Daintree Networks Obtains $8 Million in Capital

Daintree Networks Obtains $8 Million in Capital

Daintree Networks, a developer of energy-saving wireless control solutions for commercial buildings, announced today the successful conclusion to its latest round of capital funding with the entire $8 million round subscribed byLend Lease's venture capital business.

Daintree's Wireless Lighting Control Solution (WLCS) (pictured below) is intended to overcome the traditional barriers to retrofitting existing buildings with energy saving lighting control systems – the rewiring.  The company claims that its solution delivers significantly shorter payback periods, especially in retrofits, as compared with wired solutions. 

Daintree, which is based in Mountain View, California, with an R&D facility in Melbourne, Australia, indicated that the new capital will be used to fund the company's worldwide expansion as well as ongoing technology and product development.

Danny Yu, Chief Executive Officer of Daintree Networks, said "We welcome our partnership with Lend Lease and the expertise and commercial opportunities it brings to help accelerate our vision to become the leading provider of wireless solutions to the lighting industry."

Anthony Pascoe, Chief Executive Officer of Lend Lease's venture capital business, said "Energy use in commercial buildings is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Daintree Networks' innovative technology and excellent management team support Lend Lease's leadership in sustainable building construction and refurbishment globally."

For more information:

• Daintree Networks - Home page
• Daintree Secures $8M in Capital to Fund Expansion (March 26, 2010)

Is Corporate America Our Best Hope Against Climate Change?

Is Corporate America Our Best Hope Against Climate Change?

By BRYAN WALSH Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010

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Ice floating in Paradise Bay, Antarctic Peninsula

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One of the unexpected twists of the global climate change debate is that the roles of government and business have in many ways been reversed. To traditional greens, business was the enemy, polluting with impunity, and government was the hero, ready to restrain. That was the mindset of environmentalism's first great boom, when landmark legislation like the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act gave Washington the power and the tools to begin cleaning up the country.

But when it comes to climate change, times have changed. Although industry is still the engine of all those carbon emissions — more than a few CEOs doubt that global warming even exists — it is also the source of clean-energy solutions, which are emerging from every layer of the business world, from tiny startups to Fortune 500 behemoths. Major corporations set their own plans for greenhouse gas emissions reductions that far greener than targets that nations throw about at U.N. climate change summits.(See TIME's complete coverage of the World Energy Technologies Summit.)

Meanwhile Washington is paralyzed, seemingly incapable of coming to grips with global warming or the looming energy crisis. What we need is smart policy to deal with the biggest long-term challenge facing the country. What we get is vacuum.

That was the overriding theme at the 2010 World Energy Technologies Summit (WETN) held in New York City on Mar. 12. Speaker after speaker came to the podium to map out the technologies that could lead to a clean energy future: solar farms in the desert, wind turbines on a capital scale, the resurgence of nuclear power, even the recycling of energy we use today. But those solutions will sputter without the right government policy in place — especially without a firm price on carbon, according to most of the experts at the summit — and Washington can no longer be trusted. "It's going to be a three-ring circus," said Peter Goldmark, the program director for climate and air at the Environmental Defense Fund, talking about the Washington debate over climate and energy legislation. "And no one can tell you what's going to come out of this."(See Heroes of the Environment 2009.)

But does it even matter? After all, some of the smartest companies in the country are forging ahead on clean energy in the absence of legislation. Take Google, for instance. Dan Reicher, the director of climate change and energy initiatives for the Internet giant, described Google's plan to scale up renewable energy that could compete directly with coal — "RE

The company is also applying its Internet smarts on the energy sector, which in many ways has barely changed since the time of Thomas Edison. Google's PowerMeter, a free software tool, will let households customize their energy use, better tracking the electrons they're buying — a direct route to greater energy efficiency. "It's ET meets IT — energy technology meets information technology," said Reicher.(Watch video: "Energy Summit Showcases Breakthroughs and Barriers to Sustainability")

If Google can do for utility bills what it's done for email, it could change the way many of us view energy, dragging a reluctant industry into the 21st century. And the company's got a long-term plan — Clean Energy 2030 — that charts a way to wean the U.S. off coal and drastically cut petroleum use.

