Today I attended the Clean Economy Network‘s first conference in Washington, DC, fittingly on the eve of President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Who We Are
Today I attended the Clean Economy Network‘s first conference in Washington, DC, fittingly on the eve of President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Topics: Energy Efficiency, State of the Union, Federal Grants, Clean Economy Summit, Clean Energy grants, Sputnik moment
When non-engineers hear the term “building envelope” they typically think of drafty old homes with leaky windows and steam radiators overheating a bedroom while uninsulated parts of the house remain frigid. Cash for Caulkers (the currently proposed and stalled Federal legislation) epitomized the fix for this problem – create new green jobs by arming construction teams with caulk guns for sealing old windows and doors and insulation to stuff into hollow walls, saving taxpayers money and helping our economy.
Topics: Energy Efficiency, homestar, Cash for caulkers, thermal image, Building Envelope
Today we’re excited to announce that Groom Energy has been awarded US patent #7,771,083 for our GES Hybrid, the energy efficient lighting retrofit product we originally started to develop in 2006.
Our idea came when we saw newly installed HID lighting fixtures that were perfectly fine, but whose energy consumption could be cut in half just by replacing their guts – meaning their relatively inefficient HID lamp and magnetic ballast. Like all things in energy efficiency this had to be done a very low cost to make it interesting.
We literally banged out metal framed retrofit samples in Bob’s basement, then tinkered for several months to come up with a final design which could be used in a wide variety of fixture types (a universal design), generate strong light output (our reflector) and, most importantly, be fully installed for a low cost.
With the help of our legal team we learned how to document our invention for the USPTO noting absolutely everything around our design and all relevant prior art. Along the way we never stopped manufacturing and delivering
Topics: GES Hybrid, Lighting retrofit
Recently a customer had us model the energy production and financial return for a new 2MW cogen system at their manufacturing site in the United Kingdom.
Our analysis considered their contract cost for kWh and natural gas, the system’s energy production in kWh and therms, its full installation and annual maintenance cost and their UK tax benefits, including a reduced carbon tax from the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment. All in, the capital investment had a simple payback of 2.3 years.
When we built the system’s 10 year PPA model there was one big question – what escalation rate for kWh and gas should we use?
Topics: escalation rate, cost of electricity, PPA, Solar PV, escalator, United Kingdom - carbon tax, energy contracts, Combined Heat & Power, Power Purchase Agreement, Energy Cost
Today I’m attending and speaking at the SolarTech Conference in San Ramon, CA.
The conference format broke the day into working sessions covering all major areas relating to Solar PV: permitting, finance, installation, interconnection, and a new one for the market – energy efficiency (which I’ll come back to later). At the end of the day, the entire audience voted on the key initiatives for each of working session and these rankings become the basis for 2010 SolarTech working agenda. Makes great sense.
Topics: Property Assessed Clean Energy, PPA, Solar PV, energy audit, Power Purchase Agreement, PACE, whole building assessment, Clean Energy grants
This morning Jeffrey Hollender, the Chairman of Seventh Generation, gave the keynote for our Green Enterprise 2010 Seminar.
One powerful concept he described was “full cost” sustainability accounting whereby companies are required to include their external environmental costs (ie. things like pollution or resource consumption) into their corporate earnings.
Topics: green products, Enterprise Carbon Accounting, Green product design, Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA), Green Enterprise 2010, Carbon Accounting, Wal-Mart Sustainability Index
We’ve excited to announce our next Groom Energy seminar, entitled Green Enterprise 2010, which will be held April 15th at the Embassy Suites Hotel near Boston’s Logan Airport.
As with our previous seminars our target audience remains corporate energy and sustainability managers who wish to hear and discuss best practices, case study based observations.
Last year our first two seminars had a direct focus on the emerging market for Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA), a market we had identified and about which we published research. Our February 25th Boston ECA event featured Mindy Lubber from Ceres who likened climate impact to an off balance sheet risk which should be disclosed by public companies. Our follow-on May 14th San Francisco ECA event was highlighted by a practical case study panel with presentations from Applied Materials, HP, Intuit and Sony.
Topics: sustainability manager, Enterprise Carbon Accounting, Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA), Green Enterprise 2010, Carbon Accounting, Wal-Mart Sustainability Index, Wal-Mart Supplier Workshop, greening the supply chain
Today Groom Energy published our newly updated ECA research report, 2010 Enterprise Carbon Accounting, which also included our selections for the market’s 2010 ECA Emerging Leaders.
Topics: Enterprise Carbon Accounting, Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA), EPA Climate Leaders, EPA's Climate Leaders, Carbon Accounting, ECA Emerging Leaders, ECA, GHG accounting
In the 1967 movie The Graduate, 21 year old Ben Braddock (aka Dustin Hoffman) received a famous bit of advice – “there is a great future in plastics.” The line has lived on since, like an insider stock trading joke – however, VC’s would call the character who delivered this line “a master of the obvious.” If plastics would be a big market, how would Hoffman have chosen the application area or the start up company that would win?
Topics: nuclear power, Hara, Silver Spring Networks, solyndra, magnetics, Combined Heat & Power, new cleantech markets, 2010 Cleantech trends, SunRun, Solar Power Partners, waste heat recovery
During our 2010 business planning we’ve been speculating on trends that may affect our corporate customers (positively or negatively) in the coming 12 months. In 2009 Groom Energy delivered projects in 25 states and Puerto Rico. What’s stunning is how much time we spent confirming the incentives available in these states, through utilities, regional ISO’s and Clean Energy trusts. 2010 promises to introduce even great complexity to this already challenging game – in this regard here are four areas we think are worth watching:
Topics: Energy Efficiency, Solar PV, carbon tax, Copenhagen, energy efficiency trends for 2010, cap and trade, 2010 Cleantech trends, Cap N Trade, Investment Tax Credit
