McKinsey

Plunging EV Battery Prices Seen Boosting Industry

By


An expected sharp fall in the price of automotive lithium ion batteries over the next decade could make electric vehicles competitive with conventional cars, raising wide-ranging questions for the future of the electric power and petroleum industries, as well as for car makers, according to a new report from the management consultants McKinsey & Co.

The study predicts prices for the automotive battery packs could drop to about $200 per kilowatt hour by 2020 and $160 by 2025 from $500-$600 currently because of manufacturing economies of scale, lower component prices, and improvements in battery capacity. Keep reading →

Published July 11, 2012 at 9:00 AM

A Pair Of Young Entrepreneurs Make Renewables Incentives Lucrative

By


After a stint at McKinsey, Harvard graduate Jonathan Doochin found himself in Washington DC. Noticing the abundant government offerings for renewables, he decided to co-found an energy subsidiary for his employer Clark Realty Capital, called Clark Energy Group, which successfully won a $5 billion dollar IDIQ government contract for government retrofits and renewables development.

He quickly realized that federal and state incentives for renewables development were lucrative business opportunities. During business school, Doochin worked for the Department of Energy and realized that scattered information on incentives left most people in the dark about how and what they could access. His dream was to make all the documents and forms machine-readable so that they could be plugged into a computer model and easily searchable. Keep reading →

Published September 21, 2011 at 4:00 PM

Dry Ice: Air Conditioning Tech Race Gets Salty

By


Advantix Systems has its origins in a company established in the 1980s in Israel by three brothers who wanted to build an ice rink. Their quest to keep ice cool led the company to the development of a liquid desiccant based on salt water from the Dead Sea that removes humidity from the air.

Heating, Ventilation and Cooling (HVAC) systems account for around 30% of electricity used in US homes. Advantix claims its systems reduce energy demand by 35%-50%. Keep reading →

Published July 26, 2011 at 6:00 AM