renewable energy technology: the “valley of death” and the “mountain of death.”

Renewable Energy’s Valley of Death

Basic RE research is being conducted at numerous institutions around the world and much of this technology remains trapped in labs for want of commercialization know-how and funding. Basic and applied research is likewise being conducted in commercial enterprises, but much of that research is often constrained through short-term return on investment requirements.

In addition, renewable energy technology often fails to garner the resources and funding needed in order to reach commercial viability as a result of existing regulatory and fiscal regimens that bias markets towards incumbent technologies. Absent investment and institutional know-how, the commercialization of renewable energy will continue to be hampered in its application and hindered in its ability to cross the so-called “valley of death.”

Renewable Energy’s Mountain of Death

What makes renewable energy different from many other technology-based industries, however, is not just the valley of death which is common to many technology-based industries, but more the “mountain of death,” or specifically the amount of capital and time required to take promising but nascent energy technologies to widespread deployment. The energy industry tends to be an asset-based industry, and those assets are usually expensive. Early stage private capital tends to shun capital intensive businesses, and unlike information technology, for example, the energy industry does not generally provide some highly desirable “must-have” new capability, but simply supplants an existing commodity, be it the flow of electrons, or a transportation fluid, or whatever.

Unfortunately, even in good economic conditions, there is limited funding available for pilot and demonstration phases for scaling renewable energy technology. Add to this the lack of resources required to create and implement commercialization roadmaps and it becomes clear why half-hearted attempts at developing this industry have stalled.

Given the uncertainty, costs and times frames involved in overcoming the mountain of death, there needs to be a very strong enabler in order to stimulate renewable energy commercialization on a large scale. Absent regulation, market signals (like pricing carbon), or specific incentives, there are simply no compelling economic reasons in the short term for the incumbent industry leaders to switch from existing feedstocks to renewable sources. As mentioned above, in other technology-based industries, early-stage capital funds innovative disrupters, but there is simply not enough equity financing available to stimulate the early stage energy companies in such a capital intensive industry, and start-ups simply do not have the balance sheet strength typically required for project finance and other sources of financing.

The renewable energy industry is different from other technology-based industries. Granted, it is slowed by the valley of death, but widespread deployment is truly hampered by the mountain. If we are committed to the potential of renewable energy as a solution to many of our climate, economic and national security concerns, we need to recognize the need for strong federal and state support for commercializing renewable energy technologies or we run the risk of looking back on this period and wondering why (to paraphrase Rahm Emanuel) we wasted a crisis.

Image Credit: clownfish via Flickr under Creative Commons License

The Guide is filled with lots of information and hundreds of links to sites where more info and funding applications can be found.

The Guide starts by explaining the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and how it breaks down. Contained within the Guide is info about Green Energy Initiatives (DOE), Tax Credits, Green Environmental Projects (EPA)  Green Transportation Initiatives (DOT), Green Building Initiatives and Green Jobs/Job Training. It provides a modest number of “tips” and information as to how to actually land stimulus money which will be helpful to many people outside the Beltway. One that stuck out to me was contained within the “How To Apply” section:

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Compared to most other industrialized countries, the rail infrastructure system in the United States is only in its most stunted infancy.

President Obama’s stimulus package, however, is now going to help bring our nation’s transit system into the 21st century. Nine billion dollars has been allocated over the next five years to begin building a faster and cleaner high speed rail network that will not only provide many needed jobs, but will also give us more sustainable transit options and help to make us more competitive internationally.

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The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) recommended last week that funds earmarked for transit improvements go towards keeping MARTA afloat. The transit system is unable to cover its budget shortfall and operating costs, due to strict regulations on how it spends its revenue. MARTA gets the bulk of its funding from sales tax revenue, and it’s required to spend 50% on operating costs and 50% on capital expenses. This $25 million dollars would be a band aid fix, but it certainly beats cutting a day of service, like the MARTA board was proposing.

Not everyone is thrilled about this idea.

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The U.S. Department of the Interior reports that they will start spending the stimulus money granted them in February, and among the $140 million-worth of projects is $15.2 million for Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s favorite activity: volcano monitoring!

This has been covered before, but it’s too good to let go easily. The complete disregard for actual science shown was thrown back in Jinda’s face immediately, but the volcano gods joined in only a month later when Alaska’s Mt. Redoubt erupted. Residents of the area had been warned two months earlier than eruption was pending, and perhaps as a result there were no major incidents when the volcano finally blew. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that the Alaska Volcano Observatory’s “top priority is to prevent repetition of the incident that occurred during Redoubt’s eruption 19 years ago, when a Boeing 747 passenger aircraft strayed into an ash cloud and nearly crashed.” Eh, who needs monitoring, right?

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The stimulus package approved in February contains items aimed at making everyone an environmentalist. Well, let’s say practical environmentalist. By offering tax incentives for a variety of home greening initiatives, Congress managed to both raise and lower my spirits around environmental issues: it’s great that people will have reason to save energy and live more efficiently, but I hate that the reason has to be money before anyone pays attention.

