Is Toyota THE Clean Tech Automotive Company?

According to a Bloomberg article picked up by Fuel Cell Today, Toyota has announced its goal of an “all-hybrid” fleet. I think Toyota is rapidly becoming THE powerhouse in clean vehicles.

Toyota Hybrid Article

  • Toyota is the world’s second largest auto maker.
  • It is largest producer of hybrid vehicles, and doesn’t seem like it intends to relinquish the title anytime soon.
  • It actually developed the technology that is powering Ford’s hybrid program, and sold it to Ford.
  • It’s the only major automotive company that makes a concerted effort to grow its clean vehicle business at the expense of its other business units.

I read an article not too long ago explaining why Toyota as winning the hybrid race over Honda. The gist of it was design over technology. This guy suggested that Toyota designed it’s Prius hybrids just different enough to be easily recognizable as a hybrid (unlike the Honda Civic hybrid), but not so far out there in design that consumers were turned off like the Honda Insight.

Then, with great technology, good marketing, and plain good auto design, Toyota had built its lead.

Who says a $100 billion mainstream company can’t lead the way in cleantech.

Anybody have a thought on other cleantech leaders?

Odd Things – Alternative Fuel the SPCA will Hate

Talk about odd. I was really not sure what to think about this one. I guess this is for all you waste to energy guys to chase down in your spare time. This German inventor (who denies it) is supposed to have told a reporter in an article picked up by Reuters that he has tested dead cats as fuel in a waste biodiesel process.

I went to the website: http://www.alphakat.de He is basically claiming a lower temperature (270-350 C) catalytic synfuel reactor conversion process of waste organic materials to biodiesel. The gist of it is the development of patented catalyst as the key to process. He also implies that the system is low pressure and has been tested on a wide range of feedstocks, and the site seems to suggest that he has a pilot plant running, though I can’t find any direct mention of it.

To be frank though, if he hadn’t told a German reporter he using dead cats as fuel, I’m not sure he would be making the US press. The English language version of website was extremely difficult to plow through. And there is not enough information on site to validate any of the claims. Just goes to show how far afield the search for new fuels gets.

Cleantech.org – A portal for clean technology commercialization

Cleantech.org is a a new web portal launching soon as a meeting and resource place for people like us who are looking to commercialize technologies relating to energy and the environment, whether in fuel cells, solar, environmental remediation, water purification, alternative energy, power, wind, renewables, green building, or anything else of similar bent.

My company, Jane Capital, is a founding sponsor of Cleantech.org. The site is expected to go live at the end of October (until then the URL just points to this site). This is the early scoop on the site, and we are very excited to be a part of it!

The portal is designed around the following:

  • List and application form for all of the incubators and angel investor networks that are interested in clean tech.
  • Reverse job board, a posting forum for executives, angels, advisors, scientists, engineers, and students to find cleantech ventures to join
  • A technology opportunities forum for companies looking to find partners for, sell, license, or develop a technology they own

Other resources will include:

  • A collection of major news feeds on clean tech topics
  • Listings of conferences and events in the clean tech sector
  • A searchable data base of research notes on clean technology companies dating back over 7 years, written by Dr. Ed Beardsworth for a series of utility clients
  • An online panel of experts in everything from law to various technologies, to venture capital, to SBIRs, who are available by email to answer questions related to tech commercialization.

I will announce the launch on Cleantechblog.com and keep you updated on the progress.

Interesting Sites for Next Generation Energy Technology

I read a lot of sites related to energy technology. A few of them really standout, so I wanted to share them with you.
  • http://www.nrel.gov
    The site for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. NREL is where huge amounts of our tax dollars get spent looking at wacky new solar technologies or the latest and greatest fuel cell design. The site is very deep, with lots of hidden gems, but not well organized.

  • http://www.solarbuzz.com
    SolarBuzz.com is a solar information website run by a small solar consulting group, and it’s one of the few places around that actuall tracks the prices of solar cells across the industry.

  • http://www.cleantech.com
    The Cleantech Venture Network is the premier membership organization for venture capitalists and investors interested in Clean Technology. The management are friends of mine, and have done more in the last few years for getting new technologies funded and pulling together investor interest in the sector than just about anyone.

  • http://www.fuelcelltoday.com
    This is a site from the UK with a global focus. Of all the fuel cell sites out there it has the best news, a massive directory of people, and great links resources. It’s the only fuel cell site I read.

