THE HOPE NEW-ENERGY-2009 SENT TO 2010

The Top Ten Emerging Trends of 2009; A lot of little trends perked up in 2009 and they will likely have an impact on what happens in 2010, even when the DOE grants run out.
Michael Kanellos, December 9, 2009 (Greentech Media)

SUMMARY
There is a growing realization in the New Energy community, accentuated by the failure of the Copenhagen summit and subsequent finger pointing about blame for the failure, that the world’s last best hope is New Energy.

This list of 2009’s most important changes in New Energy is encouraging because there is no really bad news on it. Everything in New Energy generally seemed to grow and get better last year. This is especially impressive considering how bad the economy was for most of the year.

Part of the reason was the Obama administration’s stimulus package and general support for New Energy. Department of Energy investment was $36.7 billion. Anticipating support from the federal government to keep the New Energies growing, venture capitalists and corporate investors stayed with them as well, putting over $4 billion into startups. It was half what was invested in New Energy in 2008 but it kept the innovation going.

Battery electric vehicle (BEV) manufacturing fell off in ‘09, postponing the transportation revolution a year, but the Obama administration made it clear plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) and lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are on their way to commercialization.

In addition, the smart grid began its deployment with pilot projects, solar got cheaper and wind kept growing. All in all, 2009 suggested New Energy may just be ready to step up and do for the world what its budding international governance system is still too immature to accomplish, that is, head off the worst impacts of global climate change.

Nobody has figured out how to stop wind in recent years, though the recalcitrants in Congress have been working on it. (click to enlarge)

Greentech Media’s top 10 changes in the New Energy industries in 2009:

(1) The solar industry’s emphasis shifted from cheaper panels to cheaper installation.
(2) New Energy globalization became a busily trafficked 2-way street, with big foreign investment domestically matching U.S. companies’ ventures abroad.
(3) Defense industry players started moving money and momentum to New Energy in partnership with utilities.
(4) Money went to algae biofuels as growing, refining and marketing innovations emerged.
(5) International conglomerates started buying in.
(6) Landfill waste to gas got bigger and recycled materials found new uses.
(7) Despite widespread rising social concerns about the future of water supplies, little money went to water projects.
(8) Building energy management won a large portion of New Energy investment.
(9) New Energy insiders began talking up the enormous and overlooked opportunity in combined-heat-and-power technology.
(10) Several much-anticipated and long-awaited New Energy technologies remained much-anticipated and long-awaited.

Time is short and the need is enormous. The failure at Copenhagen was the clarion call to every member of the community from the rooftop solar installers to the laboratory engineers designing bigger better wind to the deep research policy analysts to the folks waiting for battery electric vehicles before they buy their next car: It is time to build New Energy everyday with both hands and determined hearts!

In a very tough economy, New Energy recovered from the first quarter dropoff very quickly, boding good things for 2010. (click to enlarge)

COMMENTARY
It is unfair to say absolutely nothing discouraging occurred in New Energy’s 2009. What is fair to say is that overall growth continued and New Energy met setbacks with solutions and advances.

(1) The solar industry’s emphasis shifted from cheaper panels to cheaper installation.

The industry has worked for more than a decade to get the photovoltaic (PV) panel price down. Leaders have talked about Moore’s Law and promised to get the cost of PV solar energy to grid parity since at least the 90s. But when the economy crashed and the Spanish bubble burst in late 2008, suddenly the industry found its shelves overstocked with PV panels and in some markets literally couldn’t give them away. Yet the price was still the obstacle to growth.

The solution: Cut the cost of installation (30%+ of a rooftop PV system’s price). Modular racking systems took the system price down 50-to-80 cents per watt. Simple assembly processes put the job in the hands of the roof’s owner. Manufacturers are learning to diversify their products and make systems for a variety of installation situations.

The result: PV has achieved grid parity in some markets under some circumstances and is on its way to broad-based parity.

Despite oversupply of panels, demand held up in a tough economy. (click to enlarge)

(2) New Energy globalization became a busily trafficked 2-way street, with big foreign investment domestically matching U.S. companies’ ventures abroad.

Falling costs for wind and solar energy opened up competition globally. U.S. and Chinese solar manufacturers had already been competing in Europe but European wind manufacturers and Chinese solar manufacturers moved into the U.S. in 2009. To take advantage of financing made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), foreign companies formed joint ventures with U.S. developers and manufacturers to build New Energy and build advanced transportation technology. In response, the most forward-thinking U.S. multinationals began forming partnerships and writing memoranda of understanding to get into Asian and EU markets.

China moving into the is U.S. and creating U.S. jobs. (click to enlarge)

(3) Defense industry players started moving money and momentum to New Energy in partnership with utilities.

The military-industrial complex took a hit from the economic downturn and the Obama administration takeover but a new nexus began forming. Defense industry powerhouses (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, Ratheon, BAE Systems and Bechtel), in pursuit of ARRA funding, turned their prowess at big undertakings on solar power plants, wind installations, smart grid pilot projects and transmission undertakings. Where they lacked expertise, they partnered with utilities and veteran New Energy developers.

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(4) Money went to algae biofuels as growing, refining and marketing innovations emerged.

Excitement about the possibilities of algal oils derived from algae as substitutes for petroleum oils has been tempered by the prohibitive expense of the complex harvesting required.

Futuristic genetic engineering may solve the cost problem by growing algae from which the oils are easily harvested. Companies exploring this idea got big backing through ARRA.

Another, more immediately available option is to sell the byproducts of the algal oil harvesting process. It turns out the leftovers are very nutritious and can even be delicious. Some products can substitute for almond oil or sell as nutrients for $10,000 per ton. Cellulosic biofuels makers have started exploring the same revenue potential.

