Green Wombat

Three Low-Tech Ways to Help Save the Planet

In Silicon Valley,  technological innovation tends to focus on creating knock-your-socks off products like Apple's (APPL) iPhone or some cool new Google (GOOG) mashup. Much the same is true in green tech, where a host of companies are working on advanced solar, biofuel and hydrogen technologies. But as Green Wombat's holiday sojourn in Australia comes to a close, I'm surrounded by examples of low-tech solutions to pressing environmental problems - a reminder that there's plenty of opportunity in the green tech boom to develop innovative but simple technology. Take three common Australian technologies used in my friends Susi and Andrew's home on the New South Wales coast, about four hours north of Sydney. We'll start up with the humble power outlet (or power point, as the Aussie's say.) We all know that our homes are increasingly filled with gadgets that remain on standby when plugged in, sucking electricity even when not in use. In Australia, every power outlet has a little button that cuts off the electricity when the outlet isn't active. It's a reflexive habit here to vanquish so-called vampire power by pressing a button. You can't get more low-tech than a clothes line but the widespread use of them to dry clothes saves untold kilowatts of energy. You'll find a clothes line in the backyard of just about every abode, from suburban tract homes to $3 million beach palaces. Dryers tend to be tiny, used mainly in winter. Australia's climate encourages line drying but there's also no negative cultural connotation as there is in the U.S., where people seem to associate the practice with poverty. Lastly, Susi and and Andrew have installed a rainwater tank behind their garage. Most of the rainfall in their coastal area goes straight into the Pacific Ocean but the tank collects runoff from their roof that can be used to water their garden and lawn. With a further investment, rainwater could be used to flush the toilets, wash clothes or even provide drinking water. Imagine the opportunity for some startup to come up with rainwater tank technology for use in urban but dry areas of the U.S.

Ted Turner Launches Solar Energy Company

Media mogul-turned-environmentalist Ted Turner is getting into the solar power business. The CNN founder and former vice chairman of Time Warner (TWX) (Green Wombat's employer) has created a partnership Dome-Tech Solar, a Branchburg, New Jersey-based solar energy developer, and renamed the company DT Solar. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed and it's unclear what ownership stake and role Turner will take. Green Wombat has made inquiries and will update later today. Founded in 2003, the company builds large-scale solar panel arrays for commercial and industrial use and plans to construct solar power plants in the southwest United States. With Turner (shown at right with DT Solar executives) on board, the company says it will expand beyond the Garden State, targeting several new markets, including California. “We’ve got to move away from fossil fuels and develop long-term energy solutions that work," Turner said in a statement. "Using clean energy technologies, such as solar power, is the right thing to do, and it represents a tremendous business opportunity.”

California's New Fuel Standard a Boon for Biofuel Industry, Electric Cars

photo originally uploaded by BinaryLA

While Steve Jobs sent the tech world into a tizzy on Tuesday when he unveiled the iPhone in San Francisco, up in Sacramento California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was wowing green techies by ordering Big Oil to slash the amount of greenhouse gases produced by transportation fuels sold in the Golden State. (The governor from Hollywood was not about to try to share the media stage with the Apple (AAPL) chief's carefully choreographed extravaganza so the Low Carbon Fuel Standard was strategically leaked to the press a day earlier). Green Wombat was off the grid in the Australian bush when the news broke, but the new standard – the first of its kind - looks to be a bonanza for biofuels producers and will boost efforts to develop plug-in hybrid cars and a new generation of all-electric vehicles. Schwarzenegger's green team will let the market determine how the Low Carbon Fuel Standard is met, creating new opportunities for green tech startups. Given that 40 percent of greenhouse gases produced in California come from cars and other vehicles, the new standard is a significant step to meet the state's efforts to reduce global warming emissions 25 percent by 2020. According to the governor's office, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard will more than triple the market for alternative energy fuels while putting more than 7 million hybrids and other renewable energy vehicles on the road.

In a nutshell, the new standard means the carbon content of the total mix of fuels used in California must decline by at least 10 percent by 2020 as measured in CO2-equivalent gram per unit of fuel energy sold. Given that oil provides 96 percent of the state's transportation fuel, Shell and Chevron are going to be in the market for alt energy sources. The nitty gritty of the regulations remains to be worked out and fought over, but to meet the standard fuel producers can blend more ethanol into gasoline, produce hydrogen for fuel cell cars or purchase credits from utilities that sell power for electric vehicles. Details on how the latter would work are hazy at the moment but a carbon credit program would provide further incentives for Big Oil and Big Power to push for a new generation of electric cars. Another possible consequence of the carbon fuels standard was floated by the green group Environmental Defense yesterday:  An expansion of California's nascent cow power efforts - which extracts the potent greenhouse gas methane from manure and uses it to generate electricity - to provide a renewable energy source to produce ethanol.

