The report finds that the installation of smart meters will increase the amount of time that the customer spends on a utility web site, as well as the amount of customer service phone calls a customer will make. According to a survey that IDC conducted, 35 percent of utility respondents that have installed smart meters have seen an increase in call volume of between 10 percent and 30 percent.

But not only will customers seek to interact with utilities more around the topic of new smart meters and demand response services. The addition of variable, real-time pricing, and home energy displays also provides a direct channel for a connection between the utility and the customer like never before. IDC explains the overall shift that consumer-facing smart grid technology will bring as:

“The customer will be more engaged on a daily basis with the utility. The customer will no longer be a passive recipient of a bill, but an active partner in managing energy consumption and cost.”

However, instead of embracing this opportunity, IDC finds that utilities are head-down focused on building out the smart grid infrastructure, and are not spending adequate amounts of time and money planning out communication, education and customer service strategies for that smart grid infrastructure. “There has been little investment in customer contact aids such as live chat or training of customer service representatives to walk customers through the Web experience,” says the report. And only 60 percent of the utilities surveyed even have a consumer-facing website (see chart).

Image courtesy of P^2’s photostream Flickr Creative Commons.

Utilities Not Ready for Coming Customer Engagement from Smart Grid is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

Meet the Gribble Worm: “Most cellulosic ethanol companies that are using bio-chemical methods require the use of expensive enzymes to breakdown the polysaccharides into simple sugars that can be further fermented into ethanol.” But new research suggests a crustacean called the Gribble worm, “is an idiot savant when it comes to transforming wood into sugars.” — Greentech Media

Shift in the Energy Balance: “The path of demand in [natural] gas’s new age is hard to predict, but abundant new sources could bring about profound change in patterns of energy consumption.” — The Economist

Americans on Climate Change: Meh: “Americans are less concerned about the threat of climate change than they were two years ago and almost half say the seriousness of global warming is overblown, a Gallup Organization Inc. poll shows.” — Bloomberg via BusinessWeek

Aurica Motors Angles for NUMMI: “Who the heck is Aurica Motors? An under-the-radar electric car company with big dreams, that’s who. A company that, if it gets its way, will turn the soon-to-be-closed NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA into a huge production facility for electric vehicles.” — Autoblog Green

Daily Sprout is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

The expiration of the credit on Dec. 31, 2009 put the breaks on an expanding industry and raised questions about biodiesel’s future in the U.S.

With many biodiesel plants either idle or shutdown throughout the country, the bill will reinstate the credit retroactively, extending it through Dec. 31., 2010.

Although biodiesel received a tremendous boost under the new renewable fuel standard (RFS2), without a tax credit, the industry could not compete on price with petroleum-based diesel.

RFS2 rules issued by the EPA include strong “biomass-based biodiesel” or “advanced biofuel” carve outs for biodiesel so long as it can show a favorable greenhouse gas (GHG) profile.  The tax credits will allow the biodiesel industry to begin taking advantage of its carve out under the new RFS2 definitions.

The biodiesel incentive is designed to encourage the domestic production and use of biodiesel by making the fuel price competitive with petroleum diesel fuel.  The subsidy is structured so that the value of the incentive is reflected in the market price of the fuel.

The new tax credit is contained in the bill’s “Title IV: Energy Provisions” (Section 401) and extends through 2010 energy conservation and production provisions, including:

(1) the tax credits for biodiesel and renewable diesel used as fuel;

(2) the alternative motor vehicle tax credit for large hybrid vehicles;

(3) the alternative fuel excise tax credit for natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas; and

(4) tax rules relating to sales required to implement federal and state restructuring policy for qualified electric utilities.

Specifically, sections 40A, 6426, and 6427(e) of the Internal Revenue Code provide tax incentives for the production, sale, and use of biodiesel and biodiesel mixtures.  Under the Code, the production tax credit applies to qualified blenders of biodiesel and agri-biodiesel fuels and allows them to receive an income and excise tax credit if certain conditions are met.

Biodiesel Mixture Excise Tax Credit

Excise taxes are imposed on gasoline, diesel fuel, and kerosene both for auto transport and aviation at the point of their removal from a refinery or terminal, entry into the United States, and sale.  A dollar excise tax credit is available to anyone that blends pure biodiesel or agri-biodiesel with petroleum diesel to produce a mixture containing at least 0.1 percent diesel fuel.

To qualify for the credit, the blender must be registered with the Internal Revenue Service.  A qualifying mixture must either be sold for use (sold by the producer to a buyer for use by the buyer as a fuel) or used as a fuel to operate a motor vehicle (be used as a fuel in the trade or business of the producer).

Small Agri-Biodiesel Producer Credit

A small agri-biodiesel producer credit is a volumetric based income tax credit for the production of Aagri-biodiesel.”  It allows any “eligible small agri-biodiesel producer,” meaning a person who, at all times during the taxable year, has a productive capacity for agri-biodiesel not in excess of 60,000,000 gallons, a $1.00 credit.

Definitions

• Biodiesel means the monoalkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from plant or animal matter which meet the registration requirements for fuels and fuel additives established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under section 211 of the Clean Air Act, and the requirements of the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) D6751.

• Agri-biodiesel means biodiesel derived solely from virgin oils, including esters derived from virgin vegetable oils from corn, soybeans, sunflower seeds, cottonseeds, canola, crambe, rapeseeds, safflowers, flaxseeds, rice bran, mustard seeds, and (for fuel produced, and sold or used, after 2008) camelina, and from animal fats.

The bill now moves the measure into a reconciliation phase with the House’s version of the bill, which passed at the end of 2009.

Mackinnon Lawrence is an attorney, principal consultant with Biomass Advisors, and editor & publisher of Biomass Intel. Article appearing courtesy Biomass Intel.

photo: lincolnblues

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Biodiesel Back in the Tax Credit Game is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

Mike Omotoso, senior manager for J.D. Power and Associates’ global powertrain unit, told me the firm plans to lower its hybrid and electric vehicle forecast for 2010, although it has yet to determine how big the hit will be. For the first two months of this year, the hybrid share of light vehicle sales hovered at around just 2.3 percent, compared to 2.8 percent for all of 2009 and 2.4 percent in 2008, according to Omotoso. That’s due to a number of factors — including high unemployment, a weak economy and the biggie: gas prices. But the Prius and its technical troubles loom too large to ignore.

Prior to 2009, the Prius’ share of U.S. hybrid sales had slipped below 50 percent only once since 2005 — in 2006, when it dropped to 42 percent. But even that offers a sign of Toyota’s dominance in the hybrid space. Omotoso explained that 2006 marked “the first year for the Camry hybrid and the first full year for the Highlander hybrid. So other Toyota models cannibalized Prius sales.”

Regulators are only beginning to look into the most recent incidents. But initial reports suggest the problems may not have been linked to a floor mat that pinned down the gas pedal in other Priuses and prompted Toyota to issue a recall last year for 2004-2009 models of the hybrid. Last month, when problems surfaced with the regenerative braking system of some 2010 Prius models, Toyota attributed them to a software glitch.

Regardless of what investigators and Toyota may turn up if they check out the cars involved in this week’s incidents more closely, however, one thing’s already clear: Videos that zipped around the web and TV news shows this week of a visibly shaken driver, and quotes from the 911 call he made during the 23 minutes that his 2008 Prius hurdled at high speeds down a Southern California highway before a highway patrol officer helped him stop, aren’t helping to repair the reputation of either Toyota or advanced vehicles.

Given the Prius’ status as the poster child for hybrids, Omotoso explained, “consumers might think that if the Prius has a problem then all hybrids might be dangerous.” That concern creates one more obstacle for new vehicle technologies to penetrate the mainstream, as some car buyers may forgo experimenting with the next generation of green cars — among them plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles from General Motors’ Chevy Volt and Nissan’s LEAF to BYD Auto’s e6, Coda Automotive’s Coda Sedan and Fisker Automotive’s Nina — rolling out over the next few years.

That perception problem is a hurdle that many car makers can’t really afford in this nascent market. Plug-in vehicle developers are competing for a niche that’s likely to remain quite small for years to come. Nearly a decade after the Prius debut, hybrids still hold a single-digit sliver of the pie. And despite optimistic projections from investors like Warren Buffett, who has said he expects all cars will run on electricity by 2030, other forecasts suggest significantly slower adoption, mainly due to high price tags.