Good Article on the Oil Companies and Cleantech

Red Herring magazine did an article on the Cleantech sector titled, “Big Oil’s Clean Hedge” that I was quoted in recently.
The article heavily quotes ChevronTexaco as it is one of the few oil companies that has a policy allowing managers to talk to the press.
Most of the article talks about what the oil companies are doing in clean technology, where they are investing money, and how they view the sector. The oil company managers that did give quotes are heavy on the PR as you would expect, but all in all Red Herring wrote a fairly balanced view with some interesting twists.
My contribution boiled down to pointing out that like them or not, the oil companies spend a lot of money in this sector compared to anyone else, so we really need to watch what they are up to, not treat them like pariahs.

Gas-to-Liquid: Its Time Has Come

Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) technology has been around for nearly a century. Known as the Fischer-Tropsch process (FT), it converts gas into a liquid fuel in the form of a refined crude or even a final product such as (clean) diesel. Until recently, conventional wisdom has been correct: use of GTL has been limited by high capital and operating costs. [ In the FT process, synthesis gas (or syngas, H+CO) is reacted in the presence of an iron or cobalt catalyst. End products are determined by the length of the hydrocarbon chain which, in turn, is determined by catalyst selectivity and reaction conditions. Possible end products include kerosene, naphtha, methanol, dimethyl ether, alcohols, waxes, synthetic diesel and gasoline, with water or carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct. Natural gas or coal can be the raw feedstock. ]

Several drivers, however, have combined to change that situation entirely: – Dwindling world oil reserves and high exploration costs – Impending limits worldwide on sulfur content in diesel fuel – Vast quantities of “stranded gas” identified – Technology advances, thanks to substantial programs by the oil majorsVery recently, these same oil companies have announced multibillion dollar GTL projects. Last October, Shell announced a $5 billion plant in Qatar, and estimated production costs at less than $4 per barrel. As the NY Times reported (Oct 16), Exxon Mobil is also building a plant in Qatar, at a cost of $10 billion, and the South African company Sasol is constructing a 34,000-barrel-a-day GTL plant in Qatar that is expected to come online in 2005. Together with ChevronTexaco, Sasol is negotiating with the government to build another 120,000-barrel-a-day GTL plant.

Conocophillips announced its own $5B plant to be built in Qatar. (Seems Qatar is the place to be!) BP’s commercial pilot plant in Alaska is operational.The petroleum industry has found more than 5,000 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas in remote locations, an energy equivalent of 500 billion barrels of crude oil. Most of this resource is abandoned in place because of the prohibitive cost of transportation infrastructure.

A new company, World GTL, Inc. was founded in 2000 by industry veterans. Their plan is to acquire ownership rights (in some cases production rights) to certain stranded gas fields at deeply discounted prices, and capitalize on opportunities that now exist to convert these “stranded” natural gas fields into synthetic petroleum products.Why don’t the majors do this themselves? They do hold on to larger fields and may eventually develop them as LNG sources (or increasingly, with GTL), but they have no interest in smaller fields, e.g. under 3 tcf. This leaves a huge opportunity for players like World GTL. In fact, majors have already said they’d license their GTL technology and help with plant financing. (There is an analogy to the independent oil company movement over the last 20 years in the US. The majors decided that shallow water drilling in the Gulf was not going to work with their overhead costs and targeted IRRs, so they left the area to small independents who have done very well indeed.)Turning Stranded Gas into Proven Oil ReservesWorld GTL has come up with an interesting strategy. Once the development is done on a project (i.e. secure gas rights, do site plan, license technology, do preliminary engineering, arrange financing, sales agreements, etc.) previously stranded gas reserves with little to no value will essentially have been converted to “in the ground” gasoline and diesel inventories which can be easily monetized in the international oil market. World oil companies are struggling to rebuild and expand their proven reserves which have dropped to dangerously low levels. Reserves can be borrowed against, and this critically important for these companies, not only to be able to invest in the development of those resources, but as a contribution to their balance sheet. The majors are spending an average of more than $5 per BOE (barrel of oil equivalent) just to find bookable reserves today (and that’s not even counting the “fully developed” cost to produce). Every dry hole drilled adds to the problem.World GTL estimates that ten cents will cover development costs needed to get a BOE to “bookability”, and there is a long list of buyers who will jump at the chance to buy these BOE’s for $1. (Actually better than BOE, because it’s zero sulfur fuel.)Thus venture returns are possible even before the plant is built. Once it is built, the fully developed cost of production is less than $5 per barrel of finished product, and refinery demand for sulfur free blending stock is already booming. New EPA regulations drastically limit sulfur content of diesel fuel beginning in 2006. Other regions are doing likewise, and refiners have very limited means to comply, especially in light of the lessening supply of lighter crude oil.The company is currently raising $40 M to take their program to the next level and build two small commercial GTL plants. A great deal of information is available, including a collection of recent articles in the business press.

First published in a UFTO Note by Dr. Ed Beardsworth.