suffering from bronchitis

suffering from bronchitis

Tories set out to charm green biz with uni plan

How do you like to be wooed? A nice restaurant? Expensive wine? A bunch of flowers, ideally not from a petrol station, maybe? Well, it’s time for a rethink if you work in green business, as shadow chancellor George Osborne is out to woo you, according to The Telegraph.

The paper says Osborne wants to seen green incubators set up in universities across the land to help those with bright green ideas turn them into bright green realities.

There should be a plan on how all this might work before the end of the year, with David Mott of Oxford Capital Partners at the healm.

UCLA scientists put hydrogen cars on a diet

Like a Hollywood starlet that’s just discovered ephedrine, hydrogen cars could shortly be dropping a lot of mass, thanks to researchers at UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

After all, no one likes being that little bit larger than normal, even hydrogen cars, which have been dogged by the oversize issue for a while - hydrogen cars need a larger fuel tank than their petrol counterparts, and in some cases, larger than their trunk.

Now those cunning folk at UCLA have come up with a way of slimming down the tanks by identifying better ways to store the gaseous fuel, according to Science Daily.

Here’s how the scientists explain it:

Hydrogen is a potential source of clean energy for future use in passenger vehicles powered by cheap and energy-efficient fuel cells, but its widespread adoption has been hindered by the need to store it on-board at very high densities.
A promising solution to this problem involves storing hydrogen within a material in the form of a chemically bound hydride, for example lithium hydride (LiH). Unfortunately, simple binary hydrides, in which hydrogen combines with light elements such as lithium, sodium, magnesium or others, do not adequately satisfy the requirements for on-board storage, as the hydrogen-yielding reaction requires heating the material to impractically high temperatures.
Because of this, researchers have turned to multicomponent hydride mixtures with higher volumetric and gravimetric densities, better operating temperatures and improved reaction rates for practical hydrogen storage. However, this flexibility comes at the price of drastically increased complexity associated with the large number of competing reactions and possible end-products other than hydrogen. Thus, predicting desirable hydrogen storage with multicomponent mixtures has proved difficult.

Nevertheless, UCLA has come up with an algorithm that identifies the reaction that are most suitable, which will help the scientific and engineering community to develop new ways of storing hydrogen.

US DoE, VCs take entrepreneurs and biofuels under their wing

It’s all go at the US Department of Enegy. First of all, the DoE has picked 3 VC firms to join its Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) pilot program which “aims to accelerate deployment and commercialization of advanced clean energy technologies from three DOE National Laboratories into the global marketplace” and then it went and invested a whole shedload in biofuels.
The lucky winners are Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, ARCH Venture Partners and Foundation Capital. The entrpreneurs in residence supported by the VCs will get access to one of three DoE labs and the deparment will cough up to $100,000 for each entrepreneur to help “defray salary and other expenses”, which the VCs will match.
Here’s the complete skinny:

Using their vast business expertise, the selected firms will be permitted to give proven start-up entrepreneurs the opportunity to work directly with laboratory staff for a hands-on look at various, commercially viable technologies. Entrepreneurs will conduct technology assessments, evaluate market opportunities, formulate preliminary business cases, and propose business structures in an effort to bring cutting-edge technologies to market.
Upon selecting a technology for commercialization, entrepreneurs in residence and their venture capital sponsors would negotiate a license to use the laboratory-developed technology. Working with their respective entrepreneur, the venture capital sponsors will form and finance a start-up business based on the licensed technology. The foundation of each start-up’s business plan would be the commercialization of licensed clean energy technologies.
To further accelerate the commercialization process, the EIR pilot program seeks to utilize a Standard License Agreement, tailored for entrepreneurs and small businesses. The Standard License Agreement includes a provision that would permit the EIR to offer partial ownership of the start-up company as full or partial payment for the license. This provides the opportunity for a start-up company to use its initial resources to grow the company rather than to make substantial up-front cash royalty payments.

And there’s more: the DoE said it will invest $33.8 million in over four years in projects to convert cellulosic material into biofuels.

These four projects seek to more cost-effectively and efficiently breakdown processed biomass into fermentable sugars, a significant challenge in converting biomass into fuels. Projects were selected based on their demonstrated ability to reduce the cost of enzymes-per-gallon of ethanol by improving an enzyme’s performance. Selected projects must demonstrate the ability to produce enzymes at a commercial-scale, and have a sound business strategy to market the enzymes or enzyme production systems in biorefinery operations.