Lux Research forecasts that even if oil costs $200 a barrel in 2020, just 4 percent of vehicles sold globally will be all-electric or plug-in hybrid because of the high costs of the battery technology. According to Lux, plug-in hybrids could sell 3 million units per year by 2020 if the price of oil reaches those heights, while hybrids can be expected to sell that many by 2020 regardless of oil prices.

In addition to presenting a challenge to companies vying to win over consumers to advanced vehicles, Toyota’s ongoing troubles also highlight a need for the government, the auto industry and even drivers to collect and manage (or in the case of drivers, to file), vehicle safety data and complaints in a more open and timely manner. Noting in prepared testimony that regulators and Toyota had received complaints of unintended acceleration in Toyota models seven years ago, Consumers Union is issuing that challenge – to increase transparency of vehicle safety data – in a hearing this morning on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s oversight operations. As much as technology may be part of the problem with Toyota’s vehicles, it could also be part of the solution — helping identify problems before too many drivers are put in the situation of having to call 911 from behind the wheel of an out-of-control car.

How Toyota’s Prius Troubles Will Shape the Green Car Market is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

Despite strong evidence that growing food crops to produce ethanol is harmful to the environment and the world’s poor, the Obama administration is backing subsidies and programs that will ensure that half of the U.S.’s corn crop will soon go to biofuel production. It’s time to recognize that biofuels are anything but green.

In light of the strong evidence that growing corn, soybeans, and other food crops to produce ethanol takes a heavy toll on the environment and is hurting the world’s poor through higher food prices, consider this astonishing fact: This year, more than a third of the U.S.’s record corn harvest of 335 million metric tons will be used to produce corn ethanol. What’s more, within five years fully 50 percent of the U.S. corn crop is expected to wind up as biofuels.

Here’s another sobering fact. Despite the record deficits facing the U.S., and notwithstanding President Obama’s embrace of some truly sustainable renewable energy policies, the president and his administration have wholeheartedly embraced corn ethanol and the tangle of government subsidies, price supports, and tariffs that underpin the entire dubious enterprise of using corn to power our cars. In early February, the president threw his weight behind new and existing initiatives to boost ethanol production from both food and nonfood sources, including supporting Congressional mandates that would triple biofuel production to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

Congress and the Obama administration are paying billions of dollars to producers of biofuels, with expenditures scheduled to increase steadily through 2022 and possibly 2030. The fuels are touted by these producers as a “green” solution to reliance on imported petroleum, and a boost for farmers seeking higher prices.

Yet a close look at their impact on food security and the environment — with profound effects on water, the eutrophication of our coastal zones from fertilizers, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions — suggests that the biofuel bandwagon is anything but green. Congress and the administration need to reconsider whether they are throwing good money after bad. If the biofuel saga illustrates anything, it is that thinking ecologically will require thinking more logically, as well.

Subsidy supports are a testament to the power of the farm lobby and its sway over Congress.

Investments in biofuels have grown rapidly in the last decade, accelerating especially in developed countries and Brazil after 2003, when oil prices began to climb above $25 per barrel, reaching a peak of $120 per barrel in 2008. Between 2001 and 2008, world production of ethanol tripled from 4.9 billion gallons to 17 billion gallons, while biodiesel output rose from 264 million gallons to 2.9 billion gallons. Together, the U.S. and Brazil account for most of the world’s ethanol production. Biodiesel, the other major biofuel, is produced mainly in the European Union, which makes roughly five times more than the U.S. In the EU, ethanol and biodiesel are projected to increase oilseed, wheat, and corn usage from negligible levels in 2004 to roughly 21, 17, and 5 million tons, respectively, in 2016, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In the U.S., once a reliable supplier of exported grain and oilseeds for food, biofuel production is soaring even as food crop export demand remains strong, driving prices further upward. Government support undergirding the biofuels industry has also grown rapidly and now forms a massive federal program that may be good for farm states, but is very bad for U.S. taxpayers.

These subsidy supports are a testament to the power of the farm lobby and its sway over the U.S. Congress. In addition to longstanding crop price supports that encourage production of corn and soybeans as feedstocks, biofuels are propped up by several other forms of government largesse. The first of these are mandates, known as “renewable fuels standards”: In the U.S. in 2007, energy legislation raised mandated production of biofuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022. These mandates shelter biofuels investments by guaranteeing that the demand will be there, thus encouraging oversupply.