But even the mighty Google can't do it alone. Reicher has testified before Congress about the need for strong climate legislation, including a firm carbon price that could help renewable energy compete today. A carbon cap alone isn't enough, however; the U.S. needs to establish requirements for renewable energy, and just as important, vastly increase the public research money spent on energy. That last part is often missed in the energy debate, but Reicher pointed out that despite the urgency of the energy and climate crisis, the U.S. (outside of the one time bump of the stimulus) is now spending less than it did on energy research in the Carter Administration. "We need a wave of innovation, and the current levels of funding just isn't going to bring that," says Reicher, who worked in the Department of Energy during the 1990s. "That can't be forgotten."

While Washington dithers, trapped in health care hell, other countries like China and Germany are forging ahead, seizing the reins of the clean-energy economy. In the meantime, U.S. corporations will continue making tentative steps toward supporting renewable energy, and venture capitalists will keep looking for the next big solution.

There's even a chance that we could see a real change of values at the CEO level. At the Mar. 12 summit, Mindy Lubber, the president of CERES, a national network of investors and green groups, plotted out a roadmap to true corporate sustainability for the 21st century. Sustainability might be the only way to survive in a time of scarcity — and the next several years or even decades could be lean ones, as more of us are competing for what feels like less and less.

It would be a lot easier if Washington were really participating. "We need a price on carbon," said Lubber in WETS's last panel. "That's it. That's the bottom line." We'll see if Congress will heed the call.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972936_1973104_1973861,00.html#ixzz0jQYd25c4

Can Small Lifestyle Changes Lead to Huge CO2 Cuts?

Can Small Lifestyle Changes Lead to Huge CO2 Cuts?

By BRYAN WALSH Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010

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Behavioral economists think big savings in carbon emissions can be gained by nudging people to make small changes that increase energy efficiency and cut waste

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A couple of weeks ago President Barack Obama stopped by OPOWER, a small Arlington-based energy company, to talk about green jobs and clean power. The White House doesn't schedule just any company for a Presidential visit, so you might wonder why OPOWER made the cut.

The company doesn't make shiny new solar panels, or massive wind turbines; it's not brewing algae to distill into next-generation biofuel. Rather, OPOWER works with electric utilities to send out detailed notices to customers letting them know exactly how much electricity they're using — and importantly, how their energy use compares with their friends' and neighbors'. OPOWER's reports encourages its hundreds of thousands of customers — spread across the country — to cut back on needless energy waste, enough to reduce average household consumption of electricity by more than 2% annually.

As Obama said in a speech to the company's personnel: "The work you do here...is making homes more energy efficient, it's saving people money, it's generating jobs and it's putting America on the path to a clean energy future."

That might sound like heady praise for a company that has fewer than 100 employees, but OPOWER is at the forefront of what could be the cheapest and fastest way to reduce carbon emissions and attack climate change: by modifying consumer behavior. A new analysis released on Mar. 12 by the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and the Garrison Institute's Climate Mind Behavior Project found that personal actions could reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 1 billion metric tons by 2020 — 15% of national totals — at little to no cost. Sure, clean-energy companies may get all the attention — and research and venture-capital funding — but a company like OPOWER that uses behavioral economics to get people to make energy-saving choices can start reducing CO2 emissions immediately. "These are actions that can take place right now," says Peter Lehner, NRDC's executive director. "We can't ignore actions that would make such a difference."

Those actions include simple and consistent behavioral changes: for instance, reducing engine idling time in cars and trucks by 50% would save 40 million metric tons of CO2. If everyone who flew more than three times a year eliminated one flight, it would reduce emissions by 55 million tons. Cutting food waste by 25% would save 65 million tons, and replacing red meat with poultry twice a week would save another 105 million tons. These behaviors wouldn't just save the climate — they'd save consumers money too, starting now. "People really do think wasting energy is a bad thing," says Alex Laskey, the president and founder of OPOWER. "We give them data that makes this all easily digestible to the average consumer in no time at all."

In a recent paper in the journal Science, Hunt Allcott of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University found that instituting a program similar to OPOWER would cost utilities roughly 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity saved. (Generating a kWh of electricity through coal plant or any other method costs utilities at least twice as much, so conservation is a good deal for both electricity generators and customers.). If scaled nationwide, a program like OPOWER could reduce U.S. CO2 emissions from electric power by 0.5%, at a negative cost of $165 metric tons. That means that society would be cutting carbon and saving money at the same time. (By contrast, cutting carbon by switching to wind power costs an estimated $20 per metric ton reduced.)

But while small behavioral changes, like shutting off an idling engine, seem fairly easy to accomplish — most people could cut their energy consumption without noticing a difference — but the larger changes NRDC suggests might give people pause. Why should you give up one flight a year and perhaps forgo a vacation? Why should you have to eat fewer hamburgers? Or carpool to work twice a week — saving 75 million tons — rather than driving your own car? Is it reasonable to expect people to sacrifice for the greater good, when classical economics teaches us that human beings will seek to maximize their own gain?

Behavioral economists think so. They say people's decision-making processes are not so binary; they're influenced by emotion and complicated by irrational altruism. "Simple models of human behavior where I pursue only my own interests are far too limited," says Rebecca Henderson, co-director of the Harvard Business School's Business and Environmental Initiative. "Humans are much more cooperative and empathetic than that."

Environmentalists might even have better luck appealing to people's sense of community and collective justice, instead of their concern about green jobs or money, say behavioral economists. In fact, talking about cap-and-trade or gas taxes could actually turn people off. A paper by the economist John Gowdy of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute argued that notions of the common good (implicit in any environmental campaign) are undermined by the mention of money. People want to be good — they just need to be convinced in the right way.

Of course, anyone who spent time at the contentious U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen last year might be surprised to hear that humans can be cooperative. And an attempt in 2009 to introduce a bill that would fund a Department of Energy study on the application of behavioral sciences to energy policy was stalled after conservative critics suggested — ludicrously — that it represented a government attempt at mind control.

Realistically, any strategy focused on behavioral changes would only work if people could be persuaded that more consumption does not equal more happiness; psychological studies have shown that to be true, but it's still a hard sell, especially during a recession. And even if people maximize their energy efficiency and choose to conserve, there's still no guarantee that it will translate into the level of emission cuts that groups like NRDC predict, thanks to something called the rebound effect: if we can save $165 for every metric ton of CO2 saved by an OPOWER-like program, that saved money has to go somewhere — and if it's spent on consumption that involves some form of energy powered by fossil fuels, like the vast majority of the energy we use today, the net carbon savings might be far lower than we expect. "These things can have unintended consequences," says Gowdy.

But from an economic perspective, cutting waste will always be a good thing — even if we just use it to buy more stuff. "There really is no downside to pursuing efficiency for business," says Daryl Dulaney, the U.S. CEO for Siemens Industry. "It's truly win-win." If we're really going to save the planet, however, we'll need to convince people not just to become more efficient, but to actually consume less. And that could take some powerful psychology.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972936_1973104_1973105,00.html#ixzz0jQXqDNqg

If you modernize the grid, will consumers care?

NEW YORK--The technology is maturing and there's significant investment on the way, but the smart grid still lacks the regulations and consumer demand for it to take off like the Internet did.

On Wednesday, a conference panel of executives involved in the smart grid said that there are a lot of benefits to upgrading the grid with digital technologies, including the ability to use energy more efficiently and manage the flow of wind and solar power onto the grid.

Individually, consumers can also get benefits, such as remotely controlling home energy and charging electric vehicles to get off-peak rates. But at this point, most of the activity is focused on installing two-way smart meters.

Images: The many faces of the smart grid

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"One of the biggest challenges and opportunities is customer acceptance," said Gianna Manes, senior vice president of retail products and services at utility Duke Energy, during a panel at the Jefferies Clean Tech Conference here. "Consumers are not standing in line for this technology, but as they begin to see the benefits of it, that will change."

Part of the problem is the nature of the product--electricity is the ultimate commodity that consumers in the U.S. simply expect to work. Some smart-grid programs will include energy management tools for the customer to help them see their electricity usage and either software or touch-screen devices for managing home energy.

With more details on consumption, consumers can find ways to reduce waste and cut electricity by about 5 percent to 10 percent, according to early tests. With gear like a networked thermostat, consumers program appliances and home temperature settings to shave usage more, potentially curbing electricity usage at peak times in exchange for some sort of rebate.