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(5) International conglomerates started buying in.

Where defense industry conglomerates tread, multinational conglomerates (General Electric, Cisco, Philips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., Samsung and Panasonic) soon follow. They are moving into advanced lighting, solar, smart grid, energy efficiency, energy storage and the IT that services such New Energies.

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(6) Landfill waste to gas got bigger and recycled materials found new uses.

No feedstock is cheaper than waste (biomass, trash, waste steams and sewage). Waste has much organic substance that will decay in landfills into burnable gas. Though hardly a real solution to the greenhouse problem, it is more productive to turn that gas into energy and spew than to use fossil fuels for energy and double the spew.

Recovered gas can be used like compressed natural gas to drive truck fleets in place of oil or to drive turbines and generate electricity in place of natural gas and coal. Biomass power plants can incorporate solar power plants, to get even more mileage from the spew and lay the groundwork, when New Energy storage becomes economically viable, for large-scale solar energy electricity generation.

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(7) Despite widespread rising social concerns about the future of water supplies, little money went to water projects.

Despite a growing and widespread recognition that water shortages threaten arid regions from Central Asia to Northern Africa to the U.S. Southwest, only five water treatment projects were funded in 2009. On the other hand, Greentech Media reports IBM and General Electric are both getting ready to move. So in this case 2009 is delivering a big opportunity to 2010 for any venture capital ready to compete with such multinational powers.

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(8) Building energy management won a large portion of New Energy investment.

What is the most readily available and abundant New Energy? No, not solar. Not wind. It is Energy Efficiency. And one of the most exciting opportunities in efficiency is demand response, the management of building energy.

The energy used in buildings is responsible for nearly 40% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. There is a set of ways this demand for energy can be modified to have a significant impact on total energy required and the resultant emissions. The modifications are done through “smart” technologies.

Slight but precise adjustments in the energy to cool or heat a building by perhaps 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit across an entire city, county, region or state could dramatically change the gross amount of energy consumption taking place. Similar adjustments to the electricity flowing to lighting or factory operations could have comparably significant impacts.

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Smart meters in the buildings with digital readouts inform building owners and residents about energy use and give them the option of cutting their energy bills by reducing energy consumption at times of peak demand and highest cost.

Smart grid operators can use 2-way connectivity to read the same smart meter data and reduce energy consumption according to pre-arranged guidelines. This has the potential, in worst-case scenarios, to avoid rolling blackouts or brownouts. Under less dire circumstances, it gives grid operators the option of balancing grid loads and easing peak demand when their energy is most expensive.

Eventually, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, in conjunction with battery electric vehicles, will be another major factor in this smart technology by allowing low cost New Energy generated at times of low demand to be stored in vehicle batteries and brought on line instead of generating more readily dispatchable but more expensive Old Energy.

The companies that are developing demand response, smart technologies and the capacity to use them were among those seeing the biggest investment from ARRA and the private sector during 2009. Research, development and pilot project deployment has barely begun to lay the groundwork for breakthroughs and buildups.

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(9) New Energy insiders began talking up the enormous and overlooked opportunity in combined-heat-and-power technology.

Combined heat and power (CHP), also called cogeneration, is a new design for energy generation systems in which the heat otherwise lost is recaptured and used to increase the energy output of the systems.

Thomas Edison’s earliest electricity generating stations incorporated versions of CHP in the 1880s to achieve impressive levels of efficiency. The only reason CHP is not more common is that laws designed to protect utilities and regulate power producers prohibited distributed generation and, technically, the capture and re-use of the heat is a form of “unregulated” power.

The application of CHP might be the most easily captured waste energy in the world and it is clearly the least exploited opportunity in New Energy. The only problem is that before such technologies explode into the marketplace, the antiquated regulatory regimes limiting distributed generation have to be dispensed with.

Combined Heat and Power (CHP) - available at the simple change of unnecessary regulations. (click to enlarge)

(10) Several much-anticipated and long-awaited New Energy technologies remained much-anticipated and long-awaited.

Items that Greentech Media expected to come to market in 2009 but didn’t:
(1) The Fisker Karma elegant and yet practical battery electric car (BEV);
(2) Serious Materials’ EcoRock green drywall, a super insulating and environmentally-friendly construction material;
(3) The EEStor ultracapacitor, an energy storage solution not previously thought physically possible that promises unprecedented New Energy storage capacity and BEV ranges;
(4) Bloom Energy’s methane-powered, hydrogen-generating Bloom Box that could be combined with CHP technology to take building energy efficiency to new heights; and
(5) Nanosolar home product, a Cadmium Indium Gallium DiSelenide (CIGS) thin film photovoltaic solar panel to be sold at Home Depot for installation by the roof owner.

At the websites of all these exciting and potentially game-changing breakthrough concepts, they are promised for 2010. At this time last year, they were promised for 2009.

click thru to follow all electric car progress

QUOTES
- Michael Kanellos, Top Ten Emerging Trends of 2009, Greentech Media: “A lot of little trends perked up in 2009 and they will likely have an impact on what happens in 2010, even when the DOE grants run out.”
- Kanellos, Emerging Trends, Greentech Media: I will keep plugging the idea that waste heat represents one of the biggest opportunities out there until I run out of breath.
- Kanellos, Emerging Trends, Greentech Media: “Despite the economic calamity, the greentech industry didn't do bad in 2009. The Department of Energy will have given away $36.7 billion by the time the calendar rolls over. Venture capitalists and corporate investors will invest more than $4 billion in startups this year, about half as much as in 2008 but more than any other year. Although some electric cars were pushed back to 2010, smart grid deployments started moving from the conceptual phase to reality, while solar got cheaper.”