Can Obama Make Consumers Go Cleantech Shopping?

By Ucilia Wang

The holiday season will be here in a few weeks, and it's shaping up to be a mighty disappointment for retailers, raising questions about how bad will it get for the consumer side of greentech businesses.

Only a month ago, solar industry executives at a conference in San Diego, Calif., said the future wouldn't be as bleak as some had envisioned. After all, Congress had just extended tax credits that would shave thousands of dollars off a residential solar energy system.

But consumer confidence is plummeting. The U.S. Commerce Department reported last Friday that retail sales dropped 2.8 percent, the biggest monthly decline since 1992 (prompting The New York Times' Thomas Friedman to opine that one of Barack Obama's priorities is to inspire all of us to go shopping).

Meanwhile, a 4.5-kilowatt solar energy system in Colorado could cost roughly $14,000 after all the federal and local tax credits and rebates kick in. Even with leasing or other financing options offered by solar installers, consumers will still have to fork over money that they could otherwise hold on to in case the economy tanks even further.

Are solar energy installers seeing fewer inquiries from people than previously expected? With the housing market is a deep funk, should U.S. companies developing green building materials be looking more earnestly for customers outside of the country? (see Peddling Green Cement and Concrete Abroad).

How about all those solar-powered gadgets that seem so nifty – will their sales suffer along with other consumer electronics or will they draw more interest because, hey, sunlight is a free source of energy?

It's not completely bleak: Investors and companies continue to announce deals. Two large, recent deals came from outside of the United States. BioTherm Energy of South Africa said it had raised $150 million from Denham Capital for roughly 300 megawatts worth of projects to generate electricity or steam from industrial wastes, reported New Energy Finance (via Cleanedge).

In Australia, Starfish Ventures has closed a $185 million fund for investing in cleantech, life sciences and other sectors. The firm already has invested in several companies, including solar-thermal power plant developer Ausra. Ausra, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup with Australian roots, just did a grand-opening ceremony for its 5-megawatt project in California (see Ausra's First U.S. Solar-Thermal Plant Lights Up).

Here is some of the recent funding news:

• Connecticut is setting up a $9 million greentech fund for investing in early-stage companies in areas such as renewable energy generation and clean water. The Connecticut Clean Tech Fund will give each chosen company up to $1 million.
• Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE), a natural gas distributor in Seal Beach, Calif., raised $32.5 million by selling shares and warrants. The company has attracted more scrutiny because its largest shareholder is T. Boone Pickens, who made his fortune in oil and is now an advocate for wind energy and natural gas. The company just reported quarterly losses of $10.64 million and saw its deal to buy FuelMaker fell though, reported Earth2tech.
• Solix Biofuels, which is working on making fuels out of algae, raised $10.5 million (see Solix: Another Me-Too Algae Company Raise $10.5M). The company, based in Fort Collins, Colo., raised the money from I2BF Venture Capital, Bohemian Investments, Southern Ute Alternative Energy, Valero Energy and Infield Capital. The algal biofuel startup has secured an additional $5 million from the investors for building a pilot refinery on a 10-acre site on the Southern Ute Indian reservation in Colorado.
• ElectraTherm raised $2.6 million for developing a generator that produces electricity from waste heat that is generated during geothermal or other industrial operations. The Carson City, Nev.-based company has signed a distribution deal with Taiwan-based Kaori Heat Treatment for its 50-kilowatt generator. Distributors for the U.S. market include Eisenmann Corp., Roughrider Power and Gulf Coast Green Energy.
• NanoMas Technologies raised $3.2 million for developing nanocrystal ink for producing solar cells, flat-panel displays and other electronic devices. The technology will deposit semiconducting materials in a way that is similar to printing. The company, based in Vestal, N.Y., raised the money from BASF Venture Capital, Earthrise Capital Partners and NanoMaterials Investors.
• Raser Technologies Inc. (RZ) said it will raise $20 million by selling shares of its common stock to an undisclosed investor. The Provo, Utah-based geothermal energy developer plans to use the money for project development and general corporate expenses.

Comments

[Erich J Knight:]

In a recent National Public Radio interview, Michael Pollan talks about how he was approached by a Democratic party staffer about his New York Times article, Farmer in Chief ( [url=www.treehugger.com/fil...]Michael Pollan Proposes A "Sun-Food" Agenda In Open Letter To Next U.S. President : TreeHugger[/url] ). The article is an open letter to the next president concerning U.S. agriculture policy. The staffer wanted Pollan to summarize the article into a page or two to get it into the hands of Barack Obama. Pollan declined, saying that if he could have said everything that needed to be said in two pages, he wouldn't have written 8000 words.

Despite the snub, it looks like the article created enough of a buzz that it made it into Obama's stack of pre-election reading material...

In an interview with Joe Klein, ( [url=swampland.blogs.time.c.../]Swampland - TIME.com Blog Archive The Full Obama Interview [/url] ) Obama refers to the article, explaining how Pollan's ideas fit into the concept of a new energy economy.

Obama's analysis of Pollan's message:

"There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board."


This article prompted me to send M. Pollan another update on biochar research and genteel pleading to include Biochar technology in his next agriculture policy directive to the president;

"Dear Michael,

I can just see the bread crumb trail I believe/hope you are laying out in the NPR interview. Biochar will be the 8001th word, the grand finally of solutions?
The path your work has taken me on in human / plant interactions, the pleasurable and problematic seem solved by diversity and land management practices. We know that means food web/SOM management. The arguments for sustainability you put forward, if embraced, will lead to the biochar bread.

President Obama has already done so much to de-mystified, de-politicize and de-stigmatize the word black, I feel that "A Black Revolution in Agriculture" (as a recent article titled a biochar story), would be quite consistent with this achievement.

Last year there were no biochar studies at the American Chemical Society conference, this year several dozen.

Charles Mann ("1491")in the Sept. National Geographic has a wonderful soils article which places Terra Preta / Biochar soils center stage.
I think Biochar has climbed the pinnacle, the Combined English and other language circulation of NGM is nearly nine million monthly with more than fifty million readers monthly!
We need to encourage more coverage now, to ride Mann's coattails to public critical mass.

Please put this (soil) bug in your colleague's ears. These issues need to gain traction among all the various disciplines who have an iron in this fire.
ngm.nationalgeographic...

Also,

The president has a website where he is taking in "your vision
for what America can be, where President Obama should lead
this country".

[url=www.change.gov/page/s/...]Change.gov | momentvision[/url]

I would encourage you to submit biochar visions from
your point of view. I would recommend mentioning more than
biochar. The form is set up to take input from other countries as
well.

Get Lobbying!

2008 Nov 17 03:18 PM