The rapid increase in grain and oilseed prices has been a shock to consumers worldwide.

Then there are direct biofuel production subsidies, which raise feedstock prices for farmers by increasing the price of corn. In the U.S., blenders are paid a 45 cent-per-gallon “blender’s tax credit” for ethanol — the equivalent of more than $200 per acre to divert scarce corn from the food supply into fuel tanks. The federal government also pays a $1 credit for plant-based biodiesel and “cellulosic” ethanol.

Finally, there is a 54 cent-per-gallon tariff on imported biofuel to protect domestic production from competition, especially to prevent Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol (which can be produced at less than half the cost of U.S. ethanol from corn) from entering U.S. markets. These subsidies allow ethanol producers to pay higher and higher prices for feedstocks, illustrated by the record 2008 levels of corn, soybean, and wheat prices. Projections suggest they will remain higher, assuming normal weather and yields.

The rapid increase in grain and oilseed prices due to biofuels expansion has been a shock to consumers worldwide, especially during 2008 and early 2009. From 2005 to January 2008, the global price of wheat increased 143 percent, corn by 105 percent, rice by 154 percent, sugar by 118 percent, and oilseeds by 197 percent. In 2006-2007, this rate of increase accelerated, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “due to continued demand for biofuels and drought in major producing countries.” The price increases have since moderated, but many believe only temporarily, given tight stocks-to-use ratios.

It is in poor countries that these price increases pose direct threats to disposable income and food security. There, the run-up in food prices has been ominous for the more than one billion of the world’s poor who are chronically food-insecure. Poor farmers in countries such as Bangladesh can barely support a household on a subsistence basis, and have little if any surplus production to sell, which means they do not benefit from higher prices for corn or wheat. And poor slum-dwellers in Lagos, Calcutta, Manila, or Mexico City produce no food at all, and spend as much as 90 percent of their meager household incomes just to eat.

But the most worrisome of recent criticisms of biofuels relate to their impacts on the natural environment. In the U.S., water shortages due to the huge volumes necessary to process grains or sugar into ethanol are not uncommon, and are amplified if these crops are irrigated. Growing corn to produce ethanol, according to a 2007 study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, consumes 200 times more water than the water used to process corn into ethanol.

In the cornbelt of the Upper Midwest, even more serious problem arise. Corn acreage, which expanded by over 15 percent in 2007 in response to ethanol demands, requires extensive fertilization, adding to nitrogen and phosphorus that run off into lakes and streams and eventually enter the Mississippi River watershed. This is aggravated by systems of subterranean tiles and drains — 98 percent of Iowa’s arable fields are tiled — that accelerate field drainage into ditches and local watersheds. As a result, loadings of nitrogen and phosphorus into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico encourage algae growth, starving water bodies of oxygen needed by aquatic life and enlarging the hypoxic “dead zone” in the gulf.

Biofuels have made the slow fade from green to brown.

Next is simply the crop acreage needed to feed the biofuels beast. A 2007 study in Science noted that to replace just 10 percent of the gasoline in the U.S. with ethanol and biodiesel would require 43 percent of current U.S. cropland for biofuel feedstocks. The EU would need to commit 38 percent of its cropland base. Otherwise, new lands will need to be brought into cultivation, drawn disproportionately from those more vulnerable to environmental damage, such as forests.

A pair of 2008 studies, again in Science, focused on the question of greenhouse gas emissions due to land-use shifts resulting from biofuels. One study said that if land is converted from rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels, it causes a large net increase in greenhouse gas emissions for decades. A second study said that growing corn for ethanol in the U.S., for example, can lead to the clearing of forests and other wild lands in the developing world for food corn, which also causes a surge in greenhouse gas emissions.

A third study, by Nobel-Prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2007, emphasized the impact from the heavy applications of nitrogen needed to grow expanded feedstocks of corn and rapeseed. The nitrogen necessary to grow these crops releases nitrous oxide into the atmosphere — a greenhouse gas 296 times more damaging than CO2 — and contributes more to global warming than biofuels save through fossil fuel reductions.

Thus have biofuels made the slow fade from green to brown. It is a sad irony of the biofuels experience that resource alternatives that seemed farmer-friendly and green have turned out so badly.

