On the 16^th and 17^th of October 2012 the Viridis Africa conference is to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa.  The event is dedicated to the introduction of clean technologies and associated business/investment opportunities.

The intention of Viridis Africa is to bring together investors and entrepreneurs from Africa and rest of the world, to jointly explore commercial initiatives in green technologies.

 The program includes presentation of specific projects or business initiatives, ranging in size and scope and encompassing most of the priority areas such as bioenergy, hydro, wind power, green chemistry, recycling, water treatment, desalination, amongst others.

 According to conference organiser, Suza Adam, managing member of Spindle Communications, “principals who would present their business opportunities at this event would have the audience of numerous local and foreign investors. Investors would include venture capital, private equity, project and corporate finance outfits and others dedicated to the clean tech sector. Also included are major companies who seek strategic alliance and acquisitions.”

 New technologies currently being developed by academic and research institutions will also have their opportunity so as to introduce potential business opportunities through the commercialization of the above.

 “Additional business proposals are invited from clean tech sub-sectors including clean energy generation (wind, solar, hydro, biofuels, geothermal, clean coal technologies), storage (fuel cells, advanced batteries, hybrid systems), efficiency (smart grids, waste heat recovery), water & waste water (water treatment, water conservation, waste water treatment, desalination) and recycling and waste (recycling, waste treatment, organic matter, plastics) etc.” says Adam.

 The event will also introduce parties with complimentary technologies and business models to one another in order to explore mutually beneficial opportunities.

 “In the main the conference and its exhibition will endeavour to bring about a vibrant market trading place for entrepreneurs and corporates to propose and conclude investment deals with funders”, concludes Adam.

 Although the event is to be held once a year, it is designed to give the participants long term continuity vis a vis  the provision of web-based interaction platforms, inducