Posts tagged energy
Here are the countries that are spending the most on renewable energy, along with how much of it they currently produce, and what percent of their total energy output that represents.
Obama: America’s Venture Capitalist in Chief
Via NYT Dealbook/Bloomberg BusinessWeek:
Obscured by political battles over health care and financial regulation, President Barack Obama has “turned the government into the chief financier of a manufacturing base for clean-energy technology,” Bloomberg Businessweek wrote. The comment by Businessweek was published Thursday, the same day the Obama administration made a $1 billion pledge to fund the capture of carbon emissions from a coal-fired Ameren Corporation power plant in Illinois.
By the end of 2011, the White House plans to channel more than $50 billion to thousands of clean-technology companies through tax credits, low-interest guaranteed loans, and grants, making Mr. Obama the nation’s “Clean Energy Venture Capitalist in Chief,” as Businessweek sees it.
Our Lopsided Energy Subsidies, Visualized
Here’s a look at the various ways in which we subsidize energy (the chart is based on this paper from the Environmental Law Institute). As you can see, the tax breaks for traditional fossil fuels, in the bottom left quadrant, are just massive. The result? The cost of coal and oil are artificially cheap, meaning we use them more, and the companies that extract and sell them reap absurd profits. Is there any neoliberal economic defense for this or is it simply an unfair product of industry lobbying?
My answer? Lobbying.
Agreed.
Cap And Trade Is (All But) Dead
::::sad sigh:::::
Take it away Ezra Klein….
You can’t pass what you can’t say:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid played dumb last week when a reporter asked him if the energy and climate bill headed to the floor would come with a “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions.
“I don’t use that,” the Nevada Democrat replied. “Those words are not in my vocabulary. We’re going to work on pollution.”
One of my rules in politics is that whichever side is resorting to framing devices is losing. In 2004, when Democrats became obsessed with George Lakoff, it’s because they felt unpopular and looking for a quick fix. And in 2006, when they took the Congress back, it wasn’t because they found a new slogan. It was because the Iraq War and Jack Abramoff had made the Republicans toxic. In 2008, it was exhaustion with George W. Bush and a cratering economy. Post-9/11 frame theory wouldn’t have said run the black guy with the name “Hussein.”
If cap-and-trade is so unpopular that its primary legislative advocates can’t mention it, then it’s dead. The BP oil spill offered a chance to change the fundamentals on the issue and Democrats decided against trying to use the disaster as a galvanizing moment for climate legislation. Word games don’t offer a similar opportunity.
Photo credit: Drew Angerer/AP.
Time for an upgrade? image - Images: The many faces of the smart grid - CNET News
The existing electricity grid in the U.S. works—for the most part. But activity to make the grid smarter with digital technologies (see this smart grid FAQ) has finally started to pick up steam. Although there may be varying definitions, the goal of the smart grid is to make electricity distribution more efficient and reliable. In practice, that means more information to help reduce consumption. With better systems to control the flow of electricity, the power grid as a whole can use more solar and wind power. Solar and wind are intermittent energy sources, but if utilities have better controls along the grid that allow them to store energy or switch sources quickly, they can rely on them more confidently.
Venture Capital Investing Up 34 Percent To $6.5 Billion In Q2
I’m loving these sector breakdowns by TC. Enjoy.
Funding at its highest levels since Q308. Hmmmm……
Venture capitalists invested $6.5 billion in 906 deals in the second quarter of 2010, according to a MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association, based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. Quarterly investment activity increased 34 percent in terms of dollars and 22 percent in number of deals compared to the first quarter of 2010 when $4.9 billion was invested in 740 deals.
In the first half of 2010, VC investments totaled $11.4 billion in 1,646 deals, a 49 percent increase in dollars and a 23 percent increase in deals from the first half of 2009, in the mist of the recession, when $7.7 billion was invested in 1,340 deals.
The Software industry had the most deals completed in Q2 with 229 rounds, representing a jump of 43 percent from the 160 rounds completed in the first quarter. In terms of dollars invested, the Software sector was in third place, increasing 43 percent from the prior quarter to $1 billion in the second quarter of 2010.
Internet-specific companies received $879 million going into 212 deals in the second quarter, flat in terms of dollars and a 25 percent increase in deals over the first quarter of 2010 when $891 million went into 169 deals. ‘Internet-Specific’ is a discrete classification assigned to a company with a business model that is fundamentally dependent on the Internet, regardless of the company’s primary industry category.
Investments in the clean tech sector doubled in the second quarter compared to Q1 of 2010. The sector saw a 107 percent increase in dollars over the first quarter to $1.5 billion in 71 deals compared with 70 deals in the first quarter. The life sciences sector jumped 52 percent in dollars and 36 percent in deals from the prior quarter to $2.1 billion going into 234 deals. Biotechnology again received the highest level of funding, rising 59 percent in dollars and 34 percent in deal volume in the second quarter with $1.3 billion going into 139 deals. Medical device investing also increased 40 percent in both dollars and deals over the first quarter with $755 million going into 95 deals in Q2.