As reported in the New York Times, the green measures homeowners can take and get paid for it include home-shell improvements like better windows and insulation all the way up through solar cells on rooftops and buying a hybrid vehicle. Overall, individual tax payers can earn up to $1,500 in tax credits for these types of initiatives.

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A new way to treat wood has trees back in the limelight: a hardwood’s reliability that even a rain forest mahogany tree can love.

The above picture is of the world’s first heavy traffic road bridge made from Accoya® wood. The bridge, located in Sneek in the Netherlands, is “the first wooden bridge in the world that can support the heaviest load class of 60 tons”.  At this week’s Wall Street Green Trading Summit, a panel on forestation introduced a new way of thinking about how to deal with destruction of the rain forest.

>> More from the recent Wall Street Green Trading Summit:   Opening, Carbon Markets, Weird Investments and Solar Panels for All.

I think we can all agree that planting trees is a good way to go environmentally green (they capture carbon like crazy), but lets take a look at that other green for a moment: the green of cash.  Forestation can turn a profit quickly, given that it is one of the few industries in the United States that we know for sure will be cross marketable as a carbon offset industry. 

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Even for a group focused on Investing First and Green Second, this is getting a little silly.

The longer I am here at the Wall Street Green Trading Summit, the less this feels like anything to do with environmentalism.  At some point, when does off-setting stop being feasible, and when does carbon reduction become the name of the game?

>> More Wall Street Green Trading Summit:   Opening, Carbon Markets, Solar Panels and the Electric Grid

This was driven home to me by a presentation on the investment opportunities presented by species banks.  Now, I didn’t even know what a species bank was until today, but apparently you can purchase an offset credit to get around the fact that your company is destroying the natural habitat of an endangered species.  And, there is an entire market based around this principle.

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That’s the amount that the California Budget Project expects the State and its residents to receive. The goal is the creation of 400,000 jobs, many of them “green jobs”. The funding comes none too soon, since California’s unemployment rate hit 10.5% in February.

But how will that money be spent in Los Angeles? The Green LA Coalition and the Liberty Hill Foundation seek to answer that question on Friday, April 3rd at “The Federal Stimulus: What it means for Los Angeles and the Environment”.

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We’re coming at you no-longer-quite-live at New York’s very own Wall Street Green Trading Summit.

The summit is over for today, but I wanted to throw some concluding thoughts out after an afternoon spent discussing good business models for producing alternative energy and for overhauling our current electrical grid.

>> More Wall Street Green Trading Summit:   Opening, Carbon Markets, Weird Investments.

Two presentations stuck out to me from the afternoon, Tioga Energy and Acorn (no, not that ACORN) Energy.  Without turning this into too much of a publicity-fest for either company, here’s what they were about.

Solar Panels for All

Tioga has gotten pretty good at a business model that I’ve actually heard about in a few different places: effectively, they lease people’s roof space and put solar panels up on homes and businesses.  Then, they sell the energy to the people in the home at a fixed rate (below market value for the customer) that goes up slowly over a 20 year period.  There are options for the owner of the property to purchase the solar panels if they would like to down the line, but until they do Tioga maintains everything for them. This means that the company soaks the initial start-up costs for people: often that prohibitive thing reinventing a small business or a home-owner from taking a plunge.

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Pittsburgh’s plans to make itself into a hotbed for solar power and other green technology got a metaphorical fist bump last week with the visit of two cabinet secretaries to announce funding from the federal stimulus package.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $11 million green stimulus funding during their trip. They also toured a welding and heating and air conditioning training facility at Allegheny County Community College, where officials showed off the skills needed for energy efficient projects. Allegheny County  will get $8.1 million, City of Pittsburgh will receive $3.4 million out of a $3.2 billion pot being divvied up around the country.

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More people than ever are now using mass transit in the United States. Ridership on trains, buses, ferries and subways is at record levels, according to a survey just released by the American Public Transportation Association.  Their study reports that, “despite falling gas prices and an economic recession, increasing numbers of Americans took 10.7 billion trips on public transportation in 2008, the highest level of ridership in 52 years and a modern ridership record“, and a 4% increase from 2007.

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Remember back in December when 250 laid-off workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors Plant in Chicago? As you may recall, the company was obligated to give the workers 60 days notice, but their creditor, Bank of America, had cut of the company’s line of credit, even after receiving $25 billion in government bail out money, making it difficult to pay the workers. The workers refused to leave until they got what was due them and, miraculously, they won.

Well now an even bigger miracle has occurred. Some of the workers are getting their jobs back because of around provisions in the stimulus package that put aside about $30 billion in subsidies for improved home energy efficiency. You see, California based Serious Materials, a producer of energy efficient building materials, took a look at that particular part of the stimulus package and realized they were going to be getting seriously busy since their windows qualify for a $1500 tax credit. Recognizing the need to expand to meet the coming demand for things like energy efficient windows, and having a desire to do some good in the world and to have a midwest location, they thought why not purchase the former Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, and while we’re at it, why not rehire some of those union workers, at their former union wages, and teach them about making our energy efficient products? So that is exactly what they did.

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