| Fast Times at Russ College of Engineering and Technology |
[Aug. 7th, 2007|08:16 am] |
cheap abundant hydrogen is about to become a reality
Frank Neukomm is a smart man. ok he's not Dean Kamen, but man o man would i love to be involved in the games this guy -CEO of American Security Resources Corporation-is playing. He seems like some Gordon Geko but for good worldchanging! Just a month ago he bought MagWind, one of the coolest VAWT companies there is (i guess Mr. Perot Jr. makes better deals than his dad :p ..but what he did this week blew me away! Blew-me-away.
Not content to wait for companies to develop the technologies we need, he went to the core, and just struck a deal with Ohio University to bring chemical and biomolecular engineering associate professor Gerardine Botte's brand new technology to market. And what does it do? It efficiently turns amonia into hydrogen! And he's a nice guy, OU also gets equity in the company --brand new ASRC subsidiary American Hydrogen Corp. See, ASRC was looking at hydrogen feeds to satisfy the hunger of (yet) another subsidiary; HydraFuel Cell Corp, they read Dr. Botte's research and pounced! Well it took a year to do the deal, but now they are ready to go! And why not? Ammonia is made everywhere... you can make it from fermenting waste, and when you look at the molecular structure, it's as easy to split as water. Maybe easier.
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I still like making H out of methane myself, as we end up dealing with mitigating a greenhouse gas as well... but heck, cheap hydrogen would be a way to get us using the stuff regularly, and building up the demand for the slightly more expensive approaches. Just one more small step for Frank Neukomm, one giant step for humankind!!
[important note: i have to put a caveat vaporptor on this story. I'd like to believe it's true, but MagWins while a cool idea, may not really be all that hot, and hasn't really produced anything. And that last pitch they has in TH a month ago with a GIANT sized magwind was so pie in the sky... so that, plus a Fuel Cell company, and we have to make sure that this guy isn't just doing one more vaporware stock push... you know like Zapworld does, or Hybrid Technologies, no real product just lots of green hype. we have to at least keep one eye open, ok cowboys?] |
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| things are panning out in the wild west..... |
[Jul. 23rd, 2007|09:01 am] |
Kholsa's Gevo attracts new 'polylactic CEO' and Sir Richard
Big news last Friday as California's Gevo Inc dropped not one but two bombs on the biofuel world.... it appears they have a new CEO-- one Ptrick Gruber, who's name might sound familiar to you.. and who has touched you-- if you have ever had a bioplastic cup, pen, mug, schwag.... any PLA plastic around is basically from his old haunt (he was CTO at Naturworks/Cargil). But then of course, the big news was Vinod Kholsa's new partner in crime;
Yes! The Branson and his $400M "planet cooling company" is getting on the GEVO train! It's basically the Frances H Arnold Technologies, Gevo has exclusive rights to the stuff-- and any friend of cellulostic ethanol is a friend of ours, right? I just wish "Sir B" would have shown up at the conference with Kholsa airdropping himself to the podium, or skydiving in... you know something Branson-style ...but hey, even without the spectacle, it's quite spectacular! |
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| Holy Shiholy Batman! |
[Aug. 11th, 2006|07:38 pm] |
SunEdison Acquires Team Solar; Serious Legion of Superheroes Shihizzle
Wow. this is a match made in heaven. I swear. SunEd + TeamSolar TL4Eva...
Together they have installed enough solar panels to power 15,000 homes (and that's energy pig homes, not back-to-the-earth one-LED-christmas-light-is-fine-for-my-
reading-light hippy homes).
And while they come from radically different places, this is going to be a symbiotic powerforce. Nobody is talking about how much it sold for, but the Sun bought the Team! And it looks like Baltimore's brilliant SunEdison krewe is poised for even greater stature in the energy biz (and West Coast presence) now that they've bought TS... And they were already pretty amazing, known to provide competitively priced solar energy at or below local utility rates with various financing schemes (sometimes they lease big box's rooftops, put solar there and then sell the juice to the stores, other times they lease the PV to the stores, and do the the installations and maintenance...) And SunEd's CEO Jigar Shah is a solid leader, building a team with some insanely impresisve playere (it's like he raided the halls from BP S0lar --duh, they're in Maryland-- to Bechtel).
And TeamSolar is no slouch ...born under the close tutelage of Sacramento's highly evolved SMUD, Angela and Rick Lavezzo's tiny company has grown to be California's largest solar installer. No job too small or too large.
Now we know what they did with some of that twenny six point one $M they just raised with Gold Man Sachs. But this is awesome, this is grassroots California meets business2.0 east coast new green stylee. With balance and harmony for all, I expect SunEd will spred....
