This past February, a well-known Israeli spoke at the prestigious TED Conference and received a standing ovation.  The speaker was Shai Agassi, founder and CEO of Better Place, the company that is using today’s technology to advance complete oil independence and build an electric car network.

Most of us weren’t able or fortunate enough to be there in person to hear the talk.  Luckily, the recently uploaded video of Agassi’s talk at the 2009 TED Conference allows us to relive the experience, watching him do what he does best - compelling us to pay attention.

Two years ago, at TED’s 2007 conference, Shai Agassi was an anonymous presence.  Read the rest of this entry »

Ormat Technologies, the Israeli giant that designs, develops, owns and operates geothermal and recovered energy-based power plants around the world, announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, OrPower 4, has secured funding to the tune of $105M for its geothermal project in Kenya, Olkaria III.

The lender is a group of European Development Finance Institutions (EDFIs) arranged by Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (”DEG”). In addition to the German DEG, others in the lender group include: Société de Promotion et de Participation pour la Coopération Economique, Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund Limited and Nederlandse Financierings Maatschappij Voor Ontwekkelingslanden N.V.

Furthermore, a portion of the funds provided for the loans will come from KfW Entwicklungsbank (KfW Development Bank) and from the European Financing Partners, a financing vehicle of 13 European Development Finance Institutions and the European Investment Bank (EIB).

The 48 MW capacity plant is located in the city of Naivasha, in the Rift Valley of Kenya.  Kenya is the first African country to use geothermal energy for electrical power generation, and the only country in Africa to exploit geothermal energy in a significant manner, with geothermal investigations in the Rift Valley dating back to 1956.

About 10% of Kenya’s current electricity system capacity (~ 1200 MW) comes from geothermal energy, although about the same percentage of the population has access to electricity at all.  Still, there are advanced plans by the Kenyan government to increase electricity generation from geothermal energy to 576 MW by 2017, and demand for electricity is expected to grow as infrastructure is developed further.

Ormat has already financed two phases of construction for the project, hovering at $150M from its own company resources.  The first phase included the drilling of wells to tap geothermal source at the location, while phase two expanded the project to 35 MW, meeting the project total of 48 MW. The electricity generated is sold to Kenya Power & Light Company (KPLC) under a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement. The Olkaria III power  plant  will save 120,000 tons of imported oil and mitigate approximately 200,000 tons of CO₂ emissions per year.

Related posts about Ormat:

Cleantech Investing in Israel: “Ormat Geothermal in Guatemala…”

Sustainable Business: “Ormat Adds 35MW to Kenya…”

All the talk recently about the successes of Project Better Place in transforming the mainstream transportation market for private vehicles has understandably overshadowed other niche markets that can benefit from injections of clean technologies.

One of those niches is that for industrial machinery that is used in agriculture and agricultural transport.  Modern industrial agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and contributes significantly to the regional carbon footprint of the U.S., the European Union, Australia, and increasingly, China.

According to the Independent Science Panel, agriculture is responsible for 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, 60% of methane gas emissions and 80% of nitrous oxide.  According to its report on agriculture and global warming,

the most energy-intensive components of modern industrial agriculture are the production of nitrogen fertiliser, farm machinery and pumped irrigation. They account for more than 90% of the total direct and indirect energy used in agriculture…It has been estimated that to produce a tonne of cereals or vegetables by means of modern agriculture requires 6 to 10 times more energy than by using sustainable agricultural methods.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, a series of reports in the Israeli media have put a renewed focus on the link between environmental contaminants and human health, making the need to immediately implement more of the environmental technologies out there more than food for thought.

One was a report on the troubling rise in the cancer incidence of IDF soldiers from the Nahal Training Base.  Israel’s Channel 2 reported that in the decade between 1994 and 2004, Nahal soldiers contracted lymphoma 2.5 times more than those serving in the Golani and Paratroop brigades. That same report noted that the training base was not far from sewage cesspools (pictured) and several chemical factories that were polluting the area. Daniel Pedersen’s article on  Greenprophet.com does a nice job summarizing the contents of the report and the IDF response about the causes and linkages.

This report brought back unpleasant memories of two other well-publicized incidents, the Kishon Affair and the Yarkon Bridge Collapse.

In the Kishon Affair, it was discovered in May of 2000 that that dozens of naval commando fighters had been afflicted with cancer after conducting regular diving training sessions in the Kishon river as part of their regular training.  The Kishon river has been transformed, over the course of several decades, into a receptacle for the pollutants of several of Israel’s most polluting industrial plants including the oil refineries, petrochemical and fertilizer plants, and the sewage treatment plant. Severe contamination has destroyed the natural ecosystem and has transformed the channel into an open sewage canal flowing into Haifa Bay. Read the rest of this entry »

“There is going to be a generation of Googles and Ciscos in the cleantech area.”

So says Alan Salzman, co-founder and chief executive of VantagePoint Venture Partners, one of the most successful and high profile venture capital firms in the U.S.  He is a man who has personally been involved in developing over 300 companies, and has raised and managed more than $5 billion in capital during the last 25 years in Silicon Valley.

Salzman witnessed from close up and contributed to several technological leaps that changed the way of doing business and pushed the economy’s growth, such as the PC and Internet, biotech, and digital data communications.  Already present in VantagePoint’s cleantech portfolio are start-ups like Shai Agassi’s Better Place, high-end electric car maker Tesla Motors, and BrightSource Energy (whose subsidiary, Luz II, is headquartered in Jerusalem).

He says the firm has “well over $1 billion” dedicated to making cleantech investments.  In particular, it is looking to three areas: Read the rest of this entry »

Great news for alternative energy start-ups and more established ones, as well as for Israeli and American academics, and “yarokists” of every persuasion.

Renewable Energy World reported recently that the official launch of the US-Israel Energy Cooperation Agreement will take place on 17-19th of February at the Eilat-Eilot International Renewable Energy Conference. According to the event organizers, the Conference “is part of an ambitious program in the southern Arava desert, to generate 100% regional energy independence within a decade. This will create a regional test bed for accelerated innovations. The program serves as a blueprint for other regions in the world. Other similar regional renewable energy programs will be presented.

The Energy Cooperation Act, introduced on March 12, 2007 by Senator Gordon Brown (R-OR), would authorize a grant program of $20 million for each of fiscal years 2008 through 2014 to fund joint ventures between U.S. and Israeli businesses and academics for research, development, or commercialization of alternative energy, improved energy efficiency, or renewable energy sources.

More specifically, the Act authorizes:

• grants to promote (1) solar energy; (2) biomass energy; (3) energy efficiency; (4) wind energy; (5) geothermal energy; (6) wave and tidal energy; and (7) advanced battery technology.

• Makes eligible for a grant projects that address improved energy efficiency or renewable energy sources, or joint ventures between either: (1) a for-profit business entity, academic institution, National Laboratory, or nonprofit entity in the United States, and one in Israel; or (3) the federal government and the government of Israel.

The Act would also establish the International Energy Advisory Board.

With this long-term supplement to existing VC funds for cleantech and with the large potential of securing grants in the near future, the Israel Cleantech field will become open to many more would be participants. (Currently, there are about 600 companies in Israeli Cleantech overall.)

This is good because it allows new ideas that were previously held back by funding issues to develop and take hold, and will sharpen the focus of existing companies hoping to stay ahead of the pack. Israeli companies have touched on nearly every field mentioned for grant eligibility, above all, (1) solar energy, (2) biomass, and (7) advanced battery technology.

Entrepreneurs can be heard revving their non-emitting engines just about now.

A new article by the McKinsey Quarterly revisits the relationship between the global thirst for data and its consequent growing carbon footprint.

Already, the world’s 44 million servers emit carbon at the rate approaching that of countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands.  Data center growth forecasts for the U.S. will be the equivalent of ten new power plants in the next 1-2 years alone.  In the business-as-usual model, uncurbed demand would quadruple carbon emissions from data centers worldwide by 2020.

The bad news is not only environmental, but ultimately affects business’s bottom line. The increasingly complex analysis done by companies, as well as now common features such as real-time access, technology-intensive collaboration tools, and computing, storage, and networking capacity means the current 25% share of corporate IT budgets taken up by data center costs will only climb higher.

The factors driving this increase are a greater number of servers coupled with a growth in the price of electricity beyond that of corporate revenues or other IT costs.  We are beginning to witness a trend of data center costs diverting capital from new product development and squeezing margins.  Intensive users of information such as finance, information services, media, and telecom will have to find effective solutions for the long-haul to remain profitable and competitive.

Efficiency is Key, Preferably to Zero

Israel being such a large center of ICT innovation, products, and services, it contributes to the carbon footprint caused by data centers disproportionately with its size and population.  But will the fruits of Israel’s IT labor fertilize or poison the fields on its environmental and economic horizon?

The good news is that cyber-infrastructure allows for relocation of data facilities to anywhere in the world, so that the ICT industry can greatly reduce its emissions by relocating computing resources to zero-carbon data centers powered either by solar, wind, hydroelectric or geothermal sources.  Or better still, as the McKinsey article notes, “the greenest data center is the one that you don’t have to build,” meaning that efficiency and putting current underused capital to full use will make a significant difference.

There are currently at least 100 zero-carbon data centers around the globe and substantially more expected in the next decade.  Many of these are being built by big ICT companies like Google and Microsoft, and even popping up in ambitious and oil-abundant states.  So far, Israel does not have any initiatives to build a zero-emissions data center.  If it did, the ideal place for it would be, of course, in the white hot Negev, where it could be built underground or cooled with solar energy.  Israel would finally be able to put its natural resources of sun and open desert to additional good use.  Yet, however enticing the idea of a zero-emissions data center may be, we should look first to more easily adopted efficiency technologies in the meanwhile.

Considering the flurry of IT activity that took places at the start of the millennium, one is tempted to think the same process will repeat itself in the search and application of cleantech solutions to IT’s lingering legacy, specifically in efficiency metrics technologies and delivering electricity from renewable sources to data centers.  Israeli cleantech startups that focus on energy efficiency, such as Vintec Knowledge, LV Power, C.Q.M., and Catom Energy, and alternative energy & fuel technologies would indeed have a natural point of insertion.

Some of the reasons for the delay in building zero emissions data center are underlying differences between the IT and clean tech sectors.  In IT, for example, there is a reasonably high incentive to be the first to adopt, due to low entry barriers and rapid turnover of technology.  In cleantech, potential adopters are wary, and want to see proof of success somewhere else first before making large capital investments. With plug and play technologies, this wariness is reduced, and provides the bridge between a do-nothing present and an anticipated-but-uncertain future.

As more and more businesses and entire sectors worldwide start to feel the energy-to-margin pinch, Israel can once again become an innovation leader by providing cleantech solutions. Through new applications, common sense solutions, and especially integration of cleantech with software and communications, businesses can be reinvigorated and sent on the green path to economic growth.

Cleantech startups, professionals, academics, and investors flocked to Ernst & Young’s GreenEconomy Conference, held in Tel Aviv on November 20, 2008.

Event organizer CleanIsrael put together a solid line-up of panelists and company showcases, with a decidedly positive spin on where the cleantech industry is headed amidst the global economic crunch.
Several of the brightest cleantech companies coming out of Israel presented themselves during the showcase sessions, capably moderated by TN Ventures founder Tamar Naor.  You can find a short recap of the presentations below:

BPT: Nanofiltration for industrial wastewater

Operating since 2000 and established by Moti Perry (Nitron-Chemtec, Ltd.), the company is an innovator in the nanofiltration market, the fastest growing segment of the membrane industry.  Its two products, NanoPro and HMT (Hybrid Membrane Technology), could offer industry major savings in treating organic, acid, and mineral wastewater.  HMT’s operating costs were cited at $10/m³ compared with existing incinerator or oxidation costs of between $150-300/m³.

So far, BPT has managed to raise $5.6M after its second round of A Round funding.

CellEra: Platinum-free fuel cells

CellEra is a product company pursuing opportunities in the $15.5B incumbent market for fuel cells.  Its platinum-free, membrane based fuel cell technology is disruptive, and CEO Ziv Gottesfeld does not shy away from stating their mission of displacing industrial batteries and IC engine generators in the 1-100kW range.
With its recent milestone of an order from India’s Telco, valued at $60-$70M, the company hopes it can convince others to turn away from expensive platinum membranes  and adopt its non-acidic and reusable membrane components for fuel cells.

CheckLight: Detecting water contaminants using luminescent bacteria

Bringing a dazzling new tool to the sophisticated early warning system game, the company’s AquaVerity product of bioluminescence-based monitoring could easily become a global industry standard.  Relying on rapid visual comparison of collected water samples, it requires minimal training to monitor for natural contaminants and possible terror attacks on the water supply.

CEO Eyal Mor noted  the company is currently targeting 18 countries, with a market potential of $1.5B, primarily of global water utilities and related water safety organizations.  CheckLight was recruited by the Chinese Ministry for Environmental Protection to provide kits for its mobile emergency response vehicles, following the devastating Sichuan earthquake.  The company received an undisclosed investment from Whitewater Group, and has 3 patents pending for its unique contaminant detection method, reagent long-term storage, and continuous monitoring process.

IQWind: Variable mode add-on for turbine efficiency

The revitalized and rapidly growing wind energy sector will benefit from an answer to its technology limitation. IQWind’s innovation recovers lost wind energy for rotors that must turn in a constant RPM by creating a variable mode according to the changing speed of the wind.  The product is a mechanical, efficiency add-on which has promising applications also in the transportation world.

