Water: the next frontier in energy innovation….

Finally Bill Aulet takes the leap and writes about Water. He is both knowledgeable and spends a lot of time thinking about these issues…so when he writes, I pay attention. Click here for what I wrote on water a few months ago.

My comment to Bill:

I was hoping somebody would write on water. Thanks. While the average were running after nanotech/biotech deals 5-8 years ago, the cunning were starting to see environmental tech on the horizon. Now that the average are running after energy deals, the smart should be thinking about water.

I don’t mean any offense to those in the industry, but you are dead-on that the decision makers in the water business are slow, relatively non-techie, and risk-averse. Having worked in the next slowest industry, i.e. automotive, I can imagine how hard it is to sell into it. But is there a way to approach the customers directly who would be more willing to pay than the middle-man thinks? I can tell you my family in urban Pakistan would pay a lot more for clean water (and are more used to it) than an average American.

It is interesting that some of the issues faced by water innovators parallel those in energy: (a) geographical distribution of markets, (b) centralized vs distributed systems, (c) scalability issues, (d) mismatch between rhetoric and action at governmental level, and (e) lack of entrepreneurs/investors who are willing to stick with long-term endeavors.

I agree with your comment above that the water-energy nexus could be great for both. Energy companies could end up investing in water innovations while water companies would look for cheaper energy sources. I think we need to take energy and water technologies to regions where they are needed most to develop them fast and cost effectively, i.e. developing countries in Asia, Africa etc. And lets find long term investors (maybe the Middle East investors fit the bill) who are less scared of playing with commodities in such markets.

The Next Big Thing in Energy Innovation and Investing? Let’s Talk Water

Bill Aulet 5/20/08

Energy innovation and investing are exploding right now. Technological breakthroughs are seen as perhaps the greatest hope to solving our dire energy challenge. However, what is often overlooked is the link between finding or creating new sources of energy and the effects on food and water.

Indeed, if you think of energy as a coin, the flip side is water and food. The scary thing is that food and water are both lower on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs—i.e., they are more fundamental to human survival. Yet, the current rush to create new sources of energy—including “clean” energy—may have potentially disastrous tradeoffs on our food and water supplies. Going forward, trading off energy creation for water—meaning creating new sources of energy that depend on heavy use of water, as many do—will be less and less acceptable. That’s why the most exciting opportunities in energy entrepreneurship and investment lie in strategies that create more water or energy without adversely affecting the other. Xconomy for more…

Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory and butterfly effect, dies at 90

I have been fortunate in my life to meet some great people. People who have accomplished so much, and have made such vast and lasting impact on humanity, and the sum-total of human knowledge, that I can only say I am left in total awe. By simply being in their proximity and company I have learned how humble and inconsequential my own work has been. Edward Lorenz was one of those figures. Ed died today at age 90.

Ed was a professor of Meteorology at MIT who was already in his late years when I completed my Ph.D. there. Even though i did my Ph.D. in the chemistry department, my thesis advisor had his office and labs in the EAPS (Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences), which was also home to Ed. He walked our hallways, he joined us at the daily 3PM coffee hour, and he provided kind, generous, and insightful comments on elevator rides with him. I remember hearing about him as the pioneer of chaos theory and then read a bit on him and his work. I can safely say it was more mathematical than I could comprehend, but the power and importance of his work was not lost on me. I was in awe, and remain. Great people impact generations to come. He was one of them and I consider myself so lucky to have experienced his company, even if just via casual conversations an elevator rides. May his soul rest in peace.

Here is news item on his passing from the MIT News.

Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory and butterfly effect, dies at 90

April 16, 2008

Edward Lorenz, an MIT meteorologist who tried to explain why it is so hard to make good weather forecasts and wound up unleashing a scientific revolution called chaos theory, died April 16 of cancer at his home in Cambridge. He was 90.

A professor at MIT, Lorenz was the first to recognize what is now called chaotic behavior in the mathematical modeling of weather systems. In the early 1960s, Lorenz realized that small differences in a dynamic system such as the atmosphere–or a model of the atmosphere–could trigger vast and often unsuspected results.

The Vulcan Project: High resolution mapping of fossil fuel based CO2 emissions in the USA

This is a cool video on CO2 emissions from the USA. It is from Purdue University, where a group of researchers have developed a tool for high resolution mapping and analysis of fossil fuel based CO2 emissions from power plants, traffic, industrial activity, and the residential/commercial energy consumption.

The technical significance of the work is probably best stated by Kevin Gurney, a leader of the project (source: Green Car Congress):

Before now the only thing policy-makers could do was take a big blunt tool and bang the US economy with it. Now we have more quantifiable information about what is happening in neighborhoods, on roads and in industrial areas, and track the CO2 by the hour. This offers policy-makers something akin to a scalpel instead.
—Kevin Gurney, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at Purdue University and leader of the project

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

Under its new President, Susan Hockfield, MIT has taken a leadership role in the discussions regarding science, technology, business, entrepreneurship and policy in energy and the environment. Here is an op-ed from her in today’s Boston Globe. I look forward to attending the MIT Energy Conference this coming weekend. I invite you to visit GEO2’s booth on the friday night’s Energy Showcase.

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

by Susan Hockfield

April 7, 2008

BOSTON MAGAZINE has ranked MIT’s work on energy and the environment as No. 2 on its list of “61 Best New Things About Boston.” It’s unusual praise for MIT; our research is more often noticed in academic journals. But the magazine’s listing says something important: people beyond the university research community and the green movement are eager for answers to our energy and environmental challenges.

The challenges are many. How do we meet the aspirations of people around the world for a healthy, comfortable, productive life, without irreparably damaging the planet? How will we in the developed world preserve our quality of life, while shifting to renewable technologies? At the same time, how do we enable the developing world to reach a standard of living that grants access to modern comforts? How, for example, will we get electricity to the 1 billion people who don’t yet have it?

At MIT we are inventing real energy and climate solutions - from large-scale technologies that capture carbon emissions and dramatic new ways to tap deep geothermal energy, to smaller-scale ideas such as lithium-ion batteries to revolutionize the electric car and new materials that could make solar energy as cheap and dependable as coal.

Tesla’s turn to electric-hybrid for next gen cars

I have argued before that plug-in electric cars that also have a small diesel or gasoline fueled engine, for operation when batteries have already spent their charge, will fare much better than the electric cars that some companies have proposed. I, for one, would feel much better investing in a high end car that I knew would not leave me stranded on the side of a road if I get stuck in traffic, or if I decide to make a few wrong turns and get lost in the middle of this country. I am all for a car that gives 100mpg+ (e.g. Tesla gives 135mpg in all-electric mode) but it should not be a toy that may not work at times.

That is why the news that Tesla’s second generation car platform, called WhiteStar, will include a small gasoline engine is great news. This would make their $80-100K luxury/sports car much more usable for a wider audience. I believe they still need to prove they can make money as a sub-scale manufacturer and not remain a tiny niche play in toys, but certainly White Star’s concept is, in my humble opinion, headed the right direction.

Tesla to make gas-electric car

Tesla Motors, the people who put the all-electric car on the map, are going to work with gas too.

The San Carlos, Calif.-based company will produce two basic types of its Whitestar sedan, due toward the end of 2009. One will run completely on batteries. The other will be a range-extended vehicle, or REV, CEO Ze’ev Drori said in an interview. In an REV, a small gas motor recharges the battery pack while the car is being driven. The battery pack on these types of cars only goes about 40 to 50 miles on a charge, but because it gets recharged while driving, the range of these cars will be longer

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GEO2 covered in ‘Green Car Congress’

Yes, this is a shameless plug for my company, but there is at least one useful thing here aside from that: Let me introduce you to Green Car Congress if you haven’t been introduced earlier. It is an excellent clean-tech blog, with a special emphasis on technologies associated with the automotive world. They cover exciting new technologies and companies from solar, wind and biofuels, to new battery technologies, power-trains, and of course dramatic innovations in the emissions control industry - hence GEO2.

Check it ou. Here’s a link to it (click on images to enlarge):

GEO2 Technologies Introduces New Fiber-based SiC Substrate for Diesel Particulate Filters; Ceramic Fiber Technology Enables Significant Increase in Porosity

24 January 2008

GEO₂ Technologies Inc. has introduced a new ceramic fiber silicon carbide (SiC) substrate for diesel particulate filtering. The new SiC substrate achieves high porosity and high strength simultaneously while delivering lower back pressure and high trapping efficiency, according to the company.

Unlike other SiC products, GEO₂ filters are based on a cross-linked microstructure (CLM) that increases maximum porosity to 67%—an increase of about 20 percentage points compared to other SiC filters—effectively reducing the size, weight and cost of emissions control systems.

The new GEO₂SiC filter can remove 99.9% of pollutants from diesel exhaust while achieving better fuel economy, emissions control and enhanced engine performance.

SiC-based filters have become the mainstay of the diesel light-duty vehicle market. The filters support higher temperatures, and are more robust—and expensive—than other chemistries. The common manufacturing approach is to take ceramic powders, and extrude into them into a honeycomb. This process yields filters with porosity of around 40-50%.

Porosity is a key factor in a filter—higher porosity results in lighter weight, higher catalyst loads, and reduced back pressure. Increased back pressure due to emissions treatment equipment can cause increased emissions, increased fuel consumption, and can negatively affect engine performance.

GEO₂’s breakthrough that led to the cross linked microstructure, says co-founder and vice president of product development Dr. Bilal Zuberi, was the development of a process to extrude ceramic fibers into the honeycomb filter shape.

Ceramic fibers typically look like cotton, Zuberi says, and cotton cannot be molded. The powder-based materials are like clay—add water, and it becomes moldable, and can be put through a die.

We figured out what kind of organics we can add to the fiber mix to change properties to become moldable. Once moldable, you create the shape. Then, because a ceramic product needs to be fired, during that time you burn out the organic materials. The choice of the organic and the burning cycle is key—otherwise the material just falls apart.

—Bilal Zuberi

Trying to deliver higher porosity with traditional materials can result in tradeoffs in strength and durability. The GEO₂ substrate not only delivers significantly increases porosity, but maintains its strength.

In internal testing, GEO₂ ran the new SiC materials through 1,000 regeneration cycles (most filters go for 200 cycles in their lifetimes in an light duty vehicle). Part of the strength and performance is driven by the chemistry of the SiC material, but part is because of the internal structure, says Zuberi. Where other materials get brittle fractures, the GEO₂ materials dissipate the force throughout their structure.

GEO₂’s business model calls for licensing the technology to established filter manufacturers. The company is also looking at other markets such as solutions for gasoline direct injection engines and fuel cells as well as gasification systems and fuels processing.

Kleiner Perkins investing in alternative powertrains - Fisker Automotive

Last week was the Detroit International Auto-show. This is the largest gathering of its type in the United States where largely the large automakers around the world, especially the US big 3, show off their latest car models etc. Traditionally this event has attracted automotive engineers and salesmen of all sorts, and media that was more nostalgic about the automotive past than the real future. This year, at least to me, seemed very different. For one, this year’s show coincided with the primaries in Michigan and hence all the major presidential candidates showed up to demonstrate their unity with the auto-workers etc.

…but that was hardly the big news for me. The big news this year has been the focus on green technologies in the automotive sector and the focus on alternative drive-trains. And the big news has been the inclusion of a new type of investor in the automotive world - top notch venture capital firms. I had just finished writing about Vinod Khosla’s investments in alternate powertrains that I read about Fisker Automotive, a plug-in electric hybrid car-developer/manufacturer that just got over $10million of investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.

I have written before about Tesla Motors, probably the most prominent among this new generation of car developers that promise excitement in our mobility solutions while simultaneously providing solutions to the automotive industry’s carbon foot print. The technologies deployed by such car makers are typically very impressive: light weight fiber composite structural materials, electric or hybrid drive-trains, next generation battery systems, etc. And the performance is equally impressive as well: sports-car accelerations, long mileage on single electric charges, impressive fuel economy and cabin comfort.

But the question that they must face, in addition to those around the CO2 and other emissions of the coal power plants that feed electricity into the plug-ins’ batteries, is around the supply chains that they must establish to consistently produce high quality cars in a timely fashion. Can these upstarts get dependable supply chains established (that took traditional auto-makers decades to establish?), and will they be able to reduce costs at a pace that will be necessary for mass-production? VCs will probably look for VC returns in some reasonably short period of time, and more importantly, to maximize the societal/environmental impact one would want many such vehicle son the road as quickly as possible. Hence the scalability of the solution matters tremendously. I continue to look for optimistic signs for them…

Here’s a nice article from Wall Street Journal on these new car-investments from key VC firms:

Vinod Khosla investing in combustion engine technologies?

Vinod Khosla is a prolific investor. He must work like a machine. I admire that. Khosla Ventures, the early stage VC investment firm he founded has been a star in the area of clean-tech. They have invested in many different technologies, and in some cases up and down the value chain of critical industry segments.

But given some of my interests, the news of Vinod investing in combustion engine related companies certainly caught my eye. My first reaction was wow! Given that he has dissed hybrid vehicles in the past as mere ‘toys’, I am very interested in knowing what combustion engines/power-trains is he betting on?

