Green Energy Reporter’s ranking of the top ten players in green energy for the month of February is out! Our top-ten list is based on the players’ influence over green energy policy and their ability to move the debate.
1: Bloom Energy
Whoa! What a launch. The rollout of Bloom Energy’s Bloom Box will likely emerge as a case study of close-to perfect PR execution. One must admit anticipation was high considering that for the past eight years the Silicon Valley company had remained tight lipped about its fuel cell technology. But when the company, which since its inception has raised $400 million, was ready to talk, boy did it talk, culminating with a whole segment on 60 Minutes. All the way through, Bloom Energy’s CEO and backers stayed on message, describing the Bloom Box as a green, clean source of power. And for the most part the media bought the narrative. Although, by the end of the week-long media fest, questions emerged asking how green the Box really was, considering that it does emit C02 when producing energy. Albeit, at the end of the day, thanks to thorough fundamental research (and good strategic PR), Bloom has for the time being anchored itself as one of the “it” players in greentech. However, $400 million later, the question lingers: Will Bloom turn out to be a Google or a Segway? Segway is a losing investment of one Bloom backer, Kleiner Perkins.
2: BrightSource Energy
It’s not remarkable that this Oakland-based company is battling an array of land and wildlife conservation groups to build the 392-megawatt Ivanpah solar power complex in California’s Mojave desert. Lots of green energy companies, such as Cape Wind, are fighting “green on green” fights, which pit renewable energy interests against traditional environmental concerns.
What’s remarkable is that BrightSource appears to be winning.
Ten days after the company scaled back Ivanpah to reduce its impact on the habitat of the threatened desert tortoise and local flora, BrightSource won a $1.37 billion loan guarantee from the Energy Department. State and federal regulatory hurdles remain, but it seems that BrightSource is hitting all the right notes. Company President John Woolard initially protested that the industry was being “overburdened” with too many requirements.
But, even while protesting, the company has tried to address critics’ concerns – though not hard enough, according to project opponents.
If BrightSource can make this project work, it could provide a blueprint for hundreds of other green energy companies facing environmental challenges.
3: German Solar feed-in Tariffs
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
We’ve known for a while that the German solar feed-in tariffs (#2 in our January ranking), a crucial government subsidy that’s helped turn a country with long, dark winters into a solar powerhouse, were going to be cut.
Early on in her second term, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative coalition-government floated the idea of a subsidy cut, which quickly became a top policy priority. So, it wasn’t a surprise when this month, following weeks of debate and dead-on-arrival rumors, Berlin announced a 15 percent subsidy cut for solar parks built after July 1. This was less steep than the 25 percent cut first considered, but either way, Germany’s new regulatory regime will push solar companies like First Solar, which is largely dependent on the German market, to diversify their project pipeline.
4: Silver Spring
Will 2010 witness a flood of IPOs by cleantech companies? With the global financial crisis firmly in the rear view mirror, a number (or here) of renewable energy companies are looking at public markets as a source of capital. The latest to do that is smart-grid company Silver Spring, which last week lined up Morgan Stanley and Jefferies & Co. to underwrite its expected IPO.
The news comes just a couple of months after the California company raised $100 million in new funding, from Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Northgate Capital. Next stop on the IPO route for Silver Spring will be its S1 filing, which will, for the first time, offer the public an insight on the company’s books and its worth.
5: Intel
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, investments poured into Silicon Valley to support young IT companies. The World Wide Web in the late ’90s provided the valley’s second act. And now, a decade into the 21st century, cleantech is shaping Silicon Valley’s third act.
Underscoring the valley’s transformation as a cleantech hub was the announcement last week by Intel, one of the valley’s pioneer companies, that it would invest $3.5 billion to support U.S. tech companies, including early stage cleantech startups. Other Silicon Valley stalwarts backing cleantech companies include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the powerful fund behind some of Silicon Valley’s most profitable plays.
