Enhanced Geothermal Systems Research Awarded $43.1 Million by US Department of Energy

$1.6B smart meter program starts in California

CALIFORNIA SELECTED AS PARTNER STATE FOR CeBIT 2009
California’s Selection Marks First Time a State, Not a Country, Will Serve as Partner

And because I am certain there a few stressed readers out there today, for those of you needing something soothing to look at in the midst of this market mess - there’s a lot to be hopeful about, and many great opportunities just under one’s nose…
11 Buildings Wrapped in Gorgeous Green and Living Walls

And stay tuned for more. I’ll be writing about Genomatica next…as soon as I come up for air!

This comes as no surprise, really, as you know water cost increases are coming, but very interesting to track…

PARK RIDGE, N.J. (September 24, 2008) – The annual survey conducted by the NUS Consulting Group found that the average price of water in the United States soared by 7.3 percent for the period ending July 1, 2008.  The survey, which includes 51 water systems located throughout the country, revealed the highest price paid was in Boston, MA at $5.76 per one thousand gallons (“KGal”) while consumers in Savannah, GA enjoyed the lowest water price at $1.09 per KGal.  The average cost of water in 2008 for the US was $2.81 per KGal.  When including related sewer charges, the survey found that the national average price rose to $7.08 per KGal – an increase of 6.8 percent from July 2007.  Since 2003, average surveyed water prices in the US have increased by nearly 30 percent.
 
More than two-thirds of the surveyed cities had increased their water charges.  Some of the more notable increases included New Orleans, LA (+51.9%), St Louis, MO (+32.4%), Fort Smith, AR (+29.6%), Sioux Falls, SD (+18.2%), Los Angeles, CA (+17.9%), Binghamton, NY (+16.6%), Kansas City, MO (+16.3%), San Francisco, CA (+15.8%), Hackensack, NJ (+15.4%) and Chicago, IL (+15.0%).  Of the water systems surveyed, none reported a decrease in pricing over the past year.
 
“With so much attention being paid to oil and gasoline markets, Americans may neglect to notice the increases in their water charges,” remarked Richard Soultanian, co-president of NUS Consulting Group.  “While US prices are considered modest by international comparison, this most precious commodity is truly our sleeping giant in terms of cost impacting each and every consumer.”
 
Highest Water Cost (Per KGal)                         Highest Water & Sewer Cost (Per KGal)
1.  Boston, MA             $5.76   +5.6%             1.  Seattle, WA $14.28 +5.1%
2.  Huntington, WV     $5.61   0.0%                 2.  Atlanta, GA $13.28    0.0%
3.  Pittsburgh, PA         $5.21   0.0%               3.  Boston, MA             $12.96 +5.6%
4.  Newport, NH          $4.86   0.0%                 4.  San Francisco, CA   $12.76 +11.0%
5.  San Francisco, CA   $4.00   +15.8%            5.  Portland, ME           $11.67 +6.4%
 
Lowest Water Cost       (Per KGal)                    Lowest Water & Sewer Cost     (Per KGal)
1.  Savannah, GA          $1.09   +8.0%            1.  Memphis, TN          $2.43   +8.9%
2.  Des Moines, IA        $1.23   +2.8%             2.  Chicago, IL              $2.81   +15.6%
3.  Biloxi, MS               $1.26   0.0%                3.  Greenville, MS         $2.92   +6.3%
4.  Greenville, MS         $1.46   +14.0%           4.  El Paso, TX              $3.56    0.0%
5.  Chicago, IL              $1.53   +15.0%           5.  Biloxi, MS               $3.98    0.0%
 
NUS Consulting Group is the world’s leader in energy and telecommunications consulting services.  Employing over 400 individuals in 11 countries, the company provides innovative and cost-effective expertise for its clients.  Privately held since 1933, the company has redirected more than $4 billion in energy and telecommunication savings from utilities to its clients.

Washington, D.C. (September 9, 2008) — As America confronts the current energy crisis, a new report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and partner labor and environmental groups shows that the U.S. can create two million jobs by investing in clean energy technologies that will strengthen the economy and fight global warming. The report finds that investing in clean energy would create four times as many jobs as spending the same amount of money within the oil industry.

