Green Tech

ZeaChem, a company that uses the microbes in termite guts to make ethanol, said on Thursday it has raised $34 million to build its first plant.

The biorefinery, which could be located in Boardman, Ore., will begin operating next year, making 1.5 million gallons of ethanol a year from a non-food feedstock, such as wood chips or grasses, according to ZeaChem CEO James Imbler.

(Credit: ZeaChem)

Investors in the series B round were Globespan Capital Partners and PrairieGold Venture Partners, with follow-on participation from MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, Firelake Capital, and oil refiner Valero Energy.

There are a number of research initiatives and a few companies working with the micro-organisms in termites' digestive tracts to make fuel or other chemicals.

ZeaChem has developed a process to make ethanol from these bugs, rather than try to develop new yeasts or bacteria as start-ups like Mascoma or Genomatica are doing. It also intends to use existing industrial equipment, lowering the technology risk involved.

"One advantage of our technology is that there's no new bug and no new equipment," he said. "It's really an engineering challenge because all of the equipment is industrially proven."

ZeaChem is one of several companies developing technology for cellulosic ethanol, or making the gasoline additive ethanol from non-food sources.

Thus far, though, there are only a handful of cellulosic ethanol plants being tested in the U.S., each pursuing slightly different avenues.

ZeaChem claims it can squeeze a lot of fuel from cellulose, making its ethanol yield 40 percent higher than competing cellulosic ethanol firms. It expects to be able to get 135 gallons of ethanol from a ton of feedstock, according to Imbler.

Its technology uses sulfuric acid to break down the cellulose--the molecules that give plants structure--into sugars. The termite-derived micro-organisms convert those sugars into acetic acid.

ZeaChem also plans to make use of the lignan in plants that's left after the cellulose has been broken down. Using a gasifier, it creates synthetic gas, or syngas. Hydrogen from that syngas is combined with the acetic acid after fermentation to make ethanol, Imbler explained.

(Credit: ZeaChem)

Using the gasification step means ZeaChem's process emits less carbon dioxide than other cellulosic ethanol techniques, according to the company. There's also enough syngas left over to burn and make steam to power the operation, Imbler said.

Imbler said that the process is flexible enough to use different feedstocks, but at this point, its preferred fuel source is poplar trees, which grow quickly and can be harvested cost effectively.

The company plans to break ground on its first facility this year. It envisions production at the facility starting in 2010 and plans to break ground on a commercial-scale plant in 2011.

LED manufacturer Cree has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense to supply over 4,200 recessed LED lights for the Pentagon, the company announced Tuesday. Financial details were not disclosed.

Testing commissioned by the U.S. government determined that Cree's LR24 recessed LED lights would offer a 22 percent energy reduction compared with fluorescent lights, and save the Pentagon 140 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

The government also commissioned a cost analysis that showed the lights would yield a payback of less than four years once things like energy savings, maintenance, and the expense of properly disposing mercury-laden fluorescent bulbs were taken into account, according to Cree.

The new lighting will be installed in Wedge 5 of the Pentagon, coinciding with the major Pentagon renovation already under way in that area.

The purchase also happens to follow the advice of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan recently proposed by President-elect Barack Obama in his January 3 address.

As part of his plan to reduce reliance on foreign oil and create more jobs, President-elect Obama has suggested that the government will "renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient."

Analysts have predicted that LED lighting will replace incandescent bulbs, making LED lighting manufacturers a bright spot to watch for within the struggling tech industry.

Before: A Pentagon room before Cree's LED lights were installed.

(Credit: Cree)

After: The same room at the Pentagon after Cree's LED lights were installed.

(Credit: Cree)

Sentilla's microcomputers for monitoring energy consumption are just larger than a dime.

(Credit: Sentilla)

Sentilla, a company that makes energy management technology for industrial and commercial facilities, announced Wednesday that it has secured $7.5 million in Series B funding from Onset Ventures and Claremont Creek Ventures.

The energy-management tech company has patented technology that allows people to use microcomputers to remotely monitor the energy consumption of industrial machines, and allow those machines to exchange data with one another, to collaboratively direct energy supplies to facilities as needed.