What’s needed are a freeze on further mandates to slow overinvestment, reductions in the blenders’ tax credit — especially when corn prices are high — and cuts in tariff protection to encourage cost-reduction strategies by U.S. producers. And the high environmental and human costs of using corn, soybeans, and other food crops to produce biofuels should spur government initiatives to develop more sustainable forms of renewable energy, such as wind power, solar power, and — one day, perhaps — algal biofuels grown at waste treatment plants.

Yet sadly, as in so many areas of policy, Congress and the administration prefer to reward inefficiency and political influence more than pursuing cost-effective — and sustainable — energy strategies.

Author C. Ford Runge is the McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota, where he also holds appointments in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Department of Forest Resources. He is former director of the university’s Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy and has written for Foreign Affairs.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360

photo: nor

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The Case Against Biofuels: Probing Ethanol’s Hidden Costs is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

This has created a public health crisis in developing countries, both in terms of contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation techniques. More than one million children mostly under the age of five die each year from diarrhea resulting from this lack of sanitary conditions. While the technology exists to solve this problem, it is expensive and sometimes hard to install.

But Swedish architect and entrepreneur, Anders Wilhelmson is hoping to tackle the issue with his invention: a safe, affordable, biodegradable plastic bag called the Peepoo that can be used as a single-use toilet.

According to the New York Times, Wilhelmson got the idea for the Peepoo while doing research in Kenya’s urban slums where he observed residents using cheap plastic bags to dispose of their waste and then literally tossing the bags out the window, know as “Flying Toilets.”

Wilhelmson and his team at Stockholm-based Peepoople developed a biodegradable bag made from 45 percent renewable materials (with a goal of 100 percent) with an interior lined with a thin layer of urea crystals. Urea, a non-hazardous chemical, breaks down disease-spreading pathogens such as parasites and bacteria in human excrement so the Peepoo can actually be used as a fertilizer. While in Kenya, Wilhelmson found that open areas that could be available for waste burial surrounded even the most densely packed slums.

Peepoople conducted tests in Kenya and Bangladesh in 2008-2009, and now Wlhelmson hopes to commercialize the product in 2010. He plans on selling each Peepoo for two or three cents, approximately the cost of an ordinary, non-disposable plastic bag.

The World Toilet Organization (WTO), a sanitation advocacy group, estimates the market for inexpensive toilets in the developing world is close to a trillion dollars. The organization has held an annual World Toilet Summit that has resulted in entrepreneurs such as Wilhemson working on low-cost sanitation solutions.

As reported in the Time, Rigel Technology of Singapore demonstrated a $30 toilet at the 2009 WTO meeting that turns solid waste into compost, and Sulabh International, an Indian nonprofit, has been promoting a number of low-cost toilets, including a one that produces biogas from human waste that can then be used for cooking.

The WTO has declared November 19 as “World Toilet Day” to increase awareness and generate local action for improved sanitation around the world.

Article by Julie Mitchell appearing courtesy Celsias.

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Swedish Entrepreneur Dreams Up Disposable Toilet is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

But while the stimulus package has allocated $400 million for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Program, venture capitalists and private equity investors are still largely keeping this technology at an arms length. Kho penned a report for our GigaOM Pro subscription service this week, Cleantech Financing Trends 2010 and Beyond that explains that conventional wind and solar projects by far account for the largest amount of renewable energy projects getting backed by investors. “According to private equity firm U.S. Renewables Group solar and wind projects made up 75 to 80 percent of the clean energy projects getting financing in the U.S,” Kho writes.

Venture capitalists investing in new geothermal technology have also been few and far between. Greentech Media reported last year that in 2009 venture capitalists invested $35 million into two companies building geothermal heat pumps, EnLink and Nobao. In comparison in 2009 solar startups brought in around $1.2 billion in venture capital funding.

One of the most high profile backers of advanced geothermal tech has been Google. In 2008 Google invested $10.25 million into AltaRock Energy, Potter Drilling, and the Southern Methodist University Geothermal Lab, which are all developing “enhanced geothermal system” technology — an approach that cracks into hot rocks, circulates water through the system and uses the steam to power a traditional turbine. AltaRock has also been backed with $26.25 million from Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Vulcan Capital.

