Renewables Lecture Recap: Opportunities, Companies to Follow

Last Saturday, I attended an interesting Clean Tech workshop sponsored by Bay Area chapters of NSHMBA and SHPE.  As with most of François Xavier Rongère lectures, this event was "sold-out".  By popular demand, I am posting some of his main talking points.

Renewable Energies: The time is now.  What has changed?
Man caused global warming, it's solid science (or at worst, a wise assumption).
Most CO2 emission increase is due to developing countries
Major technology improvements
Electricity generation has moved from optimization to risk management
(transportation will follow)
  -Oil/Natural Gas tensions, Price/Dollar volatility, Political Tensions, Energy independence/Security
We need to act now

Opportunities in Booming Renewable Energy Sector

Wind turbines - Bigger is better (But small is avian-friendly)

Solar cells: efficiency is everything
Thermo-solar (heating), more efficient than PVs

Biomass 2nd Renewable in California
Theoretically, Biomass is carbon neutral
It's actually not.  Additional CO2 emissions for: Planting, Maintaining and Harvesting, irrigation, fertilizer, fuel manufacturing.

Biofuels cover a broad range of technologies and applications (Transportation, Heat, Power), and feedstock sources -(sunflower, jatropha, safflower, soybean, mustard, canola)

Bio-fuels are booming.  Ethanol: Corn Ethanol consumes almost as much energy than it yields (sugar cane has better yields)

Diesel:  competitive with petro-diesel today, and algae is very promising.

Geothermal Energy:  Best locations are at the boundaries of main tectonic plates (It's big in CA).

Companies to Follow:
The number of cited companies in the space were numerous . Additional references can be found in the emerging technology database.

Bio, Companies to follow
    * Capstone 
    * STM-bio
    * Prometheus-Energy 
    * RealEnergy
    * Cummins
    * Solar
    * Microgy 

GeoThermal Electrical, Companies to follow
    * Calpine
    * Geothermal Energy Association
    * Great Basin Geothermal
    * ENEX
    * Western GeoPower Corp.
    * Geo-Heat Center
    * Fuji Electric
    * Electratherm
    * Ormat
    * CalEnergy   

GeoThermal HP/Hydro, Companies to follow
    * Water Furnace
    * Earth Energy Systems 
    * McQuay
    * Geoexchange
    * Climate Master

Solar PV, Local companies to follow
    * www.Appliedmaterials.com
    * www.Miasole.com
    * www.Nanosolar.com
    * www.Sunpowercorp.com
    * www.Akeena.com
    * www.EnergyInnovations.com
    * www.Nanosysinc.com
    * www.solfocus.com

Solar Trombe Wall/Conc, companies to follow
    * www.Solarwall.com
    * www.Ausra.com
    * www.Brightsourceenergy.com
    * www.Stirlingenergy.com
    * www.Solel.com
    * www.esolar.com
    * www.infiniacorp.com

Tide, companies to follow
    * Blue Energy Canada
    * Clean Current Technology
    * Marine Current Turbines
    * GCK (Gorlov)
    * Lunar Energy
    * Open Hydro
    * Enemar Kobold
    * Verdant Power
    * Seapower
    * Tidal Electric
    * Aquantis

Wave, Companies to follow
    * Wavegen
    * Oceanlinx
    * Ocean Power Delivery
    * Ocean Power technology
    * Wave Dragon
    * Finavera

Wind (Large), Companies to follow
    * www.gewindenergy.com
    * www.clipperwind.com
    * www.windenergy.com (aka Southwest Wind)
    * www.enXco.com
    * www.ppmenergy.com

Wind (Small), Companies to follow
    * www.awstruewind.com (Albany)
    * www.windlogic.com (St Paul)
    * www.3tiergroup.com (Seattle)
    * www.garradhassan.com  (UK)

Source: François Xavier Rongère. Manager, High Tech energy efficiency program at PG&E.  (But misquotes/errors/omissions are my own).  Merci, François !

Comments

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