The communication between the human monitor and the machines themselves is done through a series of small pervasive computers mounted either at the machine or in the vicinity that can communicate through wireless networks.

Each Sentilla Mini computer is essentially a Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller with a TI/Chipcon CC2420 low-power wireless radio that runs on two AAA batteries, according to the company. The computer is roughly the size of a dime and is loaded with Sentilla Point, a Java-compliant software platform.

In corporate-speak this type of service is referred to as a "demand-side energy management solution."

But Sentilla's technology does not only manage industrial machines.

It can also be embedded in commercial spaces or office buildings to monitor things like whether employees turn off the lights in conference rooms when not in use.

The technology was tested for this type of purpose at the Moscone Center in San Francisco during the JavaOne 2008 conference.

About 200 of Sentilla's microcomputers were mounted throughout two convention halls covering about 700,000 square feet. The computers collected data on the number of people exiting and entering the rooms, electricity usage, lighting, humidity, and temperature, then relayed the information back to a main computer via a wireless network.

By analyzing the collected data, Sentilla was able to determine attendee movement and energy consumption behavior, and make recommendations on how temperature controls, lighting, and electricity might better be allocated in the spaces.

Amid the carnage of last year's stock-market performance, shares in clean-energy firms fared worse than others, according to data published Wednesday by researcher New Energy Finance.

That dramatic decline--at one point going below 2003 levels--was despite some of the most advantageous political and economic factors for clean technologies in years.

At its low point in November, the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index (the ticker is "NEX"), which tracks 88 clean-energy global stocks, fell over 70 percent. The index then enjoyed an "Obama bounce" after the presidential election, to end up at a 61 percent decline in 2008.

For comparison, the S&P 500 index fell 38.5 percent last year and the U.S. Nasdaq Composite was down 41 percent.

The downbeat news from the public markets comes on the heels of the year-end data about clean-tech venture capital, which saw funding peak in the third quarter of 2008 and then finished the year sliding down.

Among public companies, the two hottest--and some argue overinflated--sectors within clean tech battered the worst were solar and biofuels. On average, solar shares plummeted 75 percent; biofuels and the biomass sector plunged 68 percentl; and wind fell 56 percent.

The poor performance reflects the fact that the energy business is very capital intensive and sensitive to fluctuations in fuel and commodity prices.

The price of oil plummeted from over $140 a barrel in July to under $40 in December. Meanwhile, the credit crisis made financing harder for projects such as wind farms or manufacturing plants.

The overall clean-energy sector, which has been exploding over the past three years, was also due for a correction, New Energy Finance CEO Michael Liebreich said in a statement.

Yet the demand for clean-energy products and services is still strong, making the long-term outlook good, he argued.

"Worries about climate change and energy security are still on the political agenda, and indeed the latter issue has become even more topical with the dispute over gas supplies between Russia and Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza. And Obama is not the only leader seeing clean energy as an important element in the programs they are planning, to help stimulate economic activity," Liebreich said.

Meanwhile, the level of venture funding in 2009 could potentially drop after three years of rapid growth, said Brian Fan, senior director of research at the Cleantech Group.

Still, he said, the "fundamental drivers" of energy scarcity amid growing demand and of climate change policies are intact, which should attract more investors.

A Spanish company says it has developed a way to kill the vampires lurking in your living room--the numerous appliances that suck electricity even when they are not in use.

Good for You, Good for the Planet received a patent for a microprocessor-based design that cuts an electronic machine's electricity use to zero. It is now negotiating with several large manufacturers to incorporate the technology into power strips or into appliances, according to President Jorge Juan García Alonso.

Test products are being used at customers, including at a hotel and office building in Spain, according to a report. Commercially available products could be made more broadly available in a matter of months if the company successfully licenses its patent, García Alonso said.

Taking a bite out of electronic vampires could significantly reduce wasted energy. Good for You, Good for Planet says that a TV consumes more electricity per year when it's off than when it's on because the stand-by mode consumes electricity.

(Credit: Good Magazine)

In the U.S., "vampire energy" is about 5 percent of the energy consumed in the country and costs consumers $3 billion each year, according to the Department of Energy. Researchers at the University of California estimate that reducing stand-by power loss could save the U.S. $10 billion.

