What began with the father working quietly in a Eugene laboratory is now an aspiring business moving forward under the daughter. It was a visit to the University of Oregon by Cheers star Woody Harrelson that planted the seed of inspiration in a young Virginia Klausmeier (below). She was an undergraduate when Harrelson, a passionate… Keep reading →
The ongoing boom in energy and industry infrastructure around the world, and the high price tags of many of these projects, have created a niche for entities like Siemens Financial Services, which can serve as a specialized financial intermediary for getting projects funded and built. Siemens Financial Services is the finance arm of technology and… Keep reading →
Hundreds of millions of dollars in a new venture fund, with one-quarter aimed at “future energy” technologies.
Royal Dutch Shell has won both criticism and praise for its green investment habits — but when it comes to venture capital, it’s pretty tightly focused on serving its own oil and gas business needs first. Keep reading →
Both venture dollars and deal counts were down in the first three quarters of 2012 (note: link opens pdf) and Q4 doesn’t feel poised to surprise on the upside. Even follow-on funding has been down, but mostly it’s the initial investments (Series A, etc) that have fallen by the wayside. This is driven by the significant withdrawal of generalists from the sector, and the reality that specialist VC firms are low on capital reserves. More on this below, but it doesn’t seem like LPs will suddenly start demanding VCs invest in cleantech or start making big commitments to the sector, at least in the next few months, and there’s a lag time between such shifts at the LP level and how deal volumes flow down through the GP level anyway.
The bad news – there are big, big challenges looming for the electric utility industry. The good news – agencies and regulators are increasingly aware of these painful truths and, therefore, increasingly willing to discuss solutions. That was the message from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff during a briefing on Capitol Hill this week.
1. Falling load growth. Wellinghoff cited a recent study from the Brattle Group that confirms a 30-year trend of falling growth in energy usage. Today, the average growth is roughly 1% per year, down from the 5-10% common in the middle of the last century. And no, today’s anemic growth is not due just to the recession. It is an unstoppable result of our march to energy efficiency, as evidenced by LED lights, Net Zero buildings, variable speed motors, and more. Keep reading →
Let’s take a little ride on the Atmospheric Vortex Engine bandwagon. It might not go very far, this scheme to create an air vortex in a big tower to spin turbines to produce electricity, but $300,000 from Silicon Valley investor-billionaire Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs says it’s getting a shot.
The concept is a close cousin of the solar updraft towers (which we’ve been admittedly weirdly enthusiastic about), relying on convection to move air. But whereas those projects would use solar collectors of some sort as the heat source, the brainchild of inventor Louis Michaud wants to grab waste heat from, say, a thermal power plant and channel it into a powerful swirl of energy. Keep reading →
Quick take: We’ve told you about the slow, gradual uptick in the home energy management market in recent stories about OG&E’s successful smart grid program, why Reliant Energy is piloting in-home displays and why Tendril may be positioned for growth. Now a report from Mercom Capital reveals one trend — an increase in VC investments into smart grid — that also shows another. Peel back the covers to see just what VCs are spending their money on reveals several home security and home automation firms. That’s because — after years of dipping their toes — home security and home automation firms are now adding home energy management to the things they offer to homeowners. (A similar phenomenon is taking place on the commercial side, by the way, where the vendors of building management systems now routinely offer energy management and demand response too.)
And that’s the key, in our view — making home energy part of a mix of offerings. It’s hard to cost-justify a new in-house device just for energy management. But if that device does many other things too — security and home automation, for instance — then the math starts to work. – Jesse Berst Keep reading →
It isn’t gold.
Weakening venture capital funding for one of the globe’s fastest-growing sectors isn’t a mystery for sector watchers, but with increasing adoption of disruptive monitoring technology, the market opportunity isn’t a matter of if, but when. Keep reading →
The traffic circle at the intersection of Old Street and City Road in East London’s Shoreditch neighborhood would be just another ugly piece of urban infrastructure if it hadn’t become identified with the city’s booming technology industry.
The circle – or roundabout, as the Brits call the familiar road features – is at the heart of a cluster of high-tech firms ranging from Google and Intel to hundreds of startups that have opened their doors in the last four years, generating a creative cluster that has invited comparisons with California’s Silicon Valley. Keep reading →