Those getting funding are DSM Innovation Center Inc, Novozymes, Genencor and Verenium Corporation.

BP invests $1.5 billion in renewables

According to popular psychology, you should live each day like it’s your last. If that’s the case, Greenbang has just spent her last day on earth leafing through BP’s last set of financial results. A little depressing, you might think, but every cloud and all that: there was a whole host of dirty great info on what the oil giant is up to in the field of renewables.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then Greenbang will begin.

BP has invested $1.5 billion in alternative energy since its launched its green energy arm, and plans to put the same amount again into it by the end of this year, up from $1.1 billion in 2007 and a mere $0.6 billion in 2006.

BP will have 3GW of gross wind power capacity by the end of 2010. To date, it’s invested $0.8 billion, and will be investing another $0.6 billion in wind this year and there’s a wind development pipeline of over 15GW ahead.

Its solar business is expanding and the oil giant expects to sell 800MW-ish in 2010. vested $150 million in solar last year, a figure it will double by 2008, and its solar sales are expected to grown by over 60 percent a year.

On the biofuels, hydrogen and CCS (carbon capture and storage, not the Brazilian band) front, it’s a little more hazy. BP just says there are “some major projects” in the works, which makes it sounds a little like Prince talking about his latest album.

Wave-powered ship ready to take maiden voyage

Here’s an idea that at once so screamingly obvious and yet so astounding brilliant, Greenbang is surprised no one’s come up with this before. Wait for it, wait for it… it’s a wave powered ship! I know - you’re thinking that invention is even better than the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Machine.

The wave powered ship, called the Suntory Mermaid II, has been built by the Tsuneishi Shipbuilding Company for the solo sailor Kenichi Horie. Horie will skipper the boat from Honolulu’s Hawaii Yacht Club across about 6,000 kilometers of ocean to the the Kii Channel. He’s off some time in mid May this year, apparently.

Tsuneishi Shipbuilding Company has handily provided an explanation of how it all works for the technologically curious:

Wave powered boats feature fins at the front of the craft, which generate thrust force by moving up and down like the tails of dolphins and whales and absorbing the energy of the waves. The only researcher of this type of craft, professor Hiroshi Terao of Tokai University’s oceanography department, cooperated with this project. Because the fins absorb energy from the pitching motion of the boat, the pitching decreases and the boat’s stability is improved. Under normal use the sole power source is wave energy, but the boat can also use sails or an outboard motor when entering or leaving harbor, or in case of emergencies. While cruising, the outboard motor and sails will not be used.

And that’s not all - the hull is made of recycled aluminium and on-board energy comes from solar cells. Wow.

Don’t forget next week’s Green Biz event

Yo yo. Word up. Etc.

Just a reminder to take a look at this talk next week in London on “Green & Global Market Instability – How to keep the Climate Change agenda on course”.

It’s on Wednesday, 5th March 2008, 17.00-19.00, at One Silk Street, London.

Check out: http://www.greenbizevents.co.uk/events/ggmi/ for more….

The credit crunch is hitting home everywhere. This event will explore the implications for the Climate Change agenda:

BT’s head of datacentres reveals energy-saving secrets

Finlay MacLeod is one of those guys who keeps you on your toes. You can’t lose his trail for a second because he keeps asking questions to ensure you’re listening.

Greenbang caught up with Finlay, the head of data centre transformation for BT, to find out how the company is tackling growing energy costs, and what innovation can do to help…

He didn’t have a photo for us

Greenbang: Energy costs are rising for everyone - as data centres are the engine room of a business, how do you keep those costs down? Can you give examples at BT?

Finlay MacLeod: BT has an aggressive initiative around virtualisation, consolidation and decommissioning, thereby reducing the number of servers taking power in the data centres - this helps take away the source of the “problem” (heat - therefore reducing any cooling and associated environmental needs).

BT are also looking at the efficiencies of the data centre mechanical and electrical equipment by measuring the PUE [Power Usage Effectiveness] figures for all the data centre’s in the UK - this gives us a broad brush method to identify which sites have the greatest inefficiencies in the M&E infrastructure.

We’re doing this on a monthly basis and are constructing energy improvement plans for the worst sites.

What are the reusable assets from data centres? Have many people succeeded with recycling the heat, for example?

BT are looking to reuse any useable recycling of waste from the data centre such as heat - one such initiative is where we are using ground water cooling to subsidise the cooling requirement for one of our
data centres in Italy.

What will carbon taxes mean for BT’s business? And how will you manage these?

Carbon tax will mean additional focus on a company’s carbon footprint and power consumption in far greater detail than we probably look at today - BT have been looking at their carbon footprint forensically and have a market leading methodology to assess the carbon associated with data centres and their operations - we are looking at all sorts of different ways to reduce our carbon across the company.

The main aim is to ensure that for each carbon tonne/kwhr we are getting the maximum benefit from it in terms of business value.

Where are most of the mistakes being made in managing data centre energy and carbon output?

I think the major mistake being made in managing the data centre is the fear of change - we all seem to be very comfortable with the traditional model of managing and running a data centre when uptime and processing
power was the priority.

However power consumption and carbon footprint have joined if not jumped above these priorities in terms of cost and importance.

What are the business opportunities in this area?

There are significant business opportunities with the rising power prices, constraint of further supply and the pending carbon tax.  I think the first step in order to improve in this area is to have the capability to measure your current position.

There are a number of companies that don’t know their power consumption across the data centre
Once the current position is known there are a number of improvements that can be made from just plain best practice across to major changes with varying costs - we have just undertaken this analysis for our own data centres and are looking at implementation plans.

World’s largest solar power station on track Down Under

It’s Guinness world records time, with the news that the world’s largest solar photovoltaic power station gong is set to pass to Australian state Victoria. The Aussies will be saying g’day to the development some time in 2009.

The record breaking power plant begin generation in 2010 and be fully completed by 2013.

As an aside, did you know that you can’t get into the Guiness Book of Records with acts of “gluttony” or “stupidity”? That rules out Greenbang on most counts alas, as she was going to going over the Niagara Falls in a barrel made of deep fried butterfly cakes which she would eat on the way over.

Back to the story. This megalith of photovoltaicism is the result of a deal struck between Aussie firm Solar Systems and energy company TRUenergy, apparently worth $290 million, with TRUenergy snaffling 20 percent ownership of Solar Systems.

More details from TRUenergy:

In addition, TRUenergy will contribute seven million dollars to the development of a two megawatt (MW) heliostat concentrated photovoltaic pilot plant, subsequently investing up to $285 million to build the remaining stages of the project, and adding to $129.5 million of Federal and Victorian Government funds already earmarked for the project.

Using high performance solar cells originally developed to power satellites, the $420 million full-sized photovoltaic solar plant will produce 154MW of electricity, enough clean energy to power 45,000 homes.[…]

TRUenergys parent company, CLP, which has operations in Hong Kong, China, India, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia, has also entered into a ten year joint Development Agreement with Solar Systems, to support the deployment of up to one gigawatt (GW) of concentrated photovoltaic technology across Asia Pacific Partnership countries.

Water firms unite to fight climate change

Wow. You know corporate attitudes have shifted when the big businesses like water companies admit that climate change may have messed with their supplies a bit. It’s like your parents admitting to still having sex: you knew the risk was there, but you never thought they’d actually say it. Eight of those water supplying companies in the US have come together to make an alliance “united by the fact that climate change poses a major long-term challenge to delivering high-quality drinking water”. Shizzle.

The group, called Water Utility Climate Alliance or WUCA, will work to “improve research into the impacts of climate change on water utilities, develop strategies for adapting to climate change and implement tactics to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions”.

Denver Water, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Portland Water Bureau, San Diego County Water Authority, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Seattle Public Utilities and the Southern Nevada Water Authority have all signed up to WUCA and have created a plan to tackle all that’s going on climate change-wise:

The WUCA identified several key research needs that would improve the drinking water industry’s ability to develop strategies to cope with potential impacts of climate change. The WUCA is urging the CCSP, as well as all researchers and scientists in the climate-change field, to:
– Reduce the uncertainty in climate change projections by improving and
refining global climate models and applying them at the regional or
local level;
– Enhance the collection, maintenance and accessibility of information,
making the data more useful for decision-making purposes;
– Ensure that water providers worldwide have access to consistent climate
data;
– Develop decision-support tools for planning, decision-making and
policy-making that can accommodate deep uncertainty and the potential
for abrupt climate changes; and
– Coordinate international research efforts, particularly with those
countries that are already experiencing the effects of climate change,
such as Australia.

Greenbang tracks the explosion of the environmental industry, reporting on news of green innovation and thought leadership.

We blog on this rather than the environmental problems of the world because we are interested in the answers to climate change.