Giles Parkinson has left The Climate Spectator to start a new site called REneweconomy. One of the first posts has a range of comments from leaders of Australian cleantech companies - The top Australian cleantech predictions for 2012.

It is clear that 2012 will be a critical year for cleantech in Australia. Costs for many technologies are falling rapidly, but critical decisions will be made about renewable energy targets and support mechanisms.

The carbon price will finally be introduced, the shape and purpose of the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation will be decided, reviews will be held into the Renewable Energy Target and many of the regulatory issues surrounding the energy industry, and on solar tariffs, tough decisions may be taken on programs such as Solar Flagships, and more funding will start to flow into cleantech R&D. And, of course, there will be the final version of energy White Paper.

We asked the heads of Australia’s cleantech companies and industry groups what they predicted for the year. This is what they said:

Lane Crockett, general manager, Pacific Hydro

“For the Chinese, 2012 is the year of the dragon, but for Australia 2012 must be the year we move on renewable energy. After a number of years of policy uncertainty driven by constant adjustments to the LRET and a protracted carbon price debate we should start to see some confidence return to the market as these important reforms are hopefully now well and truly bedded down. Critically, 2012 sees compliance obligations of energy retailers under the LRET scheme start to escalate substantially.

“This will help to soak up any remaining oversupply of renewable energy certificates and should signal a strong surge in contracting activity. If liable parties are tardy and don’t prepare sufficiently for future escalating obligations they may find themselves paying substantially more for certificates than they were anticipating and rue the lost opportunity to lock in long-term low cost compliance. Underlying this opportunity is the combination of excess wind turbine manufacturing capacity and a strong Australian dollar leading to some of the lowest cost turbines for some time. Hopefully 2012 will be a year to remember for all the right reasons.”

Evan Thornley, CEO Better Place

“2012 is the year of the electric car. It’s the year we’ll look back on and say: that’s when the transformation started – the biggest and most profound transformation to transport in over a century. Every major car-maker in the world has electric models either in production or in development. The auto industry has recognised it. Capital markets have recognised it. Governments have recognised it. Here in Australia, electric cars will arrive on our shores in mass volumes for the first time in the second half of the year. This means people can finally exercise a choice to drive something faster, quieter, cheaper and greener.”

Miles George, CEO, Infigen Energy

In the Australian renewable energy sphere I expect:

· the effectiveness of the large scale renewable energy target scheme will be significantly enhanced as residual surplus small scheme RECs are absorbed, and the scheduled review of the scheme confirms a stable future regulatory regime for the large scale renewable energy industry

· political partisanship on climate change response will diminish, and carbon emissions pricing will become much more widely accepted.

· wind and solar PV technologies will continue to significantly improve their cost competitiveness with burning fossil fuels, whilst other renewable energy technologies will struggle to keep up with the pace

· carbon capture and storage technology will increasingly be recognised as a pipe dream ...

Jack Curtis, head of Australia and Asia-Pacific, First Solar

‘2012 will mark the year that Australia’s first utility-scale solar project becomes a reality – with the Greenough River Solar Farm to be fully operational mid-year. In the second half of last year, the Federal Government’s ‘Clean Energy Future’ package was released, and with it the possibility of two new independent bodies: the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC). This year will be critical as it relates to the establishment of their respective mandates and their ability to support new project development in 2012.

“The Gillard Government has suggested that the CEFC could be functioning by mid-year. Both of these bodies will be vital to encouraging the next level of renewable adoption in Australia. Their ability to operate autonomously in concert with the private sector is also essential. If implemented effectively, our view is that the CEFC should alleviate the medium-term commercial viability gap that exists for emerging renewable technologies. Most importantly, the CEFC needs to facilitate and encourage private sector participation and adoption of new technologies.

“We had some positive movement from state governments last year, especially the ACT, with the announcement of a ‘reverse auction’ tariff program being established for large-scale solar. Outside the ACT, we also expect to see more utility-scale solar PV projects in development throughout Australia, with Western Australia being a key location given its strong macro drivers for solar. First Solar’s goal is to be the most bankable execution mechanism for utility-scale solar projects in Australia with a focus on driving the adoption of solar more broadly and a significant reduction in the cost of delivering solar electricity.”

Michael Ottaviano, CEO, Carnegie Wave Energy

My predictions for 2012 ….

· Solar pv will continue towards retail parity price driven by cheap Chinese manufacturing dominance,

· Wind turbine manufacturing will move in the same way to emerging market sand with the same result – costs also approaching pricing parity (although, unlike solar, at the wholesale level) and the slow decline of western turbine manufacturers (only investment in innovation and development of proprietary technology will be effective against China’s cheap cost of labour and capital),

· Billions of Euros will be committed in the EU offshore wind market – France will be the latest country to announce multi-GW projects

· The start of the Australian carbon price and resilience of domestic economy leads to renewed local interest in cleantech focused on carbon sequestering technologies such as Pacific Pyrolysis

· A shake out in marine energy as a few well capitalized and advanced developers deliver first commercial scale projects alongside major EU industrial partners including Carnegie who will commence construction of its first multi MW CETO project, ...

Anthill reports that Australian angel investors now prefer cleantech investment over all other market sectors - Australian Angel investors have a growing taste for Cleantech, at the expense of internet plays

A national survey, released this week by capital raising magazine Wholesale Investor, suggests that Australian private investors have a growing preference for Cleantech, at the expense of Internet and IT plays.

According to the survey, compiled from a registered database of 5,400 high net worth, wholesale, professional and international investors for the second quarter (April to June) of 2010, the sectors that investors are seeking to invest in right now are:

* Cleantech (42.7%)
* Mining (30.0%)
* Internet/IT (28.2%)
* Property (27.3%)
* Biotech/Life Sciences (22.7%)

The SMH has an update on Australian geothermal power hopeful Geodynamics progress out in the desert - Geodynamics set to prove hot rocks model.

High-profile geothermal hopeful Geodynamics Ltd says it's moving closer to creating an operating heat exchanger and validating the geological model of its joint venture Innamincka project in South Australia.

Operations have started at Jolokia 1, a joint venture with Origin Energy in the Cooper Basin, to complete the well, fracture the granite and create a geothermal reservoir, Geodynamics said in a statement on Friday.

Rig 100 has re-entered Jolokia 1 and successfully drilled through the cement plug set in September 2008, the well has been cleaned and Geodynamics is undertaking scheduled logging to check the condition of the well.

A simulation program is expected to start in late July and run through August.

Geodynamics will then return to Habanero for the drilling of two more wells and the commissioning of the one megawatt Pilot Plant, with the aim of being in a position to make the final investment decision regarding development of the 25 megawatt Commercial Demonstration Plant.

Giles Parkinson at the Climate Spectator reports that cleantech stocks haven't done too well in Australia in recent times, with geothermal energy companies being the worst performers of all - CLIMATE SPECTATOR: The cleantech bubble blowout.

Australia’s first cleantech bubble has well and truly burst. The geothermal energy industry has lost practically all support from the investment community, and share prices are just a fraction of what they were just a year or two ago. Hundreds of millions in market value has been wiped from the board.

In the history of market bubbles, this event might have passed unlamented. But geothermal energy is not a mere passing fad, or a cool iPhone app – it forms a crucial part of the government’s renewable energy strategy, and is supposed to be the centre of $15 billion of investment over the next decade.

As things currently stand, that looks impossible, and the government, in danger of another embarrassing debacle in its renewable energy policy, is under increasing pressure to take action to help de-risk the sector.

