Green Tech Stories for 2010

[irishbobcat]

Green Tech Stories for 2010

Even after an environmental disaster as big as this year's Gulf oil spill, green-technology innovation saw a patchy 2010. While advances were made in certain areas, the year has been highlighted by a growing concern that the U.S. is falling behind in the global economic race around cleaner energy.

Electric cars were all the rage. Tesla Motors had a splashy initial public offering, signed a partnership with Toyota to produce an electric RAV4, and bought the NUMMI factory in California to make its Model S electric sedan, which is due in 2012.

The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf finally started rolling off the assembly lines, representing the big bet the auto industry is making on electrification.

The hype machine was on full blast for the Bloom Box, a Silicon Valley company that seemed to come out of nowhere with grand promises. But once you peel back the claims, Bloom is really just a fuel cell company, perhaps with improved technology and some very media-savvy investors.

Another technical advance was closer to home: LED lightbulbs designed to dethrone energy-hogging incandescent bulbs and give compact fluorescents a run for their money.

When you get past the fascination with new technology, though, the picture is mixed.

In wind power, China surpassed the U.S. and became an undisputed powerhouse in solar photovoltaic panels. U.S. government agencies approved several large-scale solar plants slated to go online in the Southwest in the next two years, in addition to the offshore wind farm Cape Wind. The White House, too, will get both solar electric and hot water panels.

Ethanol made from non-food plants, such as wood chips or agriculture residue, is still in its nascent stage despite a federal mandate set in 2007. Algae, too, remains promising, but more people now say it will take on the order of 10 years of research and experimentation for it to compete with oil.

Government money to start modernizing the electricity system started to flow, with a lot of those dollars (matched by utilities) spent on two-way smart meters as well as on experiments in energy storage and sensors to make the transmission grid more reliable and efficient.

California utility Pacific Gas & Electric learned the hard way how not to roll out smart meters. These meters can give consumers more detailed information on energy use to help save energy, but many consumers complained about higher bills. No significant technical problems have been found in the PG&E case or others, but the backlash was a harsh reminder of how poorly the benefits of a digital energy grid have been explained to consumers. (Here's the short version: electric vehicles without crashing the grid, less energy use at home, more solar and wind.)

Dozens of companies are angling to build gadgets or Web portals to help consumers get a better handle on energy usage. But it's clear that for people to conserve energy, giving them a new gadget isn't enough, one reason why comparisons to neighbors' energy use has been shown to be a good motivator.

Venture investors, who helped fuel the green-technology wave earlier this decade, learned some hard lessons, too: investing in energy, water, and materials is, for the most part, very different from investing in IT, where many venture capitalists are comfortable.

Compared to IT, green tech requires much more money, partnerships with giant incumbent companies, and lobbyists in Washington. That's one reason why efficiency is becoming a favored investment theme, rather than solar power and biofuels as in years past.

Finally, legislative inaction in Washington on climate and energy dashed the hopes of those who hoped to see carbon pricing as a way for the U.S. to embrace green technology as an economic growth opportunity and move away from fossil fuels.

Work on green technology and sustainability continues, obviously. But there's a growing fixation on China's rapid ascent in energy technologies, something Energy Secretary Steven Chu called a "Sputnik moment" in calling for more U.S. clean-energy research and development.