Hewlett-Packard has decided to offer people in the United States money in exchange for their old tech equipment, the company announced Tuesday.

The PC maker has had a recycling program for years that lets consumers determine the value of their old tech equipment, then receive a credit for that value toward a new HP or Compaq brand product.

This new recycling program does not require people to buy anything to realize a monetary gain from giving HP their old tech equipment, though they are responsible for postage when mailing in the item. The shipping costs associated with a "Premium Service," in which FedEx picks up the old electronics, are taken out of HP's check to the consumer.

Some green-spring news during this gray winter: an old Dell Inspiron will garner a check of about $60 through HP's expanded recycling program.

(Credit: Candace Lombardi)

HP calls its new program the HP Consumer Buyback and Planet Partners Recycling Program. The program offers money in exchange for any brand of PC, monitor, printer, digital camera, or smartphone that HP determines still has some sort of value. It's part of HP's effort to recycle 2 billion pounds of electronic junk by 2010. As of now, the company has recycled more than 1 billion pounds of e-waste.

It's like Antiques Roadshow for techies, only you don't have to go to the fair to find out what your attic junk is worth.

HP has a quote Web site for the buyback program that lets consumers input the specs of their old tech equipment and receive a free instant quote.

In testing out the system, I discovered that HP offers examples from a drop-down menu, but will also accept items that have been modified, and it offers a place to put in the modified configuration and evaluate it. For example, I found that an old Dell Inspiron notebook with a 20GB hard drive, 256 MB of RAM, a Pentium III M 1.0GHz processor, and loaded with Windows XP Professional is worth about $60.

If your tech junk is determined by the online tool to have no value, you're out of luck for financial gain, but if it's an HP or Compaq brand product, you can still opt to mail it to HP for recycling.

I took it one step further and tested out the value of the same old Dell laptop against HP's U.S. trade-in recycling program, which is another option for consumers. On trade-in, the same old Dell Inspiron gets me an $86 credit.

Given this economy, I'd say it's worth your time to look up the value of your electronic junk on HP's site and make that trip to the post office.

A sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary.

• Green jobs: One goal, two different paths -- The Wall Street Journal
  Expect to hear a lot of talk about green-collar jobs this year. However, as this post notes, it's not clear which approach is best for creating those jobs.
• Lotus targets Tesla with EV of its own -- Wired.com
  Lotus, which makes the body for the Tesla Roadster, is developing electric powertrain technologies.
• Apple choosing ZPower for batteries? Good chance of it -- Greentech Media
  Rumor has it that zinc-silver battery company ZPower could supply batteries for Apple laptops.
• North Carolina approves Duke's solar program but not the cost -- Dow Jones
  Duke Energy is trying to install 15 megawatts worth of solar panels that it will own, but it has run into a serious snag with utility regulators.

Humans generate electricity at a gym in Oregon.
(Credit: BBC)
• Coming soon at Steinway, solar power -- The New York Times
  An interesting choice of solar technology: Piano maker is using small solar troughs to power an absorption chiller.
• A gym powered by sweat and tears -- BBC
  A gym in Portland, Ore., installs equipment that uses exercise to charge a battery. The challenge is the upfront cost.
• BlueFire: Cellulosic delay to be less than 6 months -- Reuters
  Another sign in how getting financing--not seed capital--is slowing down clean-tech projects, this example being second-generation ethanol.
• Catastrophe figures for 2008 confirm climate agreement is urgently needed -- press release
  Severe weather events, caused from climate change, resulted in one of the most dangerous--and expensive--years on record for the insurance industry.
• Coal ash scrutiny returns -- The Charlotte Observer
  Last month's toxic sludge spill brings to light the dangers of more potential disasters due to earthen dams that hold tons of toxic coal ash.

Green-tech venture capital funding soared last year, aided by megadeals in thin-film solar companies, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday by the Cleantech Group.

During 2008, green-tech venture investments jumped to $8.4 billion, a 38 percent increase, according to the report.

Solar investments helped drive the growth, capturing 40 percent of green-tech investments. Thin-film solar deals did particularly well, capturing the three largest investments in green technology last year.

