{"id":271285,"date":"2010-02-03T12:40:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T17:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greenenergyreporter.com\/?p=6025"},"modified":"2010-02-03T12:40:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T17:40:26","slug":"january-top-ten-players-in-green-energy-nos-6-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/271285","title":{"rendered":"January Top Ten Players in Green Energy: Nos 6-10"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

6: Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\" Bill Gates founded one of the world’s most successful software companies. Today, he’s also one of the world’s most ambitious philanthropist. Given that unique background, Gates’ actions carry weight. In an interview<\/a> last week Gates mentioned that he had invested some money with Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures. As we’ve noted that Khosla’s fund is not your “mom and pop” cleantech fund, as it tends to go after cutting edge outfits backed by promising, out-of-the box ideas. One of its investments is in LS9, the developer<\/a> of enzyme-based diesel fuel.<\/p>\n

A few days after talking about his Khosla investment, Gates announced that he would spend<\/a> $4.5 million to fund geoengineering projects. You don’t get more cutting edge than that — geoengineering seeks to deliberately change climate pattern on a global scale to mitigate the impact of climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

7: Solyndra<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Could Solyndra, the California maker of thin-film photovoltaic cells, turn out to be the Google of the solar power industry? It’s certainly a favorite of early stage investors who invested $198 million in the company by the end of 2009. It also was one of the first renewable energy company to score a coveted loan guarantee, which it plans to use to build a new plant.<\/p>\n

Solyndra only started selling its panels in the summer of 2008, but in that relatively short time, it’s scored some impressive sales, including the December deal worth $105 million with Italian installer Sun System. In total, over the past two years, Solyndra has registered more than $2 billion in backlog<\/a> orders.<\/p>\n

What’s more, in what promises to be one of the most talked about cleantech Initial Public Offerings (IPO) of the year — and a lucrative pay-out for its VC backers — Solyndra filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission <\/a>in December for an IPO that, by some estimates, could raise up to $300 million.<\/p>\n


\n8: Tesla Motors<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> It\u2019s been a while since a U.S. automaker filed for an initial public offering \u2013 Dwight Eisenhower was president the last time it happened.<\/p>\n

But if ever there was a company with the gumption to make history, it\u2019s Tesla<\/a>. The company is seeking $100 million from its IPO, a step up from A123\u2019s $57 million IPO last fall. Cleantech companies will be watching closely to see how Tesla is received by investors.<\/p>\n

Tesla is not expected to make a profit \u2013 or even have a product once its ultra-exclusive Roadster goes out of production in 2011 \u2013 until it rolls out the planned $57,400 Model S car in 2012. The company needs the cash to build its vehicle but it already has 2,000 buyers who have plunked down deposits of $5,000 to get their hands on the Model S. That\u2019s moxy.<\/p>\n


\n9:<\/strong> Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Senator-elect Scott Brown won’t be sworn in as Massachusetts freshman senator until next week, but his stunning victory<\/a> in Massachusetts last month was interpreted by many talking heads as a game changer<\/a>, killing any chance of President Obama signing a climate change bill into law.<\/p>\n

That may be true based on Brown’s stance on health care reform — he’s said he would vote against it. One could deduce that he would also vote “nay” on climate change, another cornerstone policy of the Obama administration. But the reality is that not much is known about Brown’s stance on climate change<\/a>.\u00a0 If he has any position on the matter, it’s likely to be influenced by the fact that he represents a state that just a year ago helped put Obama and his cap-and-trade\/climate change agenda in the White House.<\/p>\n

So, while on paper Brown’s election has certainly complicated things, the jury is still out whether it’s a game changer for climate change and other key bills.<\/p>\n


\n10: The Carousel Fraud<\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/strong>Last month’s indictment by Belgian prosecutors<\/a> of three Britons and a Dutchman for failing to pay 3 million Euros ($4.19 million) in taxes on carbon trading transactions is terrible news for supporters of a U.S. cap-and-trade system. The scheme, known as the \u201ccarousel fraud\u201d involved buying credits in one country that allows credits to be sold without charging Value Added Tax (VAT) and then selling these credits to buyers in another country that requires VAT to be collected. That’s the sort of close-to-the edge financial scheme that’s fueled calls for a pitch fork revolt against Wall Street over the past year.<\/p>\n

The fraud validates the anxiety many people feel about creating a huge, new financial market<\/a> to curb emissions. Could traders replicate this scheme in the U.S.?\u00a0 Not necessarily, because in the U.S., cap and trade would be governed by one set of taxation rules. But given its lackluster support, what’s for sure is that cap and trade certainly can’t afford too many bad PR days of the sort brought on by the carousel fraud.<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6: Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Bill Gates founded one of the world’s most successful software companies. Today, he’s also one of the world’s most ambitious philanthropist. Given that unique background, Gates’ actions carry weight. In an interview last week Gates mentioned that he had invested some money with Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures. As we’ve noted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2814,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2814"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}