“This new report shows that investing in clean energy is a win-win solution. Shifting to clean energy will put more people to work, provide consumers relief at the pump, help reduce global warming pollution and revitalize our economy at a time when many Americans are hurting,” said Frances Beinecke, President of NRDC.

“Green Recovery – A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy” analyzes the potential for a two year $100 billion green investment program – which would be comparable to the size of the April 2008 federal stimulus package dedicated to consumer rebates – to be an engine for job creation in the U.S. This type of investment is a component of a broader clean energy strategy to create a low-carbon economy and reduce global warming pollutions.

The program could be paid for with proceeds from auctions of carbon permits under a global warming cap-and-trade program that will drive private investments into clean energy and raise public revenue through carbon permit auctions. A cap-and-trade program will enable America to reduce global warming pollution to the levels science indicates are needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

The package is illustrative of the potential for clean energy – and specifically green infrastructure investments – to create new jobs and strengthen the economy. The specific package would invest in six green infrastructure priorities: retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency, expanding mass transit and freight rail, constructing “smart” electrical grid transmission systems, wind power, solar power, and next-generation biofuels.

The report also shows that the vast majority of the two million jobs gained from this initial $100 billion investment in clean energy would be in the same areas of employment that people already work in today, in every region and state of the country; for example: constructing wind farms creates jobs for sheet metal workers, machinists and truck drivers, among many others. Increasing the energy efficiency of buildings through retrofitting requires roofers, insulators and building inspectors. Expanding mass transit systems employs civil engineers, electricians, and dispatchers.

In addition to creating two million jobs nationwide over two years, a $100 billion initial investment in our clean energy future would:

* Create nearly four times more jobs than spending the same amount of money within the oil industry and 300,000 more jobs than a similar amount of spending directed toward household consumption.
* Create roughly triple the number of good jobs — paying at least $16 dollars an hour — as spending the same amount of money within the oil industry.
* Bolster employment especially in construction and manufacturing. Construction employment has fallen from 8 million to 7.2 million over the past two years due to the housing bubble collapse. The Green Recovery program can, at the least, bring back these lost 800,000 construction jobs.

The report proposes that the $100 billion of initial investments fund:

* $50 billion for tax credits. This would assist private businesses and homeowners to finance both commercial and residential building retrofits, as well as investments in renewable-energy systems.
* $46 billion in direct government spending. This would support public building retrofits, the expansion of mass transit, freight rail and smart electrical-grid systems, and new investments in renewable energy.
* $4 billion for federal loan guarantees. This would underwrite private credit that is extended to finance building retrofits and investments in renewable energy.

The report was written by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, under commission by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and released by NRDC and a coalition of labor and environmental groups. The authors of the report are Robert Pollin, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, James Heintz, and Helen Scharber of PERI. For the complete report findings go to
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/pdf/green_recovery.pdf

For the 34 state fact sheets go to: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/green_recovery.html

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Beijing.

Some may say Serious doesn’t need any more press or attention because of all the press they’ve already received. (Which I chalk up to great product, which makes it easy for a well-trained marketing and pr team to execute, combined with a well-trained team and something that just blows the socks off anything else around it). I say the company’s products and technologies aren’t getting enough of either. And Serious is concerned that that there isn’t enough awareness around the built environment, too, and what it’s contributing to global warming. And that’s really where Kevin Surace and I started our conversation last week, talking about the fact that the story that compelled Serious into existence isn’t one that’s well told, nor one well understood by consumers.

A little background info for you all:

The built environment is responsible for generating – and requiring – more energy than any other sector there is. 52% of CO2 worldwide each year goes just to making and occupying buildings (12% to make materials and 40% to operate buildings). Gypsum drywall, as most of us know, was designed almost 100 years ago. Gypsum drywall takes huge amounts of energy to manufacture. A large drywall plant uses 5 trillion BTUs of natural gas a year and generates as much CO2 as do 66,000 cars on the road. That’s just a mind-boggling set of numbers.

There are more than 85 dry wall plants operating today in the U.S., making 30 billion + square feet of product every year, and over a billion panels a year are manufactured in the United States alone. The market is huge. Note: the EPA doesn’t regulate CO2 today for drywall plants, or any other plants yet, as far as I know.

Contributing to that 52% in CO2 emissions is the energy which has to be generated additionally – due to inefficient windows which let our heat (or air conditioning) literally out the window. The window industry is a $22 billion dollar industry, roughly split in half: half in residential, and half in commercial. That half that’s residential is largely a retrofit market opportunity, but this is an industry that’s not the fastest-moving boat in the river. Current Energy Star window ratings actually desperately need to be increased if they’re to really make a dent in pushing CO2 emissions lower. And the majority of consumers don’t know enough about windows, window Energy Star ratings, or how their windows are contributing to increasing CO2 emissions to know they need to be voicing their concerns and pushing for change.

So with an eye on development of environmental products, and a mission to rewrite the book on building materials in order to reduce the amount of CO2 being generated in the production of these products, Serious Materials went to work first on redesigning gypsum using recycled materials and virtually zero CO2. The company today is getting set to launch the drywall technology they’ve developed called EcoRock, which is the first zero-CO2 drywall manufacturing process to come to market – made from 80% recycled material (pre-consumer waste combined with other raw materials. “It heats, cools and finishes itself in a long line, so there’s no need for dryers, calciners, natural gas…nothing,” says Surace, meaning that very little energy is used during the product’s core production, which translates to virtually zero CO2 emissions, and billions of pounds in C02 emissions saved each year. Additionally, Surace says, Serious Materials can add features into drywall that people could never get before. “Drywall is really a decorative product.” I can only think of lots of very inspired architects and interior designers suddenly.

The company is also coming out with a line of high performance windows – note their recent acquisition of Alpen Windows. Alpen was named a 2007 Top 10 Green Building Product by Building Green, and Alpen Windows and Alpenglass deliver center-of-glass R-values up to R-20. Current single pane windows have an R-value of R-1. Double pane glass windows with low emissivity coating have an R-value of only R-2 to R-3. “Consumers need to start asking for full frame R values on the windows they buy, and requiring R-5 or higher,” says Surace. (More on R-Values here: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-value_(insulation)].) “And the public should be demanding a carbon footprint on everything the public buys!” I couldn’t agree more.

I asked Kevin where he thought things would be in 10, or say even 20 to 50 years. He said to me, “Lara, in 30 years we’re out of oil and virtually out of gas; cars will go to the grid, and the vast majority of our materials are going to be made with zero energy. Now, everything has come out of the Industrial Revolution, which consumed tons of energy. But just because we said then that that was the right formula doesn’t mean it’s the right one today. One has to consider - energy costs have gone up, so the fact that we said we’d use lots of energy and hardly any labor might no longer be the right formula. There’s no business case for energy use today. And you really don’t want to be on the wrong side of the energy/carbon curve – it’s dumb. So not only are we doing the right thing regarding carbon emissions – we’re doing it better.”

As I said, when I see a company that’s an innovator, building a solid business, with a game changing technology/approach to an industry, I’m always fascinated – largely because I find it interesting to watch what happens to the rest of a ‘system’ when a catalyst of change is introduced into the dynamic. Change is interesting. It’s certainly not boring, and it means growth.

So if you ask me, I can think of two industries who I hope are up to the challenge to change: the drywall industry, which would be exceptionally smart to follow Serious Materials’ lead, and the windows industry. Somebody should put into motion an R-5 national window-retrofit program that a green corps can then go execute.

