The continued global financial crisis has been hurting the green economy. The sudden and very sharp drop in the availability of capital has dried up needed new investments and funding for new many green economy projects and businesses. Because many green or clean tech businesses are in an early expanding phase of their growth, they have been especially hard hit by the current dearth of capital. Quite a number of green firms are at serious risk of failure because of this capital starvation.
The economic recovery package contains $78.6 billion in clean energy, energy efficiency, environmental and green transportation funding. There are also energy-related tax incentives. Prior to signing the bill, Obama spoke of how the United States can now convert crisis into opportunity, like making the country more energy efficient, and how he would like to see the nation’s amount of renewable energy doubled in the next three years.
There may never be a better time to begin new building retrofits and investments in energy efficiency than the climate that prevails today. Commercial and residential buildings accounted for 39 percent of the total US energy consumption. Lowering these on-going expenditures can have such an impact on the bottom line for building operators and owners that this may represent one of the safest and most lucrative places to invest in. The green building sector offers many opportunities for retrofitting existing buildings to increase their energy efficiency lower their water usage or storm water runoff and so forth that present a whole slew of skilled labor and small business ideas for enterprising individuals and contractors willing to make the leap as well as largely untapped growth opportunities for larger corporations.
The White House accepts suggestions and questions from the public and regularly responds to feedback. Joyce from Lake Forest Park, WA wrote “I am concerned about how President Obama’s stimulus package will help people in construction industries. New green jobs will be created, but how will this help engineers and architects keep and expand their businesses?”
Earlier this month, First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) announced that it has reduced its manufacturing cost for solar modules in the fourth quarter 2009 to 98 cents per watt, becoming the first solar cell manufacturing company to break the $1 per watt price barrier. This is a major price milestone for the solar photovoltaic manufacturing sector and represents a significant step towards achieving what is known in the industry as as grid parity, the price level where the per watt cost for solar electricity reaches the current averaged cost of electricity on the grid a goal First Solar plans to reach by 2012.
In February, Dan Smollen over at Sturdy Roots polled green executives to find out their interest in participate in live seminars and webinars, attending networking events and in enrolling in courses designed to develop their green skills. I little under 100 executives participated and they released their results earlier this week, with 100% of participants saying that they would attend networking events.b
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently released a list of U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest number of energy efficient buildings in 2008 that have earned EPA’s Energy Star. The list is headed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Washington, D.C., Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis-St Paul, Atlanta and Seattle. “Energy Star buildings typically use […]
Always On Going Green has announced their list of who they think are the most promising green sector companies in the East. They evaluated several hundred private cleantech companies in the region, paying special attention to companies that appear likely to thrive in spite of tight credit and cheap energy. Other variables evaluated in include: the disruptive potential of the company’s technology combined with its likely feasibility; the strength of the management team; credibility of the investors; how big a market is there for the innovation; the clarity of the company’s mission; how close is the company to bringing this innovation to market; and the strength of its claim to belong to the cleantech revolution.
After viewing the 20/20 feature about work at home scams, Green Gigs summarized the main points of the show and decided to post some of her own tips. They are excellent. I have also posted a few additional resources to help you avoid work at home scams that prey on virtual workers.