Over the decades, the oil and auto industries have fiercely resisted California's cutting-edge efforts to reduce air pollution, and they essentially gutted a regulation requiring 10 percent of the state's cars be electric-powered by the end of this decade. But the green tech boom and global warming worries has created a constituency that will fight efforts to do the same to the new low carbon fuel program. The ethanol industry - backed by big Silicon Valley players like venture capitalist Vinod Khosla - and PG&E (PCG) - one of the country's biggest utilities - immediately threw their support to Schwarzenegger. "PG&E applauds the governor's new Low Carbon Fuel Standard and his bold leadership in addressing alternative fuels as a way to lead the nation to a climate friendly future," said Pacific Gas and Electric chief executive Thomas King in a statement. "We are committed to doing our part and have seen first hand the significant benefits of alternative fuels on reducing carbon intensity."

The Top 10 Green Tech Trends for 2007

ThinkEquity alternative energy analyst David Edwards has released his Trends for 2007 list, and there's a couple I wanted to highlight. No. 1 is a move from bolting solar panels to roofs - effective but not aesthetically pleasing - to integrating solar cells into building materials themselves. Solar-panel maker SunPower (SPWR) president Richard Swanson recently acknowledged in a speech that customers - call them the Dwell magazine demographic - increasingly are buying solar systems based on their look. Thus SunPower's sleek black rooftop panels, shown above. As Green Wombat recently reported, thin-film startup HelioVolt will work with building material companies to incorporate its solar cells into walls, windows and roofs. A second trend Edwards identifies is the emergence of new business models to finance alternative energy systems. Probably the biggest obstacle to wide-spread adoption of solar power systems is the fact that you have to wait as long as a decade before the free energy pays back the cost of the solar panels. "It’s like buying 25 years worth of gas when you buy your car," quipped Dave Pearce, CEO of thin-film solar company Miasole, at a recent conference. One possible alternative, according to Edwards, is to have the solar panel installer retain ownership of the rooftop system and then strike a power purchase deal with the homeowner or business owner. He notes that Wal-Mart's recent request for proposals to equip its stores with rooftop solar systems - a development first reported by green blogger Joel Makeover - requires bidders to present alternative ways to finance such systems, including ownership or leasing of solar panels by the retail giant or ownership by the installer.

Other green tech trends for the New Year predicted by Edwards are:
3. A move away from using silicon in solar cells.
4. More consolidation of solar panel producers and installers, such as SunPower's 2006 purchase solar systems installer PowerLight.
5. Adoption of new ethanol technologies.
6. The emergence of a bioplastics industry as an offshoot of biofuels production.
7. Stepped up efforts by automakers to develop electric cars or hybrids that rely more on battery power than internal combustion engines.
8. More investment in the development of storage technologies to be used with renewable energy sources like solar and wind power.
9. The continued rise of China as a huge market for renewable energy.
10. The Democrat-controlled Congress will take the lead on renewable energy legislation to bolster the solar and biofuels industries.

The Schwarzenegger Effect: Conservatives Go Green

Green Wombat has been holidaying in Australia for the past couple weeks, observing the Schwarzenegger Effect on state politics. Just like the Republican California governor trumped pro-environment Democrats by embracing global warming legislation and other environmental laws backed by Silicon Valley's tech titans, Australia's conservative politicos are starting to play the green card. The long-entrenched Labor Party government in New South Wales - Australia's most populous state whose capital is Sydney - has called an election for March. In recent weeks, left-leaning Labor has found itself battered by the right-wing Liberal Party on environmental issues. The pro-business New South Wales Liberal leader has promised, if elected, to cancel a controversial coal mine slated for the central coast that locals fear could contaminate the region's water supply - prompting area enviros to urge a vote for the Liberal candidate in the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, conservatives have challenged plans to build temporary desalinization plants on some beaches rather than encourage greater water conservation as Australia endures its worst drought in memory. The Libs have also pledged to dramatically expand a state program to subsidize urban residential rainwater tanks. Standard-issue in dry rural areas, the tanks collect rain - nearly all of which percent runs off into the ocean - to flush toilets, water gardens and supplement drinking water. The national Liberal Party, which controls the federal government in a conservative coalition, is decidedly brown on green issues. But as global warming and other environmental issues come to dominate the Australian consciousness and appear on the corporate agenda, savvy state conservatives, like their California  counterpart, see an electoral payoff in out-greening the greens.