[source Sun Edison, LLC press release |
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| to the moon, alice, this stock is going to go to the moon!! |
[Jun. 2nd, 2006|05:00 am] |
I know i said it months ago, but I am going to say it again. And now I'm not the only one saying it (thank you RenewableEnergy Stocks.com). Zappy the little Zappster is going to EXPLODE. Y'hear me? E-X-P-L-O-D-E!!! (sos if u were one of those peeps investing in pets.com or toys.com or burnallyourcash.com instead of, say, WholeFoods (which was $5 pre dotbomb, and is now around $66 (peaked @$80 in Jan, pre-walmartorganics) well, this may be your chance again!!
Zap (NASDAQ ZP) dipped to $0.70 last week, but has finally started to climb! They closed at $1.53 yesterday climbing again by 23% And now the press is going to start well, if not flowing, then something more than a trickle... it's still far from a household name.
And sure, they started off a little PT Barnum (oh like that stopped Steve Jobs?), Gary Starr was a wildman (but he knew his stuff!) and of course Daimler-Mercedes just really didn't like working with new CEO Stephen Schneider (maybe it was feeling like they had to work with a company called "Zero Air Pollution" or they just felt that some of the lower-end Zap products made them an unattractive biz partner?). But that's all in the past. Schneider and Co have developed, and own the software that makes smart cars street legal in the US! And smart cars are popping into the US in a big way, already the heroin of DaVinci and Inspector Cluseau are smartified, and when the Pink Panther hits the DVD racks, the smart is going to be in every eyeball in america!
And then Zap has other awesome cards up their sleeve. they have an all-electric car called the Xebra that is way cute, and made in China (affordable), Once people realize that they can get Italian Oxygen electric scooters there as well, the company is going to fly! And the stock... well I'm still betting that it will hit $25, let's say within 30 months. You just wait (and so, even if you aren't an investor, but you have played the occasional lottery ticket, plunk $100 down, here's a chance to make it grow %1000 in less than 3 years)
ok pics:
heres the 3 and 4 wheel versions:
and here's the Xebra interior (seriously, hot or not??):
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| ADM supermarket to the gas tank, extrusion plant, bioChem factory, and um... world (?) |
[Apr. 29th, 2006|08:10 am] |
The Andreas reign is over. New ADM CEO
is an Oil woman. What could this mean??
Say hello to Patty Woertz. She's the new CEO of Archer Daniels Midland. ADM is a huge company and their products are in so many products on a supermarket shelf, that if you thought about it your head would spin. Now I was never a fan of ADM founder Dwayne "sleezy" Andreas, and I'm not the only one. But every dark tunnel has a light at the end of it, and Patty might just be that light (Well one can hope). See ADM is a food company, They make corn syrup for soda-pop and food-relief packages, and well, pretty much cornered the corn and (non organic) soy markets so long ago that it's hard to find a conventional farmer who doesn't have a relationship with the "Supermarket to the World." But this appointment, Mrs. Woertz, is a new angle and definitely a glimmer of hope. Maybe. While I am hoping that she will come to terms with alternatives to chemical fertilizer, like rock dust in particular, that isn't where the glimmer comes from.
See Mrs. Woertz used to work in the oil industry. In fact she was executive vice president of Chevron before becoming President of Chevron Canada. She's an oilman. So whats an oil (wo)man doing running a corn stand? three words: bioplastics, ethanol & biodiesel.
See, this maybe good. Sure, this may end up being a HUGE boondoggle (remember there's someone else from Chevron who is seriously fucking the world up right now, they even named a tanker after her) But I'm hoping that this is a good sign. A woman who understands feedstocks (like plastic ones, not like feeding corn to pigs) and who knows how much power this woman can yield. Besides, it's not like Cargil's NaturworksPLA is so hot! And the demand for these materials at the moment is still huge as compared to the supply. So who knows? It may be a god thing after all...
[Chicago Business] |
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| When John Doerr talks, people listen! |
[Apr. 11th, 2006|08:25 pm] |
Watch the world follow as the silicon
venture-capital king goes Green!
OK so a little company called Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (but their friends call them KPCB), decides to invest in green technologies. So? Who isn't, you ask? Well um, no one quite like KPBC-- who in the past funded some companies you might have heard of, like, Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems ...Visionary doesn't even scratch at the surface of John Doerr, And now Doerr is going green.
KPBC Just announced a $100 Million dolar green technology fund. It's sister to the slighly larger $600M KPCB XII fund, but it's all green! "This field of green tech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," Doerr said. "There's never been a better time than now to start or accelerate a green-tech venture."
Let the games begin....
[edited to add: the very next thing i looked at after writing ths was a piece by John Elkington and Mark Lee in Grist all about this... so well written you gotta check it out. and you will chuckle next time i say "missionary Mercenaries"] |
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| lets show the WalM a little love, please? |
[Mar. 31st, 2006|02:34 pm] |
Poor Lee Scott.... no matter what the guy does, there's always someone ready to bite at his ankles and call him a Bentonvill thug. And I think he needs a hug.