NanoSolar raised $300 million last year, followed by Solyndra with venture investments of $219 million and SoloPower with $200 million.

Cleantech Group's senior research director, Brian Fan, said in a statement:

2008 saw solar take a 40 percent share of clean-technology venture investment dollars, led by mega investment rounds in thin-film solar, concentrated solar thermal, and solar-service provider companies.

Investors also continued to migrate from first-generation ethanol and biodiesel technologies to next-generation biofuels technologies, led by algae and synthetic biology companies. Other sectors with healthy investor interest included smart-grid companies, small-scale wind turbines, plastics recycling, green buildings, and agriculture technologies.

Following solar-energy firms in attracting VC dollars were companies specializing in biofuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, synthetic biology, and algae. The sector captured 11 percent of green-tech venture investments last year, while transportation companies, such as makers of electric vehicles, advanced batteries, and fuel cells, accounted for 9.5 percent.

United States-based companies raised the most green-tech venture funding, landing $5.8 billion among 241 disclosed investments. This group also posted the largest gain last year, marking a 58 percent funding increase over the previous period.

European and Israeli companies followed, raising $1.8 billion amid 146 disclosed rounds, marking a 47 percent increase.

Chinese companies raised a total of $430 million in green-tech investments in 18 rounds, marking a 22 percent increase over the previous year. And Indian companies landed $277 million in 14 disclosed deals, a 20 percent increase.

And while green-tech venture investments were up for the year, preliminary fourth-quarter results marked a downturn from last year and the previous quarter, according to the report.

The fourth quarter accounted for $1.7 billion worldwide, down 4 percent from last year during the same period and a 35 percent decline sequentially.

Toshiba, a company best known for making laptops and consumer electronics, on Monday said that it will enter the solar-photovoltaics business.

But don't expect to see Toshiba-branded solar panels on a home rooftop any time soon. The company's industrial and energy arm plans to build utility-scale solar power plants.

Toshiba's photovoltaics business will be part of the conglomerate's Transmission Distribution & Industrial Systems business, which makes equipment for natural-gas power plants.

The division also makes rechargeable batteries for industrial use and has a systems integration operation for installing power generation equipment.

The push into solar energy is part of Toshiba's corporate goal to lower its carbon emissions and environmental impact.

It expects it can grow the solar-photovoltaics business to $2.2 billion a year by fiscal year 2015.

Toshiba's competitors, including Sanyo and Sharp, already have large solar-photovoltaic businesses.

Green fatigue is now pervasive.

Numerous environment-theme blogs and news sites over the past week have pointed to a statement put out by Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., calling for the demise of all "green" labeling.

Since 1975, the university has been taking nominations for words that need to be banned. The top vote getters for 2008 were "green" and "going green." Also on the black list were the terms carbon footprint and carbon offset.

(Credit: TerraChoice)

One word-banning nominator, Ed Hardiman from Bristow, Va., summed up his lack of patience nicely: "If I see one more corporation declare itself 'green,' I'm going to start burning tires in my backyard."

Web site TreeHugger declares that the term green is "barely hanging on," while Willie Brent at his Mr. Cleantech blog speculates that many media companies will need to rethink their naming.

As a person who helped name the CNET Green Tech blog, I suppose I have something to answer for here.

And clearly, there are some real abuses. TreeHugger points to how the concrete industry--source of one of the most polluting industrial processes--has tried to paint itself green and sustainable.

Aggressive green marketing--also known as greenwashing--isn't very helpful to consumers who actually care about making environmentally conscious buying decisions.

But the answer isn't to ban the word green. Consumers simply need to be as savvy as they can and seek out as much information they can. Businesses should also get used to disclosing more--those with less to hide come out looking better.

Greenpeace puts out an electronics guide every year in which it drills down into a number of factors--use of toxics, recycling, carbon emissions, and corporate disclosures.

The same should hold true in other product categories--the more detail, the better. And this is where standards and certifications like Energy Star can really help.

For this to work, journalists and Web writers need to be as specific as possible in the terms they use, and try to give an environmental profile of different technologies.

After all, things aren't often black-and-white. There are many shades to being green.