Among other things Jon and I did this August was attend a dinner (for which the evening’s topic was discussion of green business issues) at the lovely SF home of Peter Kuperman, who I met through LinkedIn (as did everyone else at the dinner). Since that dinner, I’m of the opinion at this point that Peter has a good shot at becoming a professional chef, after eating my way through the dishes served that evening-all of which were delectable. About the event itself: everyone in attendance was fun to talk with. One guy was there from Treehugger.com, as was his girlfriend, who’s with Saatchi & Saatchi S; someone else showed up who incidentally is a friend of ours and also happens to be a Green Programs Specialist with the Department of Public Health, and she in turn brought along one of her friends, who handles Waste Diversion for Macy’s West (though she’s about to take on several of Macy’s stores’ waste diversion programmatic efforts). Then someone from KEMA showed up, as did someone from URS and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. And Ecounit’s CEO Kent Ragen was the night’s featured guest. He was there with his lovely wife Naoko, and he talked to us about what his company Ecounit is doing to connect eco-conscious companies with their environmentally-aware consumers. “We reward consumers for taking eco-friendly actions,” Ragen told me. “Today we offer green-themed surveys so that consumers can provide feedback to companies about green products and brand perception related to the environment. In the near future we will be launching programs with grocery stores that reward consumers for utilizing reusable bags; eventually the program will be extended to other industries that want to motivate their customers to take eco-friendly actions. EcoUnit participants are rewarded with EcoUnit credits which they can put toward carbon offsets, tree planting, and other eco-friendly products.” And we talked about Portland. Being at heart the Oregonian I am, and seeing that Kent’s from Portland, it was fun talking home state stuff, and by the end of the evening, Jon and I concurred that we’d had a lovely evening, and how refreshing a party it was. For the curious, I’ll tell you that Peter’s “Chef By Night” parties have become so popular that he’s wisely outsourced event management activities to the delightful Erin Reeser, who’s clearly a whiz at event planning, guest relations, and keeping things from burning on stoves as much as she’s good at keeping Peter from worrying about what’s happening to things on the stove. Guests are encouraged to roll up their sleeves and help out in the kitchen, too, which I always think is part of the fun. If you’d like to find out more, or to get on Peter’s invite list for the next “Chef by Night” dinner, I suggest you ping Peter via LinkedIn. So that was one very fun night in August.

Also in August I had an opportunity to speak to the guys at TechForward, which is a startup doing a great thing for consumers purchasing new consumer electronics: they’re working on a program with consumer electronics retailers to offer consumers a guaranteed buyback plan for their electronics, building for consumers a way to easily support a reuse/recycle process for all their consumer electronics (caveat: not mobile phones though). The company offers a guaranteed future trade in value for your electronics, free shipping as well as a box to put it all in, and then takes care of disposal in an environmentally friendly manner. We’ll see how the company progresses, but they’ve got funding, and I expect to see them grow. NEA and First Round Capital have put money in, and the company is talking to all the major CE retailers about putting guaranteed buy back plans – even talking to people on the extended warranty side, big box retailers. The company’s reached an agreement with SYX Services, a company that is an affiliate of, and provides management services to, TigerDirect.com and CompUSA.com, to offer Guaranteed Buyback Plans via their web sites and retail store locations. The plans will be offered through both TigerDirect and CompUSA. One thing that I think is most interesting about the organization is the concept they’ve coined, which is also the name of a Consortium they’ve launched, called “Ownership 2.0.” I think you’ll be interested to read more about it, and it hits a trend spot on. To quote their website: “Ownership is changing. Across all types of consumer products, people are realizing that long-term ownership often doesn’t make sense anymore. Ownership 1.0 basically says: buy an item, own it, then either 1) throw it away 2) recycle it, or 3) resell it; whereas Ownership 2.0 realizes at point-of-sale that you don’t want to own the item forever, and want to take steps to be able to reclaim value from the item when acquiring it. More here: http://ownership20.com/.

As I mentioned above, I also had an opportunity to test Eureka’s envirovac, and the BPA-free water bottle from Fit & Fresh and the Tersano Sanitizing System. About Eureka’s envirovac vacuum: is there anyone who WOULDN’T be interested to use a vacuum that a) works and b) is more energy efficient than your previous incarnations of vacuums have been? I don’t think so. Eureka generally makes very good vacuum cleaners, and their new envirovac uses an 8-amp motor instead of a 12-amp motor, comes in 100% recycled cardboard packaging, and includes a washable HEPA filter. The company tells me this vacuum uses 33% less energy than a 12-amp motor vacuum, and all I can say is “hey great!” It works, it worked very well, in fact, and you will likely only notice that your carpets get just as clean as they did before, if not more clean, depending upon what you use to vacuum at home. Something to consider, too: interestingly, according to Eureka’s media kit, the average American household vacuums about an hour/week using a 12-amp motor. According to Eureka, if only 25 million households in the U.S. Used an envirovac, 6.25 million kilowatt hours of energy would be saved – an energy cutback that would reduce CO2 emissions by a chunk as well. And anything we can do to reduce CO2 emissions we need to do. More info here: http://www.vacuumgreen.com.