Comparing usage data from home to home has proven to one of the best ways to encourage efficiency, according to utilities. And some companies, such as Tendril, plan to offer opt-in services to analyze home energy and provide recommendations, such as having an air conditioner serviced because it consumes more than it should.

Delayed gratification 
Many of these services rely on having some sort of communications infrastructure in place, either a smart meter or a gateway that uses a home broadband connection. But many utilities, if they are investing in the smart grid at all, are focused now on smart meters, rather than the end-user services, said panelists.

"If you looked at the grid that Thomas Edison designed and you looked at the grid today, it's the exact same grid," said Brent Pearson, the vice president of business development of meter maker Landis+Gyr. "What we're really talking about today is smart metering as phase one and most utilities are approaching that as three or four year deployment."

Over time, utilities plan to also upgrade substations and transformers so they can automatically react to outages. Also, utilities need to upgrade the system to accommodate more distributed generation, such as solar and wind at households, and the significant draw from plug-in electric vehicles, Pearson added.

Because the technology has improved, utilities are interested in investing in smart meters, which can have immediate benefits. At Duke Energy in Ohio, for example, the company has a place where it stores 60,000 keys, which are used to get into people's houses to read the meter. Upgrading to an automated reading has clear benefit, said Manes.

Elephant in the room 
Even though some utilities are pushing aggressively with smart-grid technologies, regulatory changes are still needed to drive adoption, panelists said.

To transmit solar and wind from the center of the U.S. to the larger load centers will require significant changes to regulations regarding transmissions, said Greg Yurek, CEO of American Superconductor.

Yurek cited the example of the Tres Amigas project in New Mexico to use high-voltage transmission lines to manage the flow of large amounts of electricity generated by solar and wind. China, which is moving quickly on renewable energy, is a position to deploy American superconductor's transmission cable technology faster than the U.S., he added.

For consumers, they need incentives to change how they consume electricity, which means time-of-day pricing, said Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril Networks. Also, most utilities work under regulations that provide an incentive for them to sell more electricity, rather than encourage customers to conserve.

"The technology and standards are being addressed," said Tuck. "The elephant in the room is that as a CEO of utility in most jurisdictions, you have to choose between shareholders and national energy policy. Unless (energy efficiency) programs exist, deployments will be held back because there's an inherent conflict of interest."

GE places solar bets on thin-film cells

General Electric, which has long made solar panels using traditional silicon, is converting to thin-film cells, using the same material as industry cost leader First Solar.

The company's research organization on Thursday detailed its activities with cadmium telluride solar cells, which the company has determined offers the most potential to lower solar power costs.

As first reported by CNET, GE's next-generation solar panels are based on technology from PrimeStar Solar, a Denver, Colo.-based company where GE is the majority owner. GE executives are bullish that by lowering costs, solar can grow rapidly, as its wind business has done.

GE thin-film solar cells are made from a combination of cadmium telluride, the same material used by industry cost leader First Solar.

(Credit: GE)

GE has not yet begun manufacturing solar panels using the thin-film technology but it plans to do so some time in 2011, according to a company representative.

There are several companies developing thin-film solar cell technology, which promise to lower the cost of manufacturing and use less material. But thin-film solar cells are less efficient at producing electricity than crystalline silicon cells.

GE chose to go with cadmium telluride because it offers the most potential for overall cost savings, said Danielle Merfeld, the solar-technology platform leader at GE's Research facility in Niskayuna, N.Y.

"We think cad tel fundamentally has better cost structure than other thin-film technologies," she said. "The combination of efficiency that we think we can get to, the yield of the manufacturing line, the cost of manufacturing, and the cost of raw materials--the combination gives us the best outcome for making electricity."

Over the past three years, a number of companies have invested in making thin-film solar cells from a combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide (CIGS). But CIGS is a tricky material to work with because manufacturers need to control four materials, noted Merfeld. Cadmium and tellurium are byproducts of existing mining processes, such as copper mining.

In terms of efficiency, Merfeld said GE projects it can come to market with a solar panel that is more efficient than what First Solar already offers, which is about 11 percent.

GE expects to target the utility market with its panels, but there is potential for commercial and residential customers as well. Because thin-film panels are less efficient, they are typically used in places where space is not a major constraint.

GE no longer produces panels made from crystalline silicon and plans to enter solar with high-volume manufacturing. "We decided not to step into manufacturing in 2009 as many other companies did because we wanted to make sure to have a competitive advantage from the technology," Merfeld said.

Asked about the toxicity of cadmium, Merfeld said that the material is stable once it is bound with tellurium. But GE does plan to have a recycling program for its panels, as other solar manufacturers do, she said.

Mitsubishi is ready to put its i-Miev on the road, but this woman will have a 30-minute wait to charge up her car.

(Credit: Mitsubis

Mitsubishi shows production electric car, announces pricing

hi)

Not to be outdone by Subaru's earlier announcement of the Stella electric car, Mitsubishi gave full details on the production i-Miev electric car, including sales volume plans and pricing.

Mitsubishi has been aggressive in pushing its electric car plans by putting its i-Miev into test fleet operations and showing it off at auto shows. The company even let journalists drive one at the Detroit auto show.

The i-Miev fits four passengers for zero-emission driving.

(Credit: Mitsubishi)

Mitsubishi announced that it would begin selling the i-Miev electric car in late July, matching the timing of Subaru's Stella electric car sales. But the i-Miev will initially only be available to corporations and government groups. Sales to private buyers will not commence until April 2010.

Unlike Subaru, which will only sell 170 Stella electric cars, Mitsubishi is planning on producing 1,400 i-Mievs for corporate and government lessees. The i-Mievs will go for 4,380,000 yen, or about $45,300 at current exchange rates. Japanese buyers of the i-Miev would qualify for a $14,300 subsidy for electric vehicles from the Japanese government.

The i-Miev uses a lithium ion battery pack and a 47-kilowatt electric motor to get a range of 100 miles. Recharging the batteries from a quick charger takes 30 minutes, while recharging from a 200 volt outlet takes seven hours. Regenerative brakes help recharge the battery pack during driving.

Mitsubishi has designed the i-Miev with all the amenities of a production vehicle, including electrically powered climate control with air conditioning. All exterior lighting, including headlights, are LED. Mitsubishi specifies an optional navigation system with a 7-inch display and a solid-state drive for map storage.

The company has even worked out which color schemes will be available at launch.

Toyota, Nissan to standardize electric car rechargers

Top Japanese carmakers Toyota and Nissan helped set up a group to standardize fast-charge stations for electric cars on Monday in a bid to promote the spread of the zero-emission vehicles.

The group, led by Japan's biggest utility, Tokyo Electric Power, Toyota Motor, Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors, and Fuji Heavy Industries, will set a standard for Japan and later aim for an international standard.

Some 158 companies and government bodies are expected to join, including 20 non-Japanese firms such as PG&E, Enel, Endesa, and PSA Peugeot Citroen.

A plug for plug-in power.

(Credit: Toyota Motor)

Electric vehicles are seen as one solution to meeting stricter environmental regulations because they have no tailpipe emissions. But they face hurdles such as costly batteries and a limited driving distance compared with conventional cars, as well as the lack of infrastructure to recharge when away from home.

Forming a common "language" for fast-charging electric cars across various brands would save development costs for carmakers and ancillary industries, said the group, called Chademo. (Editors' note: According to Toyota's press release, "'CHAdeMO' is an abbreviation of 'CHArge de MOve', equivalent to 'charge for moving', and is a pun for 'O cha demo ikaga desuka' in Japanese, meaning 'Let's have a tea while charging' in English.")

"We will compete when it comes to vehicle performance, but we should cooperate on areas such as infrastructure," said Nissan Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga. Japan's No. 3 automaker will begin selling its first electric car later this year.

Mitsubishi Motors and Fuji Heavy, the maker of Subaru-brand cars, are the world's only mass-volume automakers now producing battery-run electric cars, with sales so far limited to corporate and government fleets in Japan.

"There are 1,000 electric cars and 150 fast-charge stations in Japan already," Tokyo Electric Power Executive Vice President Hiroyuki Ino told a news conference in Tokyo. "Our aim is to form a standard in Japan and make use of that in the world."

He said the group would lobby international bodies such as the Society of Automotive Engineers and the International Transport Forum to promote its technology.

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