IQWind hopes to show significantly increased performance to exisiting turbine owners and manufacturers, along with extending wind energy frontiers to marginal locations.  Its market possibilities begin with the estimated $100B existing turbine market and to $23B in new turbine deals. Terra Venture Partners has been a major investor in the company so far.

AquaPure: Water treatment through plasma purification

Highlighting again the wealth of Israeli water technology capabilities, CEO Dvir Solnik presented his company’s own water treatment innovation.  Condensing available grid electricity to high voltage, the company’s Hydro Non Thermal Plasma Purification (HNTP) technique can treat water contaminants in a one-stage process, without chemicals or waste.  Having piloted and benchmarked its product in Las Vegas and in California with partner Carollo Engineers, AquaPure is slated to start direct sales in 2009.

Coriolis: Multi-rotor system for distributed wind energy

Joining on as an active player in the paradigm shift of the wind industry, Coriolis has rethought design of the traditional harvesting turbines.  Its multi-rotor system features an array of parallel turbines, leaving the scalability in two dimensions rather than three, and thereby leading to lower cost.  Backed by an initial $1.1M investment from Pitango, Coriolis is now exploring its products applications for lower wind classes.

Emefcy: Energy neutral/positive bio-processing of wastewater

Brilliantly capturing of the energy produced as bacteria break down organic materials, the company’s Megawatter system closes the waste-energy circle.  Industrial clients would be able to become producers of electricity, rather than only consumers.  The company estimates a 30% ROI coupled with 60% energy saving and 10% carbon credit.

Having received its seed funding in Nov 2007 from Israel Cleantech Ventures, Emefcy currently has a beta site with Teva.  Eytan Levy, CEO of Emefcy and Venture Partner in Israel Cleantech Ventures, quoted a potential market size of $10B, seeing their role primarily as a process package provider

Lextran: Combined removal of SOx, NOx, Hg for coal fired plants

Oriented towards the often overlooked air quality industry, this company presented a clean air technology  technique of 3 in 1 combined removal of greenhouse gases for coal based power plants.  This simultaneous removal would present a cost effective alternative to one by one removal, relying on wet scrubbers and liquid reagents.  VP Arie Manor noted its simple installation, small footprint, and the fact that it exceeds all regulation requirements for coal-fired plants are major selling points for heavy industry.  Lextran currently has a demonstration plant active in Romania.

Di.S.P.: Concentrated solar power for heat and energy

Using advanced PV cells and reporting a transformation rate of 75% to combined heat and power, Di.S.P. is putting solar power to dual use.  Compared to flat panel systems, its sun tracking PV cells would translate to high efficiency heat and power for the target customers in commercial building and industry.  The company currently has 1 patent pending and two others under submission.

CRE: Converting biogas into biomethane for clean fuel

In another wonderful example of channeling waste into energy, CRE has developed an extraction technique which captures 97% of methane from biogas, compared with 85% in competing capture methods.  Using less energy input, with no hazardous waste and no pre-treatment required, the company hopes to start commercialization in 2009.  A long-term supply guarantee and price stability are hard to beat in this market, or any for that matter.  CRE’s timeframe for projects in Israel is in February 2009.

PML: Particle monitoring of water contaminants

Offering an in-process, online monitoring of water contaminants that can discriminate between particle groups down to sub-micron size, PML puts its Technion association to good use.  A Structured non-Gaussian Dark Beam approximately the size of a microwave scans the water sample flow to manage and monitor water contamination in real time.  Bacteria, viruses, parasites, and micro-particles can be detected and discriminated, which no other system can do at present.

Financed with funds from Mekorot and the State of Israel, the company expects its first market launch by 2009.  It is seeking an additional $4M for commercialization.

With the global VC available for cleantech hovering at $8B, expected to double by 2011, can we expect Israeli cleantech companies to bloom like mushrooms after the rain, as they did during the IT bubble?

Glen Schwaber of Israel Cleantech Ventures noted that, although we can expect many crossover opportunities from Israel’s IT excellence, the apparent critical mass reached in the cleantech industry has so far not translated to investors migration to Israel in a big way.  In 2005, Israel had no VC funds dedicated to cleantech; currently, Israel has only 3 major VC funds dedicated exclusively to cleantech, with about 600 companies in the ICV database.

Nevertheless, Schwaber reminds us that the fundamental drivers of innovation in cleantech have not changed in the past few months, and are not likely to change anytime soon.  These will continue to push policy, innovation, and investment in Israeli cleantech over the coming years.

The date of the 2009 GreenEconomy Conference has not yet been revealed.  We shall see whether Schwaber’s analysis brings tangible results by then.