Cleantech and renewable energy investments as a whole are in a sorry state in this country. The 75-company Australian Cleantech Index, a basket of renewable, environmental, waste and biofuel stocks with a combined market value of $10 billion, slumped 32 per cent in fiscal 2010, compared to an 11.8 per cent gain for the ASX200 and a 10.5 per cent gain for the ASX Small Ords.

Cleantech Australia managing director John O’Brien blames “weak and inconsistent political leadership” on environmental issues for this fall. “The story of environmental investments in Australia is a depressing one compared to global cleantech stock performance,” he says.

The geothermal index was the weakest component, losing 57 per cent in the last 12 months, following a 34 per cent loss the year before. Even the two market leaders, Geodynamics and Petratherm, who share $153 million in government grants between them – if they can advance their projects far enough – have slumped by two thirds in the last six months.

Yet, according to the federal government’s own estimates, geothermal energy could provide more than one quarter of 41,000 gigawatt hours required to meet its 20 per cent renewable energy target. And the government’s own Energy Resource Assessment rates geothermal as the likely cheapest and cleanest form of baseload energy (including “clean” coal and nuclear) by 2030.

But in its current state, the industry fears it will be unable to deliver. It simply doesn’t have the support of the market to raise funds for the relatively expensive task of drilling.

The LA Times has a report on Chinese investment in clean energy is now double that of the United States - China takes lead in clean-power investment.

China overtook the United States for the first time last year in the race to invest in wind, solar and other sources of clean energy, according to a comprehensive new report that raises questions about American competitiveness in a booming global market.

U.S. clean energy investments hit $18.6 billion last year, a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts said, a little more than half the Chinese total of $34.6 billion. Five years ago, China's investments in clean energy totaled just $2.5 billion.

The United States also slipped behind 10 other countries, including Canada and Mexico, in clean energy investments as a share of the national economy.

Although part of the U.S. investment decline last year can be attributed to the deep recession, the Pew report pointed to another factor constraining U.S. competitiveness: a lack of national mandates for renewable energy production or a surcharge on greenhouse gas emissions that would make fossil fuels more expensive.

The report warned that the current U.S. approach, in which states make varied efforts and the federal government's efforts have been sporadic, has produced a "comparatively weak clean energy economy" -- and that the nation risks losing out on economic growth and job creation.

"It's certainly the case that the countries and areas with higher investment in clean energy will be able to produce more jobs," said Chris Lafakis, an economist at Moody's Economy.com, which is working with Pew in tracking the green economy and jobs. Lafakis said investment was the No. 1 factor in green job growth.

Worldwide, the report found clean energy investment more than doubling since 2005. Investment levels have already rebounded from the financial crisis and are projected to grow 25% this year, as nations increasingly seek energy sources that do not emit the heat-trapping gases produced by burning fossil fuels.

Renewable Energy World reports that this year's Clean Edge report has been released - Clean Energy 2010 Trending Up.

Last year around this time, clean tech research and publishing firm Clean Edge predicted we'd be talking about flat or even downward clean energy revenue trends in 2009. However, the report the firm issued today, Clean Energy Trends 2010, shows that combined global revenue for three major clean-energy sectors –- solar photovoltaics (PV), wind power and biofuels -– grew by 11.4 percent over 2008, reaching $139.1 billion.

Given the state of the economy, “this reported 11.4 percent increase in global revenues is quite remarkable,” said Ron Pernick, Clean Edge co-founder, managing director and co-author of the report, on a conference call. Clint Wilder, senior editor at Clean Edge and report co-author, was also on the call.

In another good sign for the clean energy sector, the Clean Energy Trends 2010 report shows that even though U.S.-based VC investments in energy technologies declined a whopping 31% — from $3.2 billion in 2008 to $2.2 billion in 2009 — clean energy’s percentage of total U.S. VC investments rose to an all-time high of 12.5% percent of total activity in 2009. “So while total investments were down for the first time in 7 years, the total percentage [invested] represented the largest share in the history of the clean-energy asset class,” said Pernick.

China, China, China

The Clean Energy Trends 2010 report also points to five trends in renewable energy that the authors believe are worth watching in the coming year.

The trends, which are detailed in the report, are as follows:

* Carbon as a Feedstock
* Steep PV Price Drops
* Biomass for Utilities and District Heating
* Clean-Tech Megaprojects
* High Speed Rail (HSR)

In 3 of the 5 trends, China figures prominently. The country is the world’s largest PV cell manufacturer and is a contributing factor in lower PV module pricing due to its low-cost production scale.

China has announced some of the largest wind and solar “megaprojects” in the past year, including a 2-GW First Solar PV Farm in Inner Mongolia and the 2 GW of CSP towers that eSolar is building. China remains a close second to the U.S. lead in installed wind power capacity. It seems likely that wind “megaprojects” will be announced in China in the near future. And in high-speed rail, the country intends to install 10,000 miles of dedicated HSR by 2020. According to the report, there will be more high-speed rail built in China over the next five years than the rest of the world combined.

While the authors point out that the real advances in biomass are coming out of Europe, Pernick said he wouldn’t be surprised if China would start making advances in that sector, too.

Giles Parkinson has an article on market troubles for the Australian cleantech industry - Cleantech Outfits Are Having A Rough Time.

Since outperforming both the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 and the S&P/ASX Small Ords indices in 2007, the 75 companies that make up the ACT Australian CleanTech Index (once valued at $16 billion but now worth $10bn) have seriously underperformed those broader indices in each of the 2008, 2009 and 2010 first-half financial years. Essentially, the index fell harder than the rest of the market and recovered less.

Now it's falling again. Figures for December show the CleanTech Index down 6.2 per cent for the month, compared with 1.7 per cent gains in the broader index and a 3.8 per cent gain in the small caps. ...

The index and its components are also vulnerable to the vagaries of government policy.

The December slump coincided with the defeat of the emissions trading legislation and disappointment in Copenhagen, which hit carbon offset stocks such as Carbon Conscious and CO2, and the allocation of renewable energy grants.

Those that missed out, including Carnegie Wave and Kuth Energy, were among the hardest hit. Solar PV installers such as Quantum Energy went on a roller-coaster ride that pretty much followed government policy.

Companies such as Jackgreen went into administration, while others, such as Geodynamics, slumped after nearly sending its board of directors into orbit with a blowout at its flagship well.

The best performer for the past month was solar cell innovator Dyesol. Biodegradable packing group Pro-Pac Packaging was the best performer for the latest quarter, while biodegradable nappies producer Eco Quest was the best performer for the half, trebling its share price, mostly in the first quarter.

It's hard to read any trend in the various components of the cleantech index. Solar, which performed well in the 2007 fiscal year and last year, underperformed in 2008 and so far this year, while wind, which boomed in 2007 but fared poorly in 2008 and last year, has performed better so far this year, as have the energy efficiency, geothermal and environmental services sub-indices.

Perhaps they could be neatly plotted against a graph highlighting policy hope, policy promises, and policy delivery over the same period. O'Brien says the volatility highlights the relatively immaturity of listed stocks in the area.

WorldChanging has a post on the progress of clean energy technology in the US - The Cleantech Revolution Sweeps Through America.

The wind of change is sweeping America – literally. Take Texas. Synonymous with the nation’s oil boom era, for the past century its wealth has been powered by gushing geysers and giant oil companies. But green gold is now competing with black, as Texas establishes itself as a powerhouse of wind energy.

And the Lone Star State is not alone. During 2008, the US wind industry almost doubled in size, reaching 25,369MW, and passing Germany as the world leader. Across 30 states, from heartland Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas to the crowded northeast seaboard, giant wind farms are becoming an accepted part of the landscape.

Nor does this clean energy revolution end with wind. America’s solar power sector has tripled in size since 2000. And with a dozen large concentrating solar power (CSP) plants under construction around the country, the industry aims to provide half of all new electricity generation by 2025.