6: Areva
Ausra CEO Robert Fishman and Areva Senior VP Amit Srivastava
Areva, the French, government-owned maker of nuclear reactors, entered the solar business in a big way last month with its acquisition of Mountain View, Calif., -based solar-thermal equipment maker Ausra. The deal is interesting for a couple of reasons: (1) It’s a nuclear power company snatching a renewable energy company; (2) It underscores the funding bind the renewable energy industry finds itself in.
Despite its unique and largely proven technology, until the acquisition, Ausra was at a standstill, hampered by a thin balance sheet that left it unable to develop the utility-scale solar power plants it had set out to do. A year after Wall Street’s implosion, expect more old energy companies buying ambitious but cash-hungry new energy companies.
7: U.S. Chamber of Commerce
U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue
After a rough year in 2009, in which they lost high profile members and got into scraps with everyone from the Yes Men to the Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, the business lobbying group flashed its fangs in February and is going for the kill.
The Chamber announced that it will take the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to court over its finding that greenhouse gases are a public health danger in an effort to prevent the agency from regulating greenhouse gases. The Chamber’s lawyers have not yet released the specifics of their challenge, saying only that the EPA failed to follow proper procedures.
The Chamber and its pugnacious President, Tom Donohue, have always been hostile to The White House’s plans to curb emissions. But now, they’re not alone. There were 16 court challenges to the EPA’s endangerment finding as of Feb. 17.
In the private sector, ConocoPhillips, BP and Caterpillar have dropped out of the Climate Action Partnership, an industry group that advocates for climate legislation and public support for a climate bill seems to have withered in the cold winter. Touché Chamber.
8: Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Yvo de Boer, UNFCC
Nothing says, “this multinational agency is going nowhere,” like the agency’s chief executive fleeing to the private sector. Alas, that is what Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, did earlier this month when he announced his intention to join the consultancy KPMG in July.
De Boer could scarcely muster a kind word for the international treaty movement on his way out the door. Instead, he said that the “sense of direction toward a low-emissions world” calls for partnerships with the business sector, which is where he will now go.
De Boer, a Dutchman who has led the agency since 2006, had always been clear-eyed about the dim prospects for a binding treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen last December.
Still, his departure from the UNFCCC justifies the pessimism that many people feel about the major parties agreeing to a successor to the Kyoto treaty anytime soon. Here is a man who knows the players and their negotiating positions effectively saying that a treaty isn’t going to happen. He’s even going to work up to the next climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, which means he thinks there won’t be a breakthrough there either.
Cancun attendees take note: you can abandon all hope.
9: The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Rajendra K. Pachauri, IPCC chairman
It’s been death by a thousand cuts for the IPCC. The scientific body tasked with evaluating global warming had to admit that its conclusions – notably, the erroneous claim that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035 – were not always right. Then critics started going after IPCC leader Rajendra K. Pachauri for his consulting gigs for private companies, even though the money goes to his favorite charities.
Of course, the critics are a ragtag bunch of politicians like Republican Sen. John Barasso and fruitcakes like Lord Monckton, who says certain young people who believe in climate change are the “Hitler Youth”. That doesn’t seem to matter. The New York Times and other mainstream media are buying what they’re selling.
The attacks on the IPCC’s credibility have a ripple effect. Enemies of climate change legislation in the U.S. Congress, such as Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., pounce on every misstep, both real and perceived, and declare global warming a fraud. Legislation is not going anywhere as long as the chief scientific authority keeps floundering.
As they say in Washington these days, the IPCC needs a win.
10: Enerkem
Canada is celebrating its hockey team’s gold medal victory over the U.S. at the Vancouver Olympic Games. It’s also been a golden week for another Canadian entity of a different kind. Montreal-based biofuel company Enerkem, which has developed a technology that turns waste materials into “syngas,” scored a CDN $53.8 million ($50.09 million / €37.5 million / £33.9 million) investment from garbage hauling company Waste Management. That private investment follows a $50 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to finance construction a waste-to-biofuels power facility in Pontotoc, Miss. Not bad, that’s more than $100 million raised by Enerkem in less than three months.