Yesterday, Clean Edge, Inc., a clean-tech research and publishing firm, released Clean Tech Job Trends 2009. The report provides an investigation of how clean-tech jobs in the U.S. and globally are changing the face of industry, where the hotbeds of growth exist, and whether current clean-tech salaries are living up to their ‘green-over blue-collar’ promise.
On August 11, the Financial Times reported on the promise of “synthetic biology,” including the development of algae that generates biofuels. In July, ExxonMobil entered into a $600 million venture with Synthetic Genomics, a firm founded by biotech pioneer Dr. Craig Venter. “Synthetic Genomics has already engineered strains of algae that secrete oil from their cells,” writes the FT’s Clive Cookson. Will oil companies transform themselves into algae companies? Or, a few years from now, could the makers of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” film a sequel about algae?
The Guardian and Cleantech Group recently announced the Global Cleantech 100. This is the first ever list of this scale highlighting the most promising private clean technology companies around the world. The Global Cleantech 100 recognizes companies at the forefront of cleantech innovation offering solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. The final list represents the collective opinion of hundreds of leading experts from cleantech innovation and venture capital companies in EMEA, North America, India and China.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers will be hosting the 2010 4th International Conference on Energy Sustainability on May 17-22, 2010. This exciting event meant as a forum for exchange of innovative ideas, leading edge concepts, new technologies and devices, ongoing R&D efforts, prototype and demonstration projects, commercialization technologies and projects, and visions of the future related to the general theme of Energy Sustainability. The conference will consist of plenary talks, invited talks, panel discussions, workshops, tutorials, technical sessions, poster presentations, and exhibitions. The conference provides a unique opportunity for communication and collaboration between academia, industry and planners in the areas of Solar Energy, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy and Advanced Energy Technologies. Abstracts are invited in any relevant policy and technology areas.
Last week, Secretary Chu announcen nearly $300 million in Clean Cities grants to support clean fuels, vehicles, and infrastructure development. The projects are designed to create jobs, limit pollution, and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.
The excitement surrounding the biofuels market opportunity has been tempered somewhat by its many challenges, which include ethical questions of food versus fuel, limited availability of inexpensive feedstocks, petroleum price volatility, overcapacity of production and the global recession. However, a two recent reports from both Pike Research and Bio Economic Research Associates forecast that, despite these significant challenges, the combined biodiesel and ethanol markets will reach $247 billion in sales by 2020, up from just $76 billion in 2010. Total job creation, accounting for economic multiplier effects, could reach 123,000 in 2012, 383,000 in 2016, and 807,000 by 2022.
The great American car culture is literally running out of gas. Many leading petroleum geologists are warning us that the era of easy cheap oil is over and that we are facing a much steeper rate of depletion than commonly believed. There is nothing that can replace these vast stores of liquid fossil energy that is being pumped out of the ground and drives our car culture. Without cheap plentiful oil the American car culture will rapidly crumble. The impending demise of the car culture and the types of spread out low density living that it has fostered is perhaps the most profound socio-economic earthquake we will have faced in many decades. Will we wisely prepare and build out alternatives to this doomed way of life or we wake up one day unprepared and find that the pumps really have run dry? Talking about giving up on the car culture in America is quite the third rail — no one wants to give up their car — and discussion often veers off into irrational sound bite, talking point filled shouting matches. But the facts are the facts. Cars run on gas and the era of cheap easy oil is over… the world now stands at the top of the oil production curve… at the peak of production. It is like we are all sitting in some great roller coaster ever so slowly rolling perched right at the very top of the precipice. We do not have much time at all to begin re-inventing America and building a green economy that can carry us into the future; if we dilly dally and do nothing events will soon race ahead of us and force drastic sudden change upon us all.
Algenol Biofuels, a Florida biofuels startup and DOW Chemical Company announced a pilot-scale algae-based integrated biorefinery that will convert CO2 into ethanol. The patented technology developed by Algenol Biofuels uses CO2, salt water, sunlight and non-arable land to produce ethanol, which can be used as a fuel or as a feedstock, replacing natural gas in the production of plastic. The algae is grown in long plastic covered troughs, called bioreactors that are filled with salt water that has been saturated with carbon dioxide gas, which provides the carbon the algae needs for photosynthesis.
The second Renewable Energy Finance Forum – West (REFF-West), will take place in San Francisco on September 29-30, 2009. It builds on the success of both REFF-Wall St and the inaugural REFF-West, which took place in Seattle in October 2008.
The conference focuses on finance and investment for clean energy technologies, with a particular emphasis on the Western US, and covers both large scale projects and the development and commercialization of new technologies. REFF-West is targeted at a senior level audience including investors, financiers, project developers and clean technology companies. Conference sessions will examine opportunities in a range of cleantech markets.