Investors, meanwhile, are betting on a cleantech future. Bucking the recession, venture capital investments in cleantech soared to a record $7.6 billion in 2008, double the 2007 tally, with solar and algae-based biofuels among the big winners. “Only a few years ago, cleantech was barely a sector at all,” says Joel Makower, Editor of GreenBiz.com, in The State of Green Business 2009 report. “Now it represents 20% of the entire venture capital asset class.”

It’s not just start-ups and VCs. Some of the country’s household name corporations are also jumping on the bandwagon. General Electric is now the biggest wind turbine manufacturer in the US, and the fifth biggest worldwide. Duke Energy, a Fortune 500 coal company which has not exactly been the darling of the green movement in the past, has built nine wind farms around the country and is planning more. And the likes of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are racing to produce the first mass market electric cars [see ‘Spark plug’]. All of a sudden, corporate America seems to be surging towards a new frontier of innovation.

So just what is generating all this enthusiasm? Can it reach critical mass? And does President Obama’s outspoken advocacy of clean energy and climate action really mean America is poised to lead the world down the sunrise path?

The first question is easiest to answer. The relentless rise of concerns over energy security, peak oil and looming carbon curbs, means cleantech is both smart business and smart policy.

Bloomberg reports that George Soros is looking to funnel some cash into cleantech investent - George Soros to Invest $1 Billion in Clean-Energy Technology .

Billionaire George Soros will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology, he said today.

Soros, speaking in Copenhagen, said he has “the ability to put money to work.” It will involve the establishment of a new climate policy institute. “The problem of global warming is primarily a political problem at this point,” he said in an e-mailed message.

Grist has an update on Vinod Khosla's cleantech investment program (which he characterises as "rooting for the underdog") - For Khosla, clean tech is all about scale.

“I like to call it ‘main tech,’ not clean tech,” says Khosla, dressed in his trademark black, when I snagged some time with him at his Sand Hill Road office in the hills above Stanford University. “We’re doing bioplastics, lighting, engines, water, and air conditioning. It’s a very broad view. Almost anything that can be made renewable, sustainable, more efficient, and cheaper.”

Khosla has a reputation as a contrarian, annoying both fellow investors and environmentalists when he disses the potential of electric cars, photovoltaics and other in-vogue technologies to make a meaningful impact on climate change. While he has poured money into solar and biofuel startups and other companies developing exotic new technologies, he’s just as interested in greening old tech.

“We just hired a great guy out of Detroit to come here on an engine startup,” says Khosla. “If you can improve the efficiency of engines by 30 to 40 percent, you can cut world oil consumption by a lot. That’s exciting stuff.”

Khosla is funding at least five startups focusing on mechanical efficiency, developing everything from circuit boards to more efficiently control a car’s systems to better fuel injection systems. Another 10 companies—with names like Kaai, Ramu and Sakti3—are working on electrical efficiency. (Some are so far below the radar that they don’t maintain Web sites.)

A portion of his portfolio is devoted to what Khosla likes to call “science experiments,” or “black swan” technologies. Seventeenth century Europeans assumed that all swans were white until the discovery of black swans in Western Australia in the 18th century. In this century, former financier Nassim Nicholas Taleb developed a theory of what he called “black swan events” to describe the impact of rare, big impact, hard-to-predict historical occurrences, like the advent of the Internet or the 9/11 attacks.

For Khosla, a world-changing black swan technology would be batteries that could store massive amounts of electricity generated by solar and wind farms or cheaply power electric cars for hundreds of kilometers on a charge. (Among Khosla’s stealth startups is Sakti3, a Michigan venture whose bare-bones Web site says it is developing “advanced solid-state rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology.”)

The operational word here is cheaply. For Khosla, the bottom line on any technology is whether it can be scaled at a price where it will be adopted without subsidies in countries such as China and India. It’s there, he says, where climate change solutions must take root if there’s to be any chance of effectively fighting global warming. In other words, entrepreneurs hoping to lure Khosla money must pass the “Chindia test.”

“Where’s the growth in energy? It’s in India and China,” he says. “And guess what, they don’t have the same rules. You don’t get a hybrid car credit in any of those countries. In the end, every single technology has to compete unsubsidized in the marketplace against fossil fuels.”

Neal Dikeman at Cleantech Blog has a post on some basic rules for investing in clean energy technology - The Rules in Cleantech.

I've now been asked enough times, that at the risk of destroying what little edge Jane Capital may have in cleantech, I finally got around to blogging our "Rules" in cleantech investing and business in general. Hopefully it will stimulate some good debate.

One of the things that makes cleantech different from other investing areas, is the best practice rules are the opposite of what the best investors have grown up with. Maybe that's because cleantech IS energy and energy IS different.

Here is our version of the Rules:

1. Energy is slow and big - Energy technology R&D and commercialization time frames are longer and costs higher

2. Technology is “cheap”, the scale up is where all the risk is

3. There is no disruptive technology in energy, only disruptive policies and resource shocks that make certain technologies look disruptive after the fact - aka, "it's the policies (and subsidies), stupid"

4. At scale, there is no capital efficient investing in energy

5. Commodity prices and policy tend to be more important variables than technology and management

6. Energy is at heart a resource play, the price you pay matters more than what you do with the resource

As a result we've worked out a strategic playbook:

1. Look for mature technologies - if it's not 10 year old technology, don't touch it.
Limit scale up risk and look for technology with few dependencies for scale

2. Embrace policy - solid policy frameworks are much better bets than great technologies. In fact, most of the serious money in cleantech has been made by being in the right place when the policies or subsidies hit critical mass, not by developing technologies after the fact.

3. Expect lower exit multiples, and target lower burn rates over a longer commercialization time as a result

4. Discipline wins. Think Stage Gate and SPC instead of venture style “massively parallel” R&D commercialization strategies

5. Don’t be afraid to play a diversified investment strategy

6. Don’t ignore Acquisition & Development as a viable growth strategy

7. Don’t be afraid of good low tech deals, that's where many the cleantech hits have been (if we haven't heard "that's not a venture bet" 3 times, we tend to stay away.)

8. “Powder dry approach” - deploy limited capital early on for larger stakes and focus on returning capital quickly, not rapidly deploying capital

9. Secure vastly superior market intelligence before moving - stealth is pretty much a worthless strategy, you're too likely to miss key things that way.

Greentech Media reports that cleantech related patents hit an all time high in the last quarter of 2008, with fuel cells rather surprisingly leading the way - Clean Energy Patents Hit All-Time High in 4Q08.

Clean energy patents climbed to an all-time high in the last quarter of 2007, with fuel cell patents leading the way, an intellectual property law firm reported Friday.

Overall, 2008 saw 928 clean energy patents granted, continuing a rising trend that was broken by a slight decline in 2007 and in the first quarter of last year, according to a report released by Albany, N.Y.-based Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti.

Adding up the total number of patents granted since the firm started tracking them in 2002, auto giants Honda and General Motors, led the pack, taking the number one and two spots on the firm's list. Toyota, Nissan and Ford also help top-ten spots.

Fuel cell companies Plug Power, Ballard Power Systems and United Technologies were in the top ten list as well. General Electric and Canon held the remaining spots on the list.

According to the report, fuel cell patents continued to capture the majority of all patents granted, with more than 500 granted in 2008. Automakers were busy in fuel cells in 2008 –Honda was granted 49 fuel cell patents, GM got 48, Toyota got 23 and Nissan got 19, while United Technologies was granted 13, Plug Power got seven and Ballard Power got four, the report showed.

Other technologies that saw growth in patent filings last year included wind power, with 155 patents, and hydroelectric, tidal and geothermal power. General Electric led on wind in 2008, with 37 patents granted.