But the AltaRock investment is an example of one of the issues for venture capitalists — the new technology can be risky. An AltaRock project was put on hold indefinitely last year after it faced problems with drilling — a drill bit snagged — and also faced concern over if its drilling could cause earthquakes similar to the ones that occurred in Basel, Switzerland. As Eric Wesoff put it last year: “Venture Capitalists are used to technology risk, market risk, and policy risk. However they are not accustomed to seismic risk.”

One of the newer geothermal startups that I’ve encountered recently is Foro Energy, and given all the negative attention the AltaRock project has received, the company is not surprisingly taking a low-profile approach. Foro Energy is developing a thermal drilling technology, which the company says will significantly lower drilling costs for geothermal energy wells and received one of the largest of the Department of Energy’s coveted ARPA-E grants with $9.1 million. Foro will have to match those funds at 50 percent cost share over time as they are used, but the company is already backed by North Bridge Venture Partners and CMEA Capital. Foro Energy plans to stay in stealth for the time being.

Image courtesy of Geothermal Energy Association.

Geothermal Might Be Heating Up, But Still Tepid for Investors is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

To be fair, said Michael Hanemann at last Friday’s BERC Energy Symposium at UC Berkeley, the private sector has been scratching its head about how to take advantage of business opportunities in water for years, but the opportunities are just not that easy to monetize.  He noted that nearly 90% of Americans receive their drinking water from public water systems.  While about half of drinking water utilities in the U.S. are privately owned, these companies provide water to just one tenth of Americans served by public water systems, and only 3% of Americans get wastewater services from private utilities (National Association of Water Companies).  There are some giants in the water industry – GE, Siemens and Halliburton are heavily involved, but many may have never even heard of the world’s largest water company, France-based Veolia Environnement.

But despite the lack of hype about the water industry over the last decade, there seems to be an awakening as of late as academics, nonprofits, investors, and entrepreneurs align to take a shot at breaking through the barriers to innovation in the water sector.  For those interested in catching up on the space, The Cleantech Group featured quite an interesting corps of water leaders at its February San Francisco Cleantech Forum, and UC Berkeley’s BERC Energy Symposium had an excellent panel of water experts including Steve Weismann of the California Center for Environmental Law and Policy, Matthew Heberger of the Pacific Institute, Laurie Park of Navigant Consulting, and Noah Goldstein of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in addition to world-renown professor Hanemann.

Numerous prizes have also recently been announced for water sector startups in an effort to jumpstart investor interest in the sector, and it will be interesting to track the winners’ progress.  The Cleantech Group and The Guardian’s Global Cleantech 100 included 12 water and wastewater companies, and the nonprofit Artemis Project’s annual competition highlights its top 50 water technologies.  Imagine H2O announced French-American vineyard water efficiency startup Fruition Sciences as the winner of its Water Innovators Prize just this past week.  The Water Innovators Prize was particularly focused on water efficiency, an area that has led to a massive decline in industrial water use over the past fifteen years but has had little impact on residential water use.  Let’s all hope that some of these incubators are able to nudge water technologies into the marketplace to make more of a dent in this space and others.  If they succeed, it will be an exciting year for an often-overlooked industry.

Water event tonight:
Imagine H2O is hosting a showcase on water innovations tonight. Learn about exciting new businesses that have risen to the surface. Meet the winning teams and other finalists from Imagine H2O’s recent Water Innovation Prize, the elite water experts who selected them, and Imagine H2O’s ecosystem of water leaders, including John Bohn, Chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission. Learn more…

photo: laszlo-photo

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Water Sector Startups Innovate Efficient Use And Supply is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

The study reinforces the need for climate policies, such as those like cap and trade that would limit countries’ total emissions, to take into account the climate-changing emissions embodied in traded goods and services, the report says. The study also points to a growing opportunity for those companies developing carbon management platforms, such as San Francisco-based Carbonetworks, Germany’s SAP or Redwood City, Calif-based Hara, to track these outsourced emissions.

The report’s authors looked at published trade data from 2004 to build a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. They then allocated carbon emissions to particular products and sources and from that were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by countries. The study concluded that about 23 percent, or 6.2 gigatons, of all carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning globally is emitted during the production of goods that are ultimately consumed in a different country.