I've said it before and I will say it again (probably many many more times) but what Scott and WalMart are doing is going to be the biggest thing to ever happen in the marketing of sustainability. Just as he, virtually overnight, got crowned the king of the organic-cotton yoga pants, now he's continuing his battle. And what is the battle? Mr. Scott feels that everyone ought to have access to organic food. Not just the wealthy. And he feels that he has enough power and scale to actually make that happen.
So of course everyone now comes out of the woodwork to say that it is a bad deal for everyone (including the planet? Please...) Even this weeks Business Week has found some organic farmer to interview. The guy is not happy. He has heard all the rumours, and on top of it, he's worried that Walmart will ruin his profit margin. The farmer, by the way, sells to WholeFoods. This is snobbery at it's worse. To begin with, China has new organic standards (that are as good or better than QAI's crap) and can produce more organic produce than all the hippies in California. And the WM does a LOT of business there alreay, right? So they may not want to own every family farm left in America, ya know?
On top of which Mr. Scott is entireley correct! The prices are outlandish for organic food right now and if you happen to be poor you are S.O.L. My last grocery order at WholePaycheque bareley covered anything (and i was raw, so i was buying none of the fancypants Organic Burrito stuffs at all, still two bags were like $75). Now, WFM is the worst offender, tbh, because a similar order from my local coop would have been about $20 lighter (and since i like buying whole foods, i mean real whole foods, like seeds for sprouting and all.... i can actually add that WholeFoods sells less actual whole food than any of the coops i can go to which are smaller but still rock).
I don't mean to bash wholefoods too much, I like that they have made it fun and fashionable to eat organic (and their $80/shares are pretty strong) but i was doing business with them a few years ago and we were a new territory and I saw how they scope out and who they thought was their competitioin, and it was never grandma's hippie organic shop, it was always the most expensive most comfortable more expendable-cash stores around... so um, let them go after the wealthiest top 10% of the pop... and for the rest of us, I say; meet me in a walmart in the organic produce isle, we'll drink fresh smoothies and raise a gladd to good 'ol Lee Scott! |
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| Mr Ken Kelly Steps Up |
[Feb. 16th, 2006|12:55 pm] |
Hot US Electric Scooter company EVader hires new CEO
Ken Kelly is EVader's new CEO. Welcome aboard Mr. K! For the past 12 months, he's been serving as a special consultant to Evader (who's electric bike up there hs a cruising speed of 80KmH!). He has been instrumental in setting up efficient systems for both engineering and manufacturing. that are in place today. Ken Kelley has had a long and distinguished career. He was a design supervisor for McDonnell Douglas in the early 1960s with responsibility for both the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft. He held the same position with Boeing of Seattle working on the Boeing 747. After serving as Vice President of Engineering for the Heath Techna Corporation of Kent, Washington which supplied composite design and manufacture for the aerospace industry, Kelley formed his own company, Kelley Morrow Industries supplying the airline industry with interior component design and manufacturing, pioneering the installation of the enclosed overhead storage compartments now seen on every aircraft in existence. From nothing he built the firm into a 500 employee, $30 million enterprise before retiring in 1984. He was coaxed out of retirement by Swissair and by Pacific Power of Portland Oregon working on a consultancy basis. "We are all excited to have a person of such experience and background helping us turn Evader into a world leader," said Julio Almeida, President of Evader. "Ken is the ideal person to lead the Evader team as we ramp up sales and manufacturing. He has a thorough understanding of engineering, design and manufacturing and, most importantly, profitability." This is exactly what an electrodrive company needs! While I still have my bias (I Loooooove Vectrix, sorry) This does look like a hot little bike and 80KmH is finally breaking that 40 mp 35mph glass ceiling, so a great product, a serious goto guy, looks like we have another great playa in the field!! |
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| Green Futures on the green Wal Mart ripple |
[Jan. 14th, 2006|07:41 am] |
Can Lee Scott turn green business into "business"?
Polly Ghazi, in Green Futures looks at the whole 'greening of Wal Mart' without the usual skepticism, some suspended disbelief, and a little of that cheery optimism that hopeless romantic idealists often seem to use as a lifepreserver...
I still wish that Vancouver BC accepted WalMart's uber green building plans (they rejected it because it was still a WalMart). Had they, you could be sure that everything below this line, all of the goals of WalMart would have been twice as ambitious and executed in 1/2 the time. Still, everything (especially the ripple) are great first-steps that will only lead to more! Ghazi writes that when Wal-Mart says 'we’re going green', the world takes notice. What’s more, she says, CEO Lee Scott didn't just dip his toe in the water with a blandly worded environmental policy: "His new shopping list of ambitious goals, if met, will send ripple effects around the globe."