And I am happy to see he is investing in diesel hybrids and advances in traditional combustion. To me, this is a good example of him using what he calls his ‘Chindia test‘, i.e. for a technology innovation to be material to solving this world’s major problems, it should have the potential to be successful and profitable in countries like China and India. I fully agree. Combustion engines will still be used in huge quantities (even if hybrids become more common) in most parts of the world, including western Europe and the US, and anything that can be done to reduce the emissions and improve fuel economy would be very beneficial to climate change.

Here’s a good synopsis of his recent investments from Venture Beat:

Khosla keeps betting on combustion engines with Transonic investment

Well-known Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla has never been shy expressing his opinion. Khosla once dissed plug-in hybrid vehicles — supported by environmentalists because of their partial reliance on batteries versus oil — as “nice toys …not material to climate change.”

Clean-tech sector: A quick review of 2007 and 2008

2007 was undoubtedly the year of clean-tech. The debate around global warming frequented the front pages of major newspapers, and reached our homes and dining tables. There were too many exciting clean-tech related news to recount, and there were a few disappointments as well. I have been asked several times if there is anything ’substantial’ to be expected out of this clean-tech boom, or are these just science fair type curiosity projects, but on a larger scale and consuming tons of public sector funding? While many clean-tech blogs are highlighting technologies to look out for in 2008, ‘Automotive News’ recently published a tongue-in-cheek list of 10 potential alternative fuels that included chicken droppings and cheese.

I remain optimistic that what we are witnessing is not just a shift in our understanding of the need for cleaner energy sources, but also a unique coming together of science, engineering, health, business, investor and public policy stakeholders that ultimately need to work closely together to find winning solutions. This is no science fair - this is evolution in action. An evolution of technologies and policies, and of our abilities to incorporate better ones into our lives.

Here are some thoughts that stuck with me through 2007, and what I am expecting in 2008. Would love to hear what you think about these.

2007

1. Ethanol bubble bursts - A few failed IPOs, the spectacle of rising food prices around the world, esp Mexico, and a realization that ethanol actually gives lower fuel economy provided enough material to disillusion even some of corn-ethanols strongest supporters. On the issue of technology trajectory for ethanol, it seems cellulosic ethanol has not yet moved fast enough to be commercially viable in the short term.
   
2. Clean coal continued to garner attention, esp as gasification projects got major funding for building demonstration projects. But I am still looking for serious and convincing plays in this sector. There is much potential here but people seem scared of venturing too far into the dirty coal business.

E-Ink digital books - soon in color!

I have known of E-Ink (the company) and its technology since it sinception at MIT. That is one of the benefits of being close to a school where labs are spinning out innovations in quick succession (and taking a course with E-Ink’s founder, Prof. Joe Jacobsen).

E-Ink has had a taken a long path to commercialization even though in late 90’s some believed paper books were a thing of the past. Even some people I knew jumped into the e-books phenomenon in the dot-boom phase.

E-Ink came up with a revolutionary technology that made it possible to use (a) very little energy and (b) the screen could be made very visible even in sunlight. They started their journey by trying to make billboards that were ‘alive’, but that didn’t really go too far. Then in addition to other display products, they started down the path of making better screen for digital book readers, and recently made big splashes when Sony (Reader) and Amazon (Kindle) announced their own versions of the e-readers that both used E-Ink technology. I won’t do justice to the technology but the basic idea is to have colored balls (microcapsules) as pixels that would expose their ‘bright’ or ‘dark’ sides when a voltage was applied to them. I am still a bit fazed by the price or I would have got one myself. Why would I ever want to carry 2-3 books with me on long trips abroad. I could just download a dozen onto my e-reader.
(click on image above to enlarge)

But anyways - now they have come up with an even cooler technology. It is E-Ink, in color! And not only that, they also have developed technologies for flexible displays….The technology is not yet fully commercial and may be a few years away from a product you and I can afford, but I look forward to the day… this could be a game-changer. Imagine all the magazines we collect during the month becoming available for download in full color! Hey, I don’t know about you but I am sick of throwing away/recycling piles of ‘Technology Review‘, ‘Chemical & Engineering News‘, ‘Wired‘, ‘Fast Company‘, ‘Business Week‘, ‘The Economist‘, ‘Foreign Affairs’ and ‘American Scientist’ each month. And the stack doesn’t look attractive after a while and I have to keep putting ‘Town and Country‘ magazine on top to hide my geekiness from being on public display.

But this won’t be the only use. Imagine quick deployment of text books in developing countries, newspaper access, consider the trees saved from being turned into paper. Would libraries turn into plug and retrieve data centers? One can just imagine the utilities. Read on…