The fact that many rich countries are net importers of carbon emissions won’t be a surprise to many, as so much production of machinery, electronics, apparel and textiles in recent years has shifted to developing countries like China. But the report, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds scientific weight – and some specific figures – behind what was arguably already an intuitive trend.  

The U.S., for example, leads the pack as a net importer of emissions with about 699 metric tons, or 2.5 tons per person, of carbon dioxide per year. Japan is second at 284 tons per year. China, however, is the largest exporter of emissions with 1147 tons per year, while Russia is second at 286 tons per year. See the graph for a nice visual representation of these carbon flows.

But all this trading of carbon points to a complicated question: Who is responsible for emissions and how should the burden of mitigation be shared? These questions need to be considered as countries around the world move to limit total emissions, the authors said. Currently, national inventories of carbon, such as those by the UN Framework on Climate Change, only account for those emissions produced within countries, the report says.  

These issues have led some to call for taxes on the import of carbon-intensive goods, which advocates say would protect domestic industries from foreign rivals using dirtier, cheaper power and would prevent so-called carbon leakage, when carbon-intensive production moves offshore. Carbon import tax has gained momentum after the recent Copenhagen talks, at least in Europe.

The cross-border flow of carbon also offers an opportunity for the growing number of companies developing software to help their clients track the carbon emissions related to their businesses. These software developers have so far focused largely on helping companies calculate emissions directly related to their operations, such as the fuel consumed by their fleets or the electricity used at their facilities.

But the “next step” in the evolution of their products, says Forrester analyst Chris Mines, will be tracking supply chain emissions, like those related to goods imported from abroad or trucked across town. Big companies like Wal-Mart and Hewlett-Packard are now “pushing hard” to get their suppliers to provide data on the embodied energy of their products, Mines said, and software suppliers will “catch up.”

Michael Meehan, chief executive of startup Carbonetworks, told Earth2Tech his company’s carbon management platform is already being used by some clients – especially those looking to “protect their brand as an asset” – to track supply chain emissions. But he said doing it is “extremely difficult” partly because you need to protect against double counting. When a good is trucked across country, you need to decide who is apportioned those emissions, the transporter, the distributor or the company buying it, he said. But Meehan said this is the perfect kind of job for software from an outside vendor: “You can’t manage this stuff internally, there is just so much.”

Rich Countries “Outsourcing” Carbon, Good News for Carbon Software Players is a post from: Clean Energy Sector

The CPUC can either accept or reject that judge’s recommendation, but still, it’s not a good sign for the pairing of fuel cells with the power grid anytime soon — fuel cells are just too expensive right now. Administrative law judge Dorothy Duda writes: “It is unreasonable to spend three times the price paid to renewable generation for the proposed Fuel Cell Projects, which are nonrenewable and fueled by natural gas.” As we’ve pointed out Bloom Energy says its fuel cells can be 100-percent carbon free, but that’s only if you run them on biogas, a resource that’s not exactly easy to get ahold of.

Woody reports that PG&E’s fuel cell project was hoping to use two 1.4 MW fuel cells from FuelCell Energy and two 100 kW Bloom servers. PG&E spokesperson Jonathan Marshall tells us that the contract with Bloom Energy is contingent on whether the CPUC ultimately approves the fuel cell project, but that the administrative judge’s recommendation does not have an effect on the deals or the project. Marshall also pointed out to us that the fuel cell project would be one of the rare cases that PG&E would own an energy project itself (rather than buying electricity under a power purchasing agreement), similar to its recent, but much larger, plans to own solar PV projects.

For PG&E the proposed fuel cell project is more about testing and learning than anything else. Marshall tells us the purpose of the fuel cell program is to “understand the economics and management of fuel cells on our grid. It’s a learning opportunity.”

But despite the interest, the the administrative judge’s skepticism is warranted. Fuel cells have made little dent on California’s power needs, in spite of the a state program to subsidize fuel cells. PG&E told Woody that only 13 MW, or just 0.01 percent of California’s peak electricity demand, come from fuel cells. And in California fuel cells are only counted for the renewable portfolio standard if they use biogas — dealing one more blow to the case for investing ratepayers dollars into the project.

Bloom Energy, Fuel Cells, Not A Good Match For Utilities — Yet is a post from: Clean Energy Sector