Scott unveiled plans last October to invest $500 million in technologies to cut greenhouse gas output. Wal-Mart’s 5,000 stores are to cut their emissions by a fifth over seven years, and to raise fuel efficiency by 25% for it's truck fleet over three years. He also pledged to eliminate a quarter of the solid waste generated by stores, reduce product packaging, introduce organic lines ‘at everyday low prices’ and design a prototype new superstore with at least 25% more energy efficiency by 2009 (hey, why not? they already have the designs). Also, suppliers in China and the US will be pressured on their sustainability practices, with the award of Wal-Mart contracts favouring those who show progress.
So, um, is this greenwashing? Ghazi says no.
( Read more... ) |
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| xSUNX gets rolling! ! ! ! ! |
[Jan. 12th, 2006|03:34 pm] |
it's a great day for Tom Djokovich! and for the planet, for that matter!
...his company, XsunX (who we love very much), is in action! Earlier today, Xsunx announced they began construction of a mass production system for the manufacture of the Company's proprietary thin film solar cell designs (so thin they're windows and solar panels!!). Apparently the company anticipates marketing efforts of this awesome system as early as this coming spring. So get ready-- we're soon gong to have our see through solar PV windows!! Wooo Hooo!
[incidentally if you want to hear a podcast interview with Mr. Djokovich, here] |
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| more in the upstanding corporate citizenry department: |
[Jan. 11th, 2006|06:58 am] |
...from the whole fizzle to the fedxizzle!
Kevin at Unplugged Living has some more great green corporate news for y'all. It appears that FedEx Kinko's (which you may know as FedEx or as Kinkos or as NYSE: FDX, announced new renewable energy purchases at more than 100 locations nationwide, increasing its total green power commitment by 67.5 percent to an estimated 40 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. Which will avert more than 26,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year. That's equivalent to the power used by over 3,900 U.S. households in a 12-month period. Already a leading green power purchaser, ((In 2005, FedEx unveiled California's largest corporate solar electric system at its hub at Oakland International Airport. Later that year, The United States EPA and the Department of Energy awarded the FedEx Express solar hub with The 2005 Green Power Leadership Award for green power purchasing)), FedEx Kinko's recently agreed to purchase 10.8 million kWh of Green-e(R) certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) for 88 of its locations in Southern California. The new purchase will provide 50 percent of the annual electricity consumption for those centers. Looks like new CEO Kenny May is continuing the awesome path cut out for him but ex CEO Gary Kusin. And we all say "Aiiiiiight!"
[press release available at CSRWire] |
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| A Message from Dr. David Suzuki |
[Jan. 8th, 2006|08:16 pm] |
Up here in Canada David Suzuki is a rock star of the ecoworld. He's a household name, TV star, activist, and committed like no one's business. When he gives a stern talk, everyone listens. But that's not today, this isn't stern, this is hopeful! (And nicked from his amazing DSFoundation Website). And it was in newspapers across Canada today!
Sea Change in Environmental Understanding- By David Suzuki
The New Year is often considered a time to reflect on the past and look ahead to see what's coming in the near future. Over the holidays, I had time to reflect on some recent events and I think what's coming next may be "good for the environment."
Why the quotation marks? Well, early in December, I spent a week in Montreal for the international climate negotiations. It was an amazing experience and I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with a wide variety of people, from delegates and dignitaries, to business leaders and citizens on the streets.
It was a busy time. There were peaceful protests and rallies. There were tough discussions behind closed doors. There were holdouts and those who attempted to derail negotiations. There were even a few confused souls standing out on street corners, handing out pamphlets insisting that global warming was some sort of hoax. Yes, the conference had a little of everything.
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( keep reading and get rewarded with a pic of a hot 64 year old ) |
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| life inside the fuel cell... |
[Dec. 14th, 2005|08:03 am] |
wanna know what it's like to try getting your fuel cell to market?
Then go out and read Baseline Magazine's ("the project management center") interview with Roger Saillant, CEO of (my very favorite fuel cell company) PlugPower. Not a huge article but he talks about what it takes to get an idea onto the floor and then out the door. Quite educational. (why do i dig Plug so much? is it because of their armslegnth relationship with GE's Ecomagination? Or is it because the first thing they did was put 75 fuel cells into operation in new york state? or maybe it's just the cute name....).
  Oh and hey, on the FC tip: i just read in EarthToys, that a truley Canadian product has just matured. Thats right, the hydrogen fuel cell Zamboni! Made by FC company E-Power Synergies made it's debut this week in the home of the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver, British Columbia! Dubbed the EP-ICEBEAR (Heyyy! AnotherIce Bear!!) it will be the centerpiece of the EPower display at the Electric Drive Transportation Association EDTA exhibition being held at Canada Place in Vancouver this week! Cute huh? clean ice, no exhaust... score! |
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