The Industrial/Energy industry received the second highest level of funding in the quarter with $1.3 billion going into 61 deals, representing a 95 percent increase in dollars but a 13 percent decrease in deals compared to the first quarter when $658 million went into 70 deals. In all, 11 of the 17 sectors experienced dollar increases in the second quarter, including Computers and Peripherals (48 percent increase), Consumer Products and Services (44 percent), and IT Services (28 percent). Sectors which saw decreases in dollars included Semiconductors (40 percent decrease), Financial Services (22 percent) and Telecommunications (27 percent).
Seed and early stage deals also increased in Q2 from prior quarters, rising 54 percent in dollar value to $2.3 billion. The actual number of Seed and Early stage deals increased 32 percent to 429 from the prior quarter. Seed/Early stage deals accounted for 47 percent of total deal volume in the second quarter, compared to the first quarter when it accounted for 44 percent of all deals. The average Seed deal in the second quarter was $7.1 million, up from $5.1 million in the first quarter. The average Early stage deal was $4.7 million in Q2, up from $4.4 million in the prior quarter.
Expansion stage dollars increased 48 percent in the second quarter, with $2.7 billion going into 277 deals. Overall, Expansion stage deals accounted for 31 percent of venture deals in the second quarter, down slightly from 32 percent in the first quarter of 2010. The average Expansion stage deal was $9.7 million, up from $7.6 million in the first quarter of 2010.
These numbers create an optimistic view of the venture capital sector that is not reflected in another recent National Venture Capital Association study that showed that most U.S. venture capitalists expect their market to contract. And while, fundraising is on the rise, long terms returns are hurting.
SF Lunchtime Read: A Colossal Fracking Mess
Excerpt below…….
Early on a spring morning in the town of Damascus, in northeastern Pennsylvania, the fog on the Delaware River rises to form a mist that hangs above the tree-covered hills on either side. A buzzard swoops in from the northern hills to join a flock ensconced in an evergreen on the river’s southern bank.
Stretching some 400 miles, the Delaware is one of the cleanest free-flowing rivers in the United States, home to some of the best fly-fishing in the country. More than 15 million people, including residents of New York City and Philadelphia, get their water from its pristine watershed. To regard its unspoiled beauty on a spring morning, you might be led to believe that the river is safely off limits from the destructive effects of industrialization. Unfortunately, you’d be mistaken. The Delaware is now the most endangered river in the country, according to the conservation group American Rivers.
That’s because large swaths of land—private and public—in the watershed have been leased to energy companies eager to drill for natural gas here using a controversial, poorly understood technique called hydraulic fracturing. “Fracking,” as it’s colloquially known, involves injecting millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals, many of them toxic, into the earth at high pressures to break up rock formations and release natural gas trapped inside. Sixty miles west of Damascus, the town of Dimock, population 1,400, makes all too clear the dangers posed by hydraulic fracturing. You don’t need to drive around Dimock long to notice how the rolling hills and farmland of this Appalachian town are scarred by barren, square-shaped clearings, jagged, newly constructed roads with 18-wheelers driving up and down them, and colorful freight containers labeled “residual waste.” Although there is a moratorium on drilling new wells for the time being, you can still see the occasional active drill site, manned by figures in hazmat suits and surrounded by klieg lights, trailers, and pits of toxic wastewater, the derricks towering over barns, horses, and cows in their shadows.
Damascus and Dimock are both located above a vast rock formation rich in natural gas known as the Marcellus Shale, which stretches along the Appalachians from West Virginia up to the western half of the state of New York. The gas in the Marcellus Shale has been known about for more than 100 years, but it has become accessible and attractive as a resource only in the past two decades, thanks to technological innovation, the depletion of easier-to-reach, “conventional” gas deposits, and increases in the price of natural gas. Shale-gas deposits are dispersed throughout a thin horizontal layer of loose rock (the shale), generally more than a mile below ground. Conventional vertical drilling cannot retrieve shale gas in an economical way, but when combined with hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling—whereby a deeply drilled well is bent at an angle to run parallel to the surface of the Earth—changes the equation.
Developed by oil-field-services provider Halliburton, which first implemented the technology commercially in 1949 (and which was famously run by Dick Cheney before he became vice president of the United States), hydraulic fracturing has been used in conventional oil and gas wells for decades to increase production when a well starts to run dry. But its use in unconventional types of drilling, from coal-bed methane to shale gas, is relatively new. When a well is fracked, a small earthquake is produced by the pressurized injection of fluids, fracturing the rock around the well. The gas trapped inside is released and makes its way to the surface along with about half of the “fracking fluid,” plus dirt and rock that are occasionally radioactive. From there, the gas is piped to nearby compressor stations that purify it and prepare it to be piped (and sometimes transported in liquefied form) to power plants, manufacturers, and domestic consumers. Volatile organic compounds (carbon-based gaseous substances with a variety of detrimental health effects) and other dangerous chemicals are burned off directly into the air during this on-site compression process. Meanwhile, the returned fracking fluid, now called wastewater, is either trucked off or stored in large, open-air, tarp-lined pits on site, where it is allowed to evaporate. The other portion of the fluid remains deep underground—no one really knows what happens to it.
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