Solar, biofuel and hybrid and electric transportation patents declined, however. While Canon holds the largest number of solar patents since 2002, it was granted none in 2008. Sunpower Corp. took the lead in patents granted last year with 6 patents, followed by General Electric and Sharp Corp., each with three patents, and Emcore with two patents.

Patent filings by country continued to be dominated by U.S.-based companies and research organizations, with half the overall number of patents granted. Japan came second with 29 percent, and Germany was third with 8 percent.

The Australian has a report on global warming driven opportunities in the cleantech sector in Australia - environmental changes a chance for investors. There isn't a lot to choose from in the local market, with the preferred picks being companies like Energy Developments (landfill gas), Ceramic Fuel Cells (cogeneration), GeoDynamics (geothermal energy) and (not quite so clean) Origin Energy (coal seam gas).

TO professional investors, climate change is not just a problem, it's an opportunity.

Many of the processes that will be used to fight, or ameliorate the effects of climate change will make huge profits -- and that's where any self-respecting investor wants to be.

The investors who hope to get a head-start in climate-change winners are those involved in sustainable investment, a subset of ethical and socially responsible investment (SRI). Sustainable investment concentrates on supporting technology, infrastructure and business models that reduce carbon emissions, improve efficiency and conserve natural resources -- particularly in sectors such as energy, water, and materials -- as well as working to cut pollution and reverse existing environmental damage.

Much of the opportunity set trawled through by sustainable investors looking for stocks that will benefit from addressing climate change is found in the sector called "cleantech", the term used to describe companies involved in renewable energy, biofuels, energy efficiency, water purification technology, salinity, carbon sequestration projects, alternative engine technology, electrical switching devices, clean coal technologies and new materials.

Sustainable investors are hoping to save the world, but they want to make money doing so. "We definitely want to make money for our investors, but we want to do it in stocks that meet our criteria for having a positive effect on climate change," says James Thier, executive director of leading ethical/SRI fund manager Australian Ethical Investment (AEI).

"Climate change is a business opportunity for a lot of companies, and it's important for investors to remember that. Governments across the world are underpinning that business growth through mandatory renewable energy targets. In Australia, for example, the government is talking about 20 per cent of the nation's energy needs coming from renewable sources by 2020. That's going to have to be supplied by somebody. It's a huge opportunity."

The Australian also reports that a key funding source for the shift to a clean energy economy is the superannuation industry - Super funds crucial in shift to green economy.

SUPERANNUATION funds are emerging as a crucial driver in the shift towards a carbon-constrained economy, according to a key report. ...

The report, Carbon Counts 2008: The Carbon Footprints of Australian Superannuation Investment Managers, was provided by Trucost, a UK-based consulting firm recognised as a leader in the analysis of the environmental performance of companies.

It examines 14 of the largest superannuation funds in Australia, accounting for $31.6 billion in equity holdings, and looks at the greenhouse gas emissions associated with 100 equity portfolios that employ different investment styles.

"This will have a very significant impact on the investment strategies of super funds," says Andrew Barr, policy and research manager for the AIST. "It provides a solid base of data.

For example, it shows that the average carbon intensity of 14 funds was 357 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted per million dollars of revenue. This is actually better than the average for the ASX 200 Index, which is 370 tonnes, but obviously there is a great deal of room for improvement. The figure of 357 tonnes is 20 per cent larger than the MSCI All World Developed Index, for example.

Technology Review has a post on the benefits and challenges facing a new clean energy economy - The Clean Energy Economy: A New Industrial Revolution Rising From Challenging Times.

In the last five years, many venture capitalists (myself included) have committed to backing entrepreneurs who aspire to build the next generation of clean energy companies that will endure. Thousands of companies have formed to harness alternative forms of energy like wind, solar and biofuels; and to reduce man's carbon footprint. Billions of dollars have been poured into this fledgling entrepreneurial ecosystem with the vision of creating significant wealth, millions of jobs, and energy security for our nation.

When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, entrepreneurs focused on the communications sector, and within a decade companies like Google, Yahoo and EBay became household names and changes heretofore unseen since the Industrial Revolution occurred. It's time for another Industrial Revolution, fueled by clean energy.

Despite the capital-intensive nature of clean energy companies, the nation's entrepreneurial ecosystem is committed to building a clean energy economy for three primary reasons:

1) a strong and growing belief that concern over climate change and increasing energy demand from emerging economies have created a long term opportunity for clean energy innovation;

2) a conviction that technology and business innovation can reduce our carbon footprint and produce viable alternative energy sources at scale; and

3) the development of a favorable U.S. policy framework at the federal and state level, that has attracted large scale private funding to build the next generation of infrastructure.

However, I submit that the continued development of our clean energy economy is now at risk with the advent of the economic crisis. Large financial institutions that had begun to finance the commercialization of clean energy technologies have suddenly lost their capacity to do so. Chief executive officers of emerging clean energy companies now have genuine fears as to whether enough capital will be available to fuel their growth. Furthermore, the slowdown of emerging economies as well as a dramatic reduction in the price of oil further hinders the situation. Investors and entrepreneurs alike are forced to reconsider funding this sector, worried that this may lead to another false start akin to the setback in the early 1980s.

The newly elected administration must show its full resolve and partner with the entrepreneurial ecosystem by reinforcing our national commitment to achieve energy independence and curb global warming. Swift and comprehensive action is required.

First, the incoming administration must make a significant financial commitment towards research and development of clean energy technologies. ...

Second, the Obama administration must develop a comprehensive national policy framework to build and adopt alternative energy solutions. We need a national cap and trade legislation; an aggressive renewable portfolio standard to reduce our dependence on oil and drive the adoption of all forms of clean alternative energy; and energy efficiency programs through regulations and incentives for utilities that can increase the energy productivity of our nation. ...

Finally, the administration needs to have an unbiased strategy for lending its financial support to this sector. The federal government shouldn't be in the business of picking technology winners. Instead, it should lend support to all sustainable clean alternative technologies that have a roadmap to economic viability without any subsidies.

News Ltd (somewhat surprisingly, given their customary love for all things coal and uranium related) have an article advocating Australia switch to clean energy sources - How we can be a green super power.

"I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100% of its electricity from clean energy within 10 years" - Al Gore

Al Gore says the United States should embark on a "man on the moon"-style effort to satisfy all of America's electricity needs by renewable energy within a decade. Just 10 years. That’s an incredibly bold vision - a real stretch goal. But it is also what’s needed to avert a climate crisis.

So why not do the same in Australia? Here, it could become a "nation-building" symbol of pride, akin to the 19th Century construction of the Overland Telegraph Line or the post-WW II Snowy Hydro Scheme.

Eighty per cent of Australians support carbon trading. A carbon price will open up huge new 21st Century markets, as price signals lead to a retooling of our energy economy away from dirty power sources like coal.

Australia has more than enough wind, geothermal and solar energy to make it happen. The question is not the availability of resources. It is national will, adequate leadership and sufficient commitment.

Al Gore says his plan is "achievable, affordable and transformative." It is, both in the US and in Australia.

Fossil fuels like coal and oil are rising in price due to scarcity and supply bottlenecks, coupled to spiralling demand. Meanwhile, the costs of renewables are falling due to innovation, research and development, and rapidly-increasing economies of scale. Just like computers and mobile phones, the more you invest in these technologies and the more widespread their use, the cheaper they become.

Also, unlike fossil fuels, there will never be scarcity in renewables - ever. "Peak sun" and "peak geothermal" remain billions of years away. "Peak oil" and "peak coal" are right around the corner. ...

Renewable energy economics is radically transformative. Civilisation has never experienced a long-term epoch of declining energy costs such as it will see in renewable energy. Scarcity could become irrelevant. Renewable energy is an infinite resource that's falling in price due to rapid technological research and development.

"Moore's Law” has been successful since the early 1970s in predicting that computer prices will halve, and processing power double, every 18 months. This literally transformed modern society.

Falling energy prices due to the uptake of huge amounts of "flat price" (free once built) renewable energy could be even more positive. We only need to choose to follow this obvious path.

The time is right. We have a huge windfall of export receipts to invest in decarbonising our economy. Carbon trading will provide tens of billions of dollars more per year to invest in upgrading to cleaner energy sources.

If coupled with proper economic reform that progressively eliminates $10 billion of annual domestic fossil fuel subsidies in Australia , we could lay the groundwork for a "long boom" akin to the early years of the 20th century when our nation got rich on agricultural commodities

If we want to become an energy superpower we'll need to keep companies like Ausra at home instead of forcing them to move offshore. The Australian reports the company has raised more funding - $76m lights up solar tech maker. Co-founder John O'Donnell has moved on now the company is established, hopefully to start another cleantech venture.

THE Australian-founded solar energy technology company Ausra has scored a $US60.6 million ($76 million) funding package from venture capitalists -- including the local fund Starfish Ventures -- to help it crank up the production of its Fresnel lens-based power generators.

The Ausra investment is the first renewable energy investment for Starfish Ventures.
Ausra develops solar power plants using relatively inexpensive Fresnel lens technology that can stand alone or be grafted on to dirty coal-fired plants to reduce their carbon footprint.

Fresnel lenses are less efficient, but much cheaper, than conventional lenses and have traditionally been used in lighthouses. The powerplants work by focusing sunlight on water and generating steam that drives an electricity-producing turbine.

The Ausra investment is the first renewable energy investment for Starfish Ventures.

Ausra investment director Aaron Fyke said Ausra's long-term goal was to build solar plants at near the costs of coal-fired plants. Ausra is close to completing a 5-megawatt solar thermal plant near Bakersfield, California, and proposes to build a 177MW plant for Pacific Gas & Electric in California.

Fortune's Green Wombat reports that Chinese solar company Suntech is moving into the US market as well - China’s solar giant makes U.S. move.

In another sign that the financial crisis is not slowing the solar industry, Suntech, the giant Chinese solar module maker, made a big move into the United States market on Thursday. The company announced a joint venure with green energy financier MMA Renewable Ventures to build solar power plants and said it would acquire California-based solar installer EI Solutions.

Founded in 2001, Suntech (STP) recently overtook its Japanese and German rivals to become the world’s largest solar cell producer. The company has focused on the lucrative European market and only opened a U.S. outpost, in San Francisco, last year. The joint venture with MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA) - called Gemini Solar - will build photovoltaic power plants bigger than 10 megawatts.

Most solar panels are produced for commercial and residential rooftops, but in recent months utilities have been signing deals for massive megawatt photovoltaic power plants. Silicon Valley’s SunPower (SPWRA) is building a 250-megawatt PV power station for PG&E (PCG) while Bay Area startup OptiSolar inked a contract with the San Francisco-based utility for a 550-megawatt thin-film solar power plant. First Solar (FSLR), a Tempe, Ariz.-based thin-film company, has contracts with Southern California Edision (EIX) and Sempre to build smaller-scale solar power plants.

Suntech’s purchase of EI Solutions gives it entree into the growing market for commercial rooftop solar systems. EI has installed large solar arrays for Google, Disney, Sony and other corporations.

“Suntech views the long-term prospects for the U.S. solar market as excellent and growing,” said Suntech CEO Zhengrong Shi in a statement.

CNet's GreenTech blog has a post on the belief that there may be a bubble forming in cleantech investment - Clean-tech bubble talk is a red herring.

It's fashionable these days to ponder whether there's an investment bubble in clean tech. But I believe this discussion obscures a bigger problem for the clean-tech crowd: not enough money.

A panel of venture capitalists at the Technology Review EmTech 2008 conference on Thursday took the bubble question head on. The response from investors tends to be nuanced: no, there isn't a bubble, but there are some silly company ideas getting funded.

Before I delve into the details of the bubble debate, let me say that focusing on venture capital deals is a myopic view of the market that could ultimately give the "clean-tech revolution" a bigger black eye than just a few failed start-ups.

Clean-, or green-tech, venture capitalists will tell you times have never been better if you judge by the number of business plan proposals crossing their desks and their ability to raise funds. Many an entrepreneur and investor sees energy and environment as a ripe area for technology innovation.

What worries me is whether the hundreds of newly formed energy tech companies will have enough capital to actually succeed--and change the world as they all set out to do.

Insiders have been fretting about the dreaded funding gap, or "Valley of Death," for years. It's the stage a company must cross to take its technology to commercial scale, such as building a manufacturing plant. In energy-related businesses, it usually take lots of money.

Now the financial crisis could actually make that gap tougher to bridge, given the difficulty in the public markets and the projected cost of an anticipated Wall Street bail-out plan.

Spending hundreds of millions of dollars for say, a solar manufacturing facility, is outside the range of most VC funds. To some extent, project finance can fill in the gap, said CMEA Ventures investor James Kim.

"But if that doesn't happen, you will have all these great energy technologies which are ready to be deployed at a large scale and they have nowhere to go," he said during the panel.

Hedge funds have invested in some of these late-stage funding deals, but turmoil on Wall Street could tie their hands. Loan guarantees from the federal government are possible. But the prospect of a $700 billion Wall Street bail-out puts the availability of those funds--or some massive government-led energy initiative--into question.

A business model around private equity companies, such as the Carlyle Group and Hudson Clean Energy Partners, to invest in energy is clearly taking hold. But Kim notes there are limitations: private equity firms don't jump in unless they are sure a clean-tech company's product will work. ...

The good news is that energy is an issue that transcends today's crisis. That means that the ultimate customers of green-tech products--be it a utility, corporation making a green building, or consumer--are not going away. ...

Venture capitalists will generally tell you that the energy business is so big and the problems--whether it's energy security, cost, or climate change--are so acute, it's hard to see the few billion dollars a year going to clean tech as overly exuberant, particularly when viewed over the long term.

Jeremy Leggett has an article in The Guardian on how to make the UK energy independent - Independence from the street up.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is warning of an oil crunch by 2012, so we have to act immediately if we aren't to add peak oil to our credit-crunch woes. There is also a grave risk of major shortfalls in gas supply in the next few years. North Sea oil and gas production is plunging 7.5% a year at the same time as liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects are being cancelled around the world. Meanwhile, Moscow dangles the prospect of sending most of its gas exports east to China, rather than west to Europe.

Without government help, the global economic crisis may deter investors in climate technology. The UK government talks about building new gas pipes of different kinds – in an expanded national grid, and in import pipelines and regasification plants – but it cannot rely on having gas to put in them. It talks of allowing an expansion of coal burning, knowing carbon capture and storage is more than a decade from proving economic, or even workable. As for nuclear, we don't get one of those new reactors that are so far behind schedule and so over budget in Finland until 2018 at the earliest. Provided, that is, anyone can be found foolish enough to finance it.

We need to make ourselves energy independent from the street up – in transport, electricity and heating – starting today. The good news is that with today's technologies and the right kind of financing and workforce mobilisation, we could surprise ourselves about what we could achieve.

Everything must spring from energy efficiency. We have an ocean of electricity and heating profligacy to mine in this country. British Gas ran an interesting experiment recently. Eight British streets were asked to compete in cutting their fuel bills, using only the easiest of efficiency measures. In no time at all, they cut their CO2 by an average 20% and fuel bills by a third. The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), which monitored the exercise (pdf) for BG, suggests that 10,000 advisers be appointed nationwide, one per 20 streets. The cost would be £500m annually against national energy savings of £4.6bn. The IPPR gives a telling example of what householders, energy-services companies, and government could do could if they worked together. A £524 loan package for cavity wall and lost insulation would give annual savings of £395 per household. A quick payback indeed.

Then there are the new means of energy generation. Silicon Valley is not pouring billions of dollars into 50 families of clean technology (cleantech) for nothing. We were already entering a green industrial revolution as the credit crunch hit panic phase. True, there will be a race against time to create mass markets in cleantech. But these are highly disruptive technologies: they can displace fossil fuels far faster than most people appreciate. Once they really get going, the prize is huge. Consider this example. Modern solar electric and heating tiles, fitted to a maximally energy-efficient home, can take that property's emissions to zero. The whole thing can be put up in a matter of days using modern offsite methods of construction. More than half the UK's greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings; the majority from homes. We can cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero, we can get rid of the need for energy bills of any kind once the capital cost is paid, and we can dump gas, coal and nuclear alike.

Then there is transport. Car manufacturers are aligning behind electricity as the fuel of the future. They are already well into systemic change, even at $100-barrel oil. Renewable energy can charge the plug-in super-efficient vehicles of the near future, even as massive new public transport infrastructure is built by the carbon army.

Long term, we save much more money than we invest making this happen. It is all doable, if we just have the imagination and the will.

Also in the Guardian, an article on bioplastic from the CEO of NatureWorks, contesting some of columnist John Vidal's reservations about the technology - Bioplastics offer a more sustainable future.

As the world's largest producer of plastics made from plants, we wish to clarify John Vidal's claims about bioplastics (Sustainable bioplastic can damage the environment, April 26). While bioplastics are still on a journey to full sustainability, we believe they are the greenest alternative to conventional oil-based plastics.

The advantages of bioplastic start in the manufacturing process. Peer-reviewed studies have found that making Ingeo - known generically as polylactic acid or PLA - generates less than half the greenhouse emissions of making oil-based plastics. New innovations in the manufacturing process mean Ingeo production will soon produce 75% less greenhouse emissions than making petro-plastics.

The environmental benefits continue through the life of the plastic. Unlike conventional plastics, PLA is infinitely recyclable: a PLA bottle can be made into another bottle again and again, whereas oil-based competitors are typically "down-cycled" into products of diminishing value and ultimately destined for landfill. Ingeo is also certified as fully compostable in specific conditions. The Association for Organics Recycling (formerly the UK Composting Association) supports the increased use of biodegradable material as a means of reducing the 4.6m tonnes of packaging disposed of annually in the UK.

Rising food prices are a serious concern today. At full capacity, we would use less than 0.1% of 2007 US corn production (all grown within 50 miles of our Nebraska plant). By contrast, about 30% of that crop went to make ethanol - a 300-fold difference.

Affordable food, reliable energy and a healthy environment are global problems that cannot be solved without fundamental changes in the way we treat limited natural resources. We believe that plants, rather than fossil fuels, are a good place to start.

Harpers has an article by bubble follower Eric Janszen on The Next Bubble, which he tips to be in the alternative energy sector. Personally I think an alternative energy bubble (or at least a very large boom) is our best hope of solving the problems this blog focuses on, so I, for one, will be cheering it on if it does occur.

Our economy is in serious trouble. Both the production-consumption sector and the FIRE sector know that a debt-deflation Armageddon is nigh, and both are praying for a timely miracle, a new bubble to keep the economy from slipping into a depression.

We have learned that the industry in any given bubble must support hundreds or thousands of separate firms financed by not billions but trillions of dollars in new securities that Wall Street will create and sell. Like housing in the late 1990s, this sector of the economy must already be formed and growing even as the previous bubble deflates. For those investing in that sector, legislation guaranteeing favorable tax treatment, along with other protections and advantages for investors, should already be in place or under review. Finally, the industry must be popular, its name on the lips of government policymakers and journalists. It should be familiar to those who watch television news or read newspapers.

There are a number of plausible candidates for the next bubble, but only a few meet all the criteria. Health care must expand to meet the needs of the aging baby boomers, but there is as yet no enabling government legislation to make way for a health-care bubble; the same holds true of the pharmaceutical industry, which could hyperinflate only if the Food and Drug Administration was gutted of its power. A second technology boom—under the rubric “Web 2.0”—is based on improvements to existing technology rather than any new discovery. The capital-intensive biotechnology industry will not inflate, as it requires too much specialized intelligence.

There is one industry that fits the bill: alternative energy, the development of more energy-efficient products, along with viable alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, and geothermal power, along with the use of nuclear energy to produce sustainable oil substitutes, such as liquefied hydrogen from water. Indeed, the next bubble is already being branded. Wired magazine, returning to its roots in boosterism, put ethanol on the cover of its October 2007 issue, advising its readers to forget oil; NBC had a “Green Week” in November 2007, with themed shows beating away at an ecological message and Al Gore making a guest appearance on the sitcom 30 Rock. Improbably, Gore threatens to become the poster boy for the new new new economy: he has joined the legendary venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which assisted at the births of Amazon.com and Google, to oversee the “climate change solutions group,” thus providing a massive dose of Nobel Prize–winning credibility that will be most useful when its first alternative-energy investments are taken public before a credulous mob. Other ventures—Lazard Capital Markets, Generation Investment Management, Nth Power, EnerTech Capital, and Battery Ventures—are funding an array of startups working on improvements to solar cells, to biofuels production, to batteries, to “energy management” software, and so on.

The candidates for the 2008 presidential election, notably Obama, Clinton, Romney, and McCain, now invoke “energy security” in their stump speeches and on their websites. Previously, “energy independence” was more common, and perhaps this change in terminology is a hint that a portion of the Homeland Security budget will be allocated for alternative energy, a potential boon for startups and for FIRE. ...

Of course, alternative energy and the improvement of our infrastructure are both necessary for our national well-being; and therein lies the danger: hyperinflations, in the long run, are always destructive. Since the 1970s, U.S. dependence on foreign energy supplies has become a major economic and security liability, and our superannuated roadways are the nation’s circulatory system. Without the efficient transit of gasoline-powered trucks laden with goods across our highways there would be no Wal-Mart, no other big-box stores, no morning FedEx deliveries. Without “energy security” and repairs to our “crumbling infrastructure,” our very competitiveness is at stake.

Going back 2 booms in time, one of the chief cheerleaders of the dotcom / technology boom was Wired. Their infamous (amongst those who took a lot of joy in the bursting of the tech bubble) story on the Long Boom immediately came to mind when I read the Harpers article - as the last stage of the long boom it described was an alternative energy boom.

The intervening booms were supposed to be in biotech and nanotech, though neither has really made it to the boom stage - instead we had a global real estate boom, coupled with an oil "boom" of sorts, both of which are largely responsible for the current mess we are in (especially if you include Bush and Cheney's oil grab in Iraq as an aspect of the oil boom).

Wired's alternative energy boom already has a slightly retro feel to it, given the heavy focus on the hydrogen economy instead of the real revolution for vehicles that is slowly getting started - electric cars - and didn't have the imagination to envisage the switch to an entirely clean energy economy that we'll like undergo in the next 3 decades.

All four waves of technology coursing through this era - computers, telecom, biotech, and nanotech - contribute to a surge of economic activity. In the industrial era, a booming economy would have put a severe strain on the environment: basically everything we made, we cooked, and such high-temperature cooking creates a lot of waste by-products. The logic of the era also tended toward larger and larger factories, which created pollution at even greater scales.

Biotech, on the other hand, uses more moderate temperature realms and emulates the processes of nature, creating much less pollution. Infotech, which moves information electronically rather than physically, also makes much less impact on the natural world. Moving information across the United States through the relatively simple infotechnology of the fax, for example, proves to be seven times more energy efficient than sending it through Federal Express. Furthermore, these technologies are on an escalating track of constant refinement, with each new generation becoming more and more energy efficient, with lower and lower environmental impact. Even so, these increasing efficiencies are not enough to counteract the juggernaut of a booming global economy.

Fortunately, the fifth wave of new technology - alternative energy - arrives right around the turn of the century with the introduction of the hybrid electric car. Stage one begins in the late 1990s when automobile companies such as Toyota roll out vehicles using small diesel- or gasoline-fueled internal-combustion engines to power an onboard generator that then drives small electric motors at each wheel. The car runs on electric power at low RPMs but uses the internal-combustion engine at highway speeds, avoiding the problem of completely battery-powered electric vehicles that run out of juice after 60 miles. The early hybrids are also much more efficient than regular gas-powered cars, often getting 80 miles to a gallon.

Stage two quickly follows, this time spurred by aerospace companies such as Allied Signal, which leverage their knowledge of jet engines to build hybrids powered by gas turbines. By 2005, technology previously confined to aircraft's onboard electric systems successfully migrates to automobiles. These cars use natural gas to power the onboard generators, which then drive the electric motors at the wheels. They also make use of superstrong, ultralight new materials that take the place of steel and allow big savings on mileage.

Then comes the third and final stage: hybrids using hydrogen fuel cells. The simplest and most abundant atom in the universe, hydrogen becomes the source of power for electric generators - with the only waste product being water. No exhaust. No carbon monoxide. Just water. The basic hydrogen-power technology had been developed as far back as the Apollo space program, though then it was still extremely expensive and had a nasty tendency to blow up. By the late 1990s, research labs such as British Columbia-based Ballard Power Systems are steadily developing the technology with little public fanfare. Within 10 years, there are transitional hydrogen car models that extract fuel from ordinary gasoline, using the existing network of pumps. By 2010, hydrogen is being processed in refinery-like plants and loaded onto cars that can go thousands of miles - and many months - before refueling. The technology is vastly cheaper and safer than in the 1960s and well on its way to widespread use.

These technological developments drive nothing less than a wholesale transformation of the automobile industry through the first quarter of the new century. Initially prodded by government decrees such as California's zero-emission mandate - which called for 10 percent of new cars sold to have zero emissions by 2003 - the industrial behemoths begin to pick up speed when an actual market for hybrid cars opens up. People buy them not because they are the environmentally correct option but because they're sporty, fast, and fun. And the auto companies build them because executives see green - as in money, not trees.

This 10- to 15-year industrial retooling sends reverberations throughout the global economy. The petrochemical giants begin switching from maintaining vast networks that bring oil from remote Middle Eastern deserts to building similarly vast networks that supply the new elements of electrical power. Fossil fuels will continue to be a primary source of power into the middle of the 21st century - but they will be clean fossil fuels. By 2020, almost all new cars are hybrid vehicles, mostly using hydrogen power. That development alone defuses much of the pressure on the global environment. The world may be able to support quite a few additional automobile drivers - including nearly 2 billion Chinese.

Renewable Energy World has a report on the Clean Edge Report for 2008 and the 5 trends to watch for this year - electric vehicles, sustainable cities, foriegn companies moving into the US wind power market, geothermal power and environmentally friendly shipping.

rowth in the renewable energy industry is set to reach more than US $250 billion by the year 2017 with the electric car, sustainable cities, non-U.S.-based energy firms, geothermal energy and the greening of the shipping industry helping to lead the way. That's the prediction made by Clean Edge in its Clean Energy Trends 2008 report released on Wednesday.

The report's co-authors Joel Makower, Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder spotlighted the biofuels, wind power, solar photovoltaic (PV) and fuel cell markets as the benchmark segments for the renewable energy industry as a whole.

The report put the spotlight on five trends to watch as renewable energy industry surges ahead. The first was the new structure taking shape in the electric vehicle market where startups are taking center stage. In a presentation about the trends, Joel Makeower said that there are currently 200 U.S. companies working, in some way, shape or form, on bringing the electric car to market.

According to the report, "the new generation of green vehicles may not be driven by Detroit or its Euro or Asian counterparts. A growing line of start-ups is rendering moot the question of 'Who killed the electric car?' While the global car companies go through years-long retooling to create plug-in hybrids, electric cars, and other alt-fuel vehicles, these start-ups are beating the big guys to market, delivering greener cars to a waiting public."

These startups include Scandanavian company Think, Tesla, Project Better Place/Renault-Nissan in Israel, Eliica from Japan, Miles and ZAP in the U.S., REVA in India, ZENN in Canda, Spark in China and Venturi in France.

The second trend to watch according to Clean Edge is the movement toward sustainable cities, including the new Masdar City in Abu Dhabi a city that plans, by 2016, to serve a population 50,000 individuals and 1,500 businesses all powered by solar energy. Another emerging eco-city is Dongtan, on Chongming Island near Shanghai, which plans to serve 20,000 people by 2010 and be powered completely by renewables, mostly wind and biomass. The report also points to major efforts being made around the world to "green" established cities.

Third in the series of trends is the growing presence of overseas companies in the U.S. wind energy market, a trend that will continue to grow according to the Clean Edge report as the dollar remains relatively weak and the demand for wind in the U.S. continues to grow.

Geothermal energy's return to the main stage is the fourth trend to watch. According to the report, "geothermal is the only clean-energy resource besides hydroelectric that provides baseload power 24 hours a day, and with average plant uptime of 98 percent, it does so even more reliably than nuclear or coal-fired power plants, both of which require more downtime for maintenance."

The co-authors noted that three of California's largest investor-owned utilities, PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric, within the past year have announced new geothermal plans. This comes as no surprise as average geothermal electric costs are between 4-7 cents per kilowatt-hour.

And finally, the fifth trend is a building movement to make shipping by sea more environmentally friendly. Driven more by the major shippers worldwide (the presenters mentioned IKEA, Home Depot, and Toyota), than the shipping companies themselves, the idea is to lessen the negative impact that cargo ships currently put on the environment. In the report, the co-authors point out that cargo ships account for more than 4 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions, double the emissions of aviation, according to a study commissioned by the UN's International Maritime Organization.

Companies that are developing technologies to propel ships without greenhouse gas emissions are gaining ground. Kite for Sail, KiteShip and Sky Sails, all of whom are working on designing kites that, when combined with better navigation tools and software will allow large ships to use the wind for propulsion.

The report said that "given that shipping emissions, left unchecked, are forecast to grow 30 percent from current levels by 2020, such technologies could be a breath of fresh air."

The Economist has an article noting the migration of tech industry executives from information technology to clean energy technology.

WHEN Shai Agassi, long the heir apparent at SAP, was told in March 2007 that he would not become chief executive for at least another two years, he quit. And when the German software giant then tried to change his mind by offering to make him boss right away, he realised he was “much more excited” about the new chance that his unexpected freedom would grant him. In January Mr Agassi's new start-up, Better Place, announced its first deal, in partnership with Renault, a carmaker, and the government of Israel: to “get an entire country off its addiction to gasoline” by switching to electric cars.

Though Mr Agassi is the most senior executive so far to quit a mainstream information-technology firm for clean tech, he is far from alone. Mr Agassi (pictured right, above) joins Elon Musk (pictured left), a co-founder of PayPal who is now chairman of Tesla Motors, an electric-car start-up, and Vinod Khosla (pictured centre), a legendary venture capitalist who has switched his focus from dotcommery to greenery, among many others. “There is an unbelievable migration of talent from traditional technology to clean technology,” says Adam Grosser, a partner at Foundation Capital, a big Silicon Valley venture firm. “They have had their social conscience energised, and they believe there is a lot of money to be made. So you get to exercise your capitalist desires while feeling self-righteous at the same time.”

Many of these techies are being recruited by the same Silicon Valley venture firms that were behind successive generations of tech companies, from PC-makers to software companies to two waves of internet firms. Along with Foundation Capital, several of the leading venture firms, including Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, are now betting big on green. ...

In some cases, the leap from computing to greenery may not be all that big. Most geeks already have a science background (though Mr Musk abandoned his physics doctorate after two days). Building solar panels has much in common with building microchips. “It is all about miniaturisation and the use of silicon,” says Mr Ford. If he is right to expect a “Moore's Law for solar”, the effectiveness of the technology will increase at a predictable rate. One of the early successes in the green boom is SunPower, a solar-energy firm spun out of Cypress Semiconductor, which now has a stockmarket value of nearly $6 billion.

Similarly, energy firms operate huge distribution networks—another area in which geeks feel at home. “When I joined from Perot Systems in 2004, the last-mile technology for energy utilities had not been invented, and I saw a huge opportunity to help utilities connect more efficiently with their customers,” says Scott Lang, the chief executive of Silver Spring Networks. His firm applies internet technology to utilities' networks to improve energy efficiency and manage demand. “This is classic IT,” he says. He reckons that nearly half of the demand for new generation capacity around the world over the next 15 years could be met instead through greater efficiency.

One danger for tech executives who go green is that “they may expect things to happen too quickly,” says Mr Lang. “They are used to overnight change, but this is going to take time.” Another, at least for some green start-ups, is the amount of capital that has to be laid out at an early stage.

“The amounts of money on the line are radically different from traditional technology start-ups,” says Mitch Mandich, a 25-year veteran of Silicon Valley technology firms, including Apple, who runs Range Fuels, which is building America's first cellulosic-ethanol plant in Georgia. (The idea is that turning plant material such as switchgrass, wood or agricultural waste into biofuel will overcome the drawbacks of corn-based ethanol, which is inefficient and drives up food prices.) He has had to learn to raise money from New York investment banks and hedge funds, as well as from his venture-capital backers. Clean-tech start-ups very quickly leave the $5m-10m range, he says, and go to $50m and $100m fundraising rounds. “The stakes get very high much earlier.”

For this reason, Foundation Capital is focusing on firms that improve energy use. Attempts to design clean fuels are “not capital efficient”, says Mr Grosser, noting that “building plants costs hundreds of millions, and the margins may be low.” Mr Khosla, an investor in Range Fuels and other clean-fuel firms, disagrees. He thinks the huge market opportunity in “replacing coal and oil” justifies the huge risks.

The award for most bizarre piece of nuclear power advocacy I've seen in a while goes to this proposal from some scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory reported on by the New York Times - constructing nuclear power plants to power the conversion of CO2 into petrol. Of course, you could use the nuclear power for electric vehciles instead, and use less than 20% of the energy this process requires. Or you could just skip the nuclear option entirely and plug your electirc vehicles into a clean energy grid instead (hat tip Engineer Poet).

If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming. In a proposal by two scientists, vehicle emissions would no longer contribute to global warming.

The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have patriotically named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.

The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.

This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle — equal amounts of carbon dioxide emitted and removed — would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.

Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small prototype, the scientists say it is all based on existing technology. “Everything in the concept has been built, is operating or has a close cousin that is operating,” Dr. Martin said.

The Los Alamos proposal does not violate any laws of physics, and other scientists, like George A. Olah, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist at the University of Southern California, and Klaus Lackner, a professor of geophysics at Columbia University, have independently suggested similar ideas. Dr. Martin said he and Dr. Kubic had worked out their concept in more detail than previous proposals.

There is, however, a major caveat that explains why no one has built a carbon-dioxide-to-gasoline factory: it requires a great deal of energy.

To deal with that problem, the Los Alamos scientists say they have developed a number of innovations, including a new electrochemical process for detaching the carbon dioxide after it has been absorbed into the potassium carbonate solution. The process has been tested in Dr. Kubic’s garage, in a simple apparatus that looks like mutant Tupperware.

Even with those improvements, providing the energy to produce gasoline on a commercial scale — say, 750,000 gallons a day — would require a dedicated power plant, preferably a nuclear one, the scientists say.

Cleantech.com has a report on the reborn, ex-Xerox PARC and its new focus on clean technology - including an interest in creating "liquid fuels from the air" - but using renewables rather than vast farms of nuclear power plants.

Formerly Xerox's R&D center, Silicon Valley-based PARC is using its new status as an independent business to leverage its almost 40-year history in IT, mass production, microfluidics and other scientific expertise for a variety of mostly corporate clients—unlike the government focus of other research institutes. And now, there are a number of interesting cleantech-specific initiatives underway at the sprawling hillside complex, a stone's throw from Stanford University and the VCs of famed Sand Hill Road. ...

The center's most visible cleantech-related initiative in recent years has been helping incubate solar concentrating startup SolFocus, which resided in and operated from PARC's labs until August of 2007. PARC scientists helped the company develop a second generation of its solar concentrator, which is now smaller, lighter and less expensive to make (see photos below.) PARC drew directly on its expertise in laser printing. The success of the partnership inspired PARC to institute a formal incubation program, which it calls Startup@PARC. Fledgling cleantech and other companies can leverage PARC staff and facilities in exchange for cash, royalties, equity compensation, or a combination.

We received a tour of the facility, and learned about the center's current cleantech-related projects, including:

Printing for solar PV - Gridlines on the front of most manufacturers' silicon cells for collecting current tend to be relatively wide, hiding much of the substrate beneath from the sun. PARC developed a new extrusion method for printing narrower yet taller gridlines on silicon with the same conductivity, but less "shadow".

The new technique apparently boosts the power output of a solar cell by 6 percent. "We invented the print head; we're looking at commercializing in a reasonably short timeframe," said Elrod.

LED lighting - Could PARC's optics and thermal management experience translate into differentiated designs? Researchers pursued phosphor-based solid state lighting that has proven to be 10-20 percent more efficient than LEDs, PARC claims. The technology has been developed, and the center is now interested in engaging commercial partners.

Membrane-less water filtration - A novel design inspired by years of toner manipulation through apertures has lead to what appears to be a high volume water filtration process not requiring a membrane. PARC scientists leveraged the centrifugal force of contaminants in water to direct them through an alternative path in a spiral flow. The technique requires little power, and appears to hold promise for wastewater treatment, according to PARC's Elrod.

Liquid fuels from the air - Perhaps the most ambitious project underway at PARC is an investigation into the practicality of generating liquid fuels from simply water and carbon present in the air.

PARC scientists are looking into using renewable energy to power large scale electrolysis, combining hydrogen from water with large volumes of carbon extracted from the atmosphere to produce hydrocarbon-based fuel.

Admittedly, carbon would be released back into the atmosphere when the fuels combusted, Elrod acknowledged. But using the atmosphere for carbon "transport," as described on a PARC briefing slide, would guarantee fuel could be made anywhere, even on small islands.

"This is speculative, high risk and potentially high reward," said Elrod. "We're not putting a lot of people on this; this still has to pass the sanity test. But we don't know of anyone else doing this."

Other cleantech projects underway at PARC include demand response-like adaptive control technologies for data centers and power grids, new manufacturing techniques for small form-factor fuel cells that take advantage of PARC's print head expertise, biofuel from algae and reusable paper.