The Fit & Fresh LivPURE water bottle intrigues me, because it’s got the portability I would want, and it would keep a lot of bottled water drinkers from buying bottled water potentially, and therefore keep a bunch of plastic bottles out of landfills, though it’s not quite as far along the purification spectrum as I look forward to seeing something like this eventually be. That it’s made out of a non-toxic material, serves as an alternative to bottled water, yet still is a portable little water purifier, is nice. The bottle’s been tested and certified by the Water Quality Association, too, though again, don’t expect it to purify everything out of water. Right now, Fit & Fresh can really only remove up to 50% of the aesthetic chlorine (and therefore the associated negative taste and/or smell from the chlorine) from the water it filters, meaning you’ll generally get better tasting water than you might from some taps. And it does some other minor filtration stuff, from what I can tell, but what I really want is a portable bottle purifier that can purify what this one can (up to 75 gallons of water), but goes so far as to remove metals like lead or arsenic from the water being filtered. Maybe it does, and I just don’t know, but it doesn’t appear to do so. It’s got a carbon-activated filter. More info here: http://fit-fresh.com/products/livpure/.

Tersano’s Lotus Sanitizing System is one of those things that some of you will likely want to check out. Aside from Tersano being a winner of Canada’s 2007/2008 Top 10 CleanTech Competition, and a TIME Magazine Best Invention 2006 winner, this St. Catharines, Ontario-based company is also interesting because it gives consumers and cleaning professionals a way to clean and sanitize chemically-free. The company’s technologies use a company-patented progressive ozone technology process called Oxyshield that enables you to reduce bacteria and pesticides on foods, or sanitize surfaces. I’m finding myself using the Lotus a lot, and since I clean all the time with water, I happen to like this a lot. We’ve also tried it on strawberries and it really extended the shelf-life of the strawberries.

I’ll have more later this week, but for now, I’ll sign off with the following quick additions, since, as always, there are some upcoming events to make note of (and as always, I’m certain I’ve missed some very important ones, but the list for now will have to suffice…):

Aquatech Amsterdam
Always On’s GoingGreen San Francisco
West Coast Green
The Green Manufacturing Summit on October 16-17, 2008 in San Francisco
And the Urban Revision competition.

Other news that at least I found interesting:
-Borealis and Uponor Study Water Footprint Of Plastics Industry

-RoofRay Your Building’s Solar Potential

And lastly, I was asked to post the following, which I said I would do, since I’m a fan of Robert Redford’s. I’ll leave you with FIGHTING GOLIATH: TEXAS COAL WARS.

Tonight, thanks to Nick Allen from Morgan Stanley Research, here’s the latest on this evening’s Renewable Energy Forum: The Obama and McCain campaigns will present their positions on energy policy and the role of renewables, followed by a moderated discussion of attendees’ questions in an event entitled ‘Renewable Energy Forum - Presidential Campaign 2008′.

Details
- Wednesday, August 13 at the Marine Memorial Association, 609 Sutter St. San Francisco. Doors open at 5:30pm, the event starts promptly at 6pm, will end around 7:30pm, and be followed by a wine & beer reception.
- Sign up today while there are still seats.

Surrogates from both campaigns and a moderator will engage in a collaborative discussion of their candidates’ positions. The presidential campaign surrogates are Tim Carmichael, Senior Campaign Advisor for Obama ‘08, and Kurt E. Yeager, California Chair of the McCain Energy Coalition. The event will take place at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre on Wednesday, August 13 @ 6:00 PM and is sponsored by the Marines’ Memorial Association, the Renewable Energy Business Network (REBN) and the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Written questions will be solicited from the audience during the speaker presentations to be presented by the moderator, James L. Sweeney, Director, Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency and Professor, Management Science and Engineering, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Stanford University. Mr. Carmichael is Senior Director of Policy at the Coalition for Clean Air. Mr. Yeager is the former President and CEO of the Electric Power Institute of Palo Alto.

The Renewable Energy Business Network enables researchers and business professionals with an interest in renewable energy to connect with one another to promote the growth of the renewable energy industry. REBN provides opportunities for networking, collaboration, education and business creation. For more information visit www.rebn.org

Something else has caught my eye: Dow Jones’ Alternative Energy Innovations 2008. The list of presenters at this year’s conference includes a long enough list of companies to keep you reading and researching for a while. Worth checking out.

Social Capital Markets 2008 is also upcoming. Certainly you can’t separate the social contribution cleantech as an industry is making to society - whether we’re talking water technologies or solar, or whatnot - and certainly there’s a real need to re-think the metrics that used in creating financial valuations of companies - where metrics may include measurement of the intangibles as well as tangibles. Anyway, I figure you can learn a lot at a conference like this. A list of speakers for Social Capital Markets 2008 is here.

And World Water Week in Stockholm’s upcoming, kicking off on Sunday.

Re. companies…if you haven’t seen it, check out what Bluesign is doing. Good for them. And I’m rather fascinated at the moment by Solarbee. More research to do on them, but I’m intrigued…you might be, too.

Significantly, a new National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT) has been formed by the Directors of the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories (Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) and the Department of Energy. The announcement was made by outgoing Assistant DoE Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner, who, in conjunction with an announcement of the Collaborative, also announced the launch of the DoE’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) at the latest California Clean Tech Open Event Tuesday. In addition, NREL, as a DoE-sponsored National Lab, is providing $100,000 to the CCTO on behalf of DOE/NLCBT to facilitate initiation and development of a green building awards category under the competition.

Let me spell that out a little more clearly: as a result of the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007 (Note: EISA, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush into law in December, calls for all new commercial buildings to be so efficient in energy consumption and in on-site renewable energy generation that they offset any energy use from the grid), there are statutory authorizations of up to $250 million a year going to green building initiatives. [(1) $20,000,000 for fiscal year 2008; (2) $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010; (3) $100,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2011 and 2012; and (4) $200,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2013 through 2018.] The first $40 million is going to green buildings; and the very first $100,000 of that $40 million is going to the California Clean Tech Open. This should give you a sense of the importance and critical role that the CCTO is playing in making all this stuff ‘go’. And this news comes on the heels of hearing that the CA Clean Tech Open is going to be blowing out the Program in a wider scope, with a regional Clean Tech Open coming soon - Denver having been picked as the next stop, if I have my facts straight. (NREL’s in CO, so it makes sense.)

Per Marc Gottschalk, a Co-founder of the Clean Tech Open and a partner at the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, “The fact that the Department of Energy and its National Labs chose sponsorship of the California Clean Tech Open Green Building Prize as one of its first acts of collaboration under this new initiative underscores their commitment to and recognition of critical importance of public/private cooperation. We are committed to working alongside them and our intrepid entrepreneurs and inventors to catalyze new clean tech enterprises that can achieve Net Zero energy buildings as rapidly as humanly possible.”

The day marked also the very first time all members of the Collaborative met formally, and to follow on this historic meeting, in the press room for the briefing were Karsner; David E. Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency, Office of Technology Development, EERE; Steven Chu, Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Bobi Garrett, Associate Director, Strategic Development & Analysis, NREL; Michael Kluse, Director of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Robert Rosner, Director, Argonne National Laboratory; and Tom Mason, Director Oak Ridge National Lab.

The urgency in the room was palpable. Karsner was clear: “We have no time to lose. This is about galvanizing the leading minds and the leading resources to solve this problem.”

The Commercial Building Initiative [CBI], includes
The National Laboratory Collaborative for Building Technologies – a network of lab experts
Supporting Consortium – a public/private partnership to provide “arms and legs”
Partner Consortia – building sector groups with which the DOE will consult
Commercial Building Integration R&D – congressionally funded R&D efforts
Commercial Lighting Solutions – partnerships to accelerate commercialization of advanced lighting
Commercial Building Energy Alliances – key partners from major sectors sharing best practices
- Retailer Energy Alliance (launched in February 2008)
- Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance (forming steering committee 08)
- Institutional Energy Alliances
Hospital Energy Alliance (forming steering committee 08)
Higher Education Energy Alliance (09)
State and Local Government Energy Alliance (09)
- Commercial Building Industry Alliance (09)
National Accounts (NAs) – key industry partners conducting cost-shared RD&D

So on a national level, the Laboratory Collaborative will serve as the platform from which to accelerate transformation of the biggest energy consuming sector in the United States: commercial buildings. Specifically, the Collaborative’s mission is to make Net Zero buildings commercially viable and profitable. (In case you’re not familiar with the term, Net-Zero Energy Commercial Buildings are grid-integrated buildings capable of generating as much energy as they consume through advanced efficiency technologies and on-site generation systems such as solar power and geothermal energy.) That means making profitable the technologies that will support Net Zero Energy Efficient commercial buildings. So technologies such as building envelope technologies, solid state lighting, smart electronics, intelligent grid technologies, building simulation software, etc., all come into play here.

Why our commercial building infrastructure, you ask? Because commercial buildings and homes account for such an enormous percentage of our domestic energy use. The buildings sector consumes more energy than either industrial or transportation, surpassing industrial as the number one consuming sector in 1995. Buildings account for 72 percent of U.S. electricity use and 55 percent of natural gas use, including the gas used at power plants to generate electricity. Commercial buildings represent over one-third of electricity usage and are big contributors to peak usage. By dramatically reducing building loads through advanced design, intelligent building operation, and innovative smart technology, buildings will require less electricity overall and have reduced peak demands, including peak cooling demands. And where much of a medium or large building’s cooling energy use is actually due to “internal” heat gains - from equipment and lights - as well as from windows, more efficient lights and equipment and better windows dramatically reduce the cooling and therefore energy demands of buildings.

NREL’s Bobi Garrett quietly noted, “This opportunity represented here is a very significant one…it’s not often that the Department brings the total system to bear on a problem.” So why address the problem just now, and not earlier?

“This has been a time of evolutionary understanding of the challenges we face, and simply put, the point of discovery was not the point of action. Everyone has failed abysmally to galvanize and address the problem.” There’s truth in that. It has taken “a broader societal motivation” for things to reach a tipping point.

Karsner himself noted the historic significance of a Collaborative finally coming together around the issue. “I can’t emphasize enough how special it is, in terms of the U.S. Government’s capacity to, at scale, and in a timeframe that’s consequential, have this kind of firepower on the same stage, now postured to perform. We can now be a force greater than the sum of its parts.” Kluse concurred. “The improvements we’re trying to make are bigger than any one lab alone,” he said. Kluse’s lab has a long history in supporting the DOE’s mission in energy efficiency, not unlike the other labs in the Collaborative. Steven Chu is clearly a man concerned. “This is an emergency that’s as visible as the iceburg a mile away,” he noted during the press briefing, emphasizing that it only requires just a mere 5 degree shift higher in temperatures to wreak havoc on life on earth in very many ways. “We need everybody to pitch in. Essentially, we have to make this profitable. If buildings represent more than 40% of all the energy we consume, then including transportation – this is a very big deal. You can get rid of 3/4 of the energy we use just in buildings alone.” Chu expressed to me after the briefing that he was very concerned that the American public doesn’t grasp the enormity of the situation.

The new Collaborative, by the way, is backed by the DoE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Building Technologies Program.

The roll out goal is development of a multi-year plan and time table to achieve Net Zero Energy in new commercial buildings by 2025. All climate zones in the country will be included in the plan. The 5 labs mentioned will be responsible for developing the multi-year plan in the context of both policy and business plans that bring solutions to the table, such as those being developed by CCTO competition entrants and alums. Simultaneously investment will be made in a multi-year plan for existing buildings under the existing statute. The National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT), will allow the DOE and the five above mentioned of its national laboratories to work closely on the research, validation, and commercialization priorities that are critical to the success of Net Zero energy buildings, essentially pushing political gating factors aside, and combining the scientific resources of the five Laboratories to tackle the problem.

This is huge, folks…

Take, for instance, Tendril. I had the opportunity to sit down with Adrian Tuck, Tendril’s CEO, and a few members of his staff a week or so ago, to learn more about the company and the market-transformational things they’re doing. Over hot chocolate, we talked about Tendril’s Residential Energy Ecosystem, affectionately known as TREE.

Founded in 2004, Tendril this year shot from 17 employees at year’s start to the 60+ it’s at today, and there’s no sign of growth slowing for the company. With 20 million raised thus far (12 million in their B round raised), and plans to raise more later in the year, CEO Tuck is in ‘go’ mode. He’s leveraging his expertise in large scale wireless sensor and control networks to build solutions for the energy market – specifically residential energy management systems (REMS) today. The goal? To deliver a comprehensive and innovative residential energy management system (REMS) that will interactively engage consumers in energy efficiency and demand response – all in collaboration with utilities. With residential energy demand 30% of demand and growing, and with the insight into customer consumption patterns that TREE will be able to provide utilities with, the timing for Tendril couldn’t be better. We all know consumers are being pinched by high gas prices and soaring food costs, and there isn’t a one of us who doesn’t want to be able to control how much energy we use and when. And just think: if you’ve ever been one to not understand how to read your monthly energy bills, well – this could fix that problem.

Tendril’s got a whole range of products that will be made available to consumers through their utilities – ( I had a chance to play with Tendril’s in-home display, and also got a look at the company’s outlet product, Tendril Volt, which will tell consumers exactly how much it’s costing them to use various appliances by outlet): the Tendril Insight (in-home display), Tendril Transport (gateway), and Tendril Set-Point (thermostat). Tendril will also be able to recognize and support for certain third party products.

Tendril’s REMS is a platform that supports all utility programs, with the idea being that an open, extensible software platform will simplify and expedite the deployment and management of REMS. The server is designed to scale, and interfaces with utility back-office apps. Consumers will have access to real-time energy consumption and financial information through a web portal or window, which will allow for a predictive, personalized, and intuitive experience (since the company has developed an intuitive install and interface component for measuring energy consumption by appliance). In end-to-end fashion, Tendril’s Energy EcoSystem Server supports broadband and AMI meter backhaul network environments as well as having that front end connection to the consumer.

What do you have to do to install TREE? Just plug in the display and gateway to your power supplies, then take the cable that’s supplied to plug the gateway into an existing Internet router. And your Tendril devices take care of the rest, to form a home-area network. To see your handy work, you will then just logon to Tendril’s consumer portal, register your devices, and that’s it. You’re good to go. Pretty smart, I think. The bonus for utilities? They don’t have to spend the money to build more power stations, and can instead leverage Tendril’s TREE to monitor and reduce energy consumption in tims of high demand or peak pricing. And for consumers - just like you can access your cell phone bill online, and monitor your usage, as well as change your monthly spend based on usage, you’ll have access through a web-based portal to do the same sort of thing in terms of shaping your own energy consumption load with Tendril’s web interface. It’s really pretty easy sounding, if you ask me. And that’s what it’s going to take to get consumers on board. Ease of use.

Expect to see some partnerships with major appliance manufacturers and various providers of energy efficient solutions. The company’s offering their services in a SaaS model to utilities, making it easier than ever for utilities to give consumers a way to take charge of their energy consumption habits as well as influence consumer energy consumption behaviors. The company’s go live is slated for sometime in August. They’re currently doing live and piloting testing in about a thousand homes, and will be in the field with five utilities by the end of the year.

Tuck told me the company’s in active discussions with 20 odd utilities. That’s roughly 56 million homes. And the company will be making some major customer and partner announcements shortly.

Let’s home Tendril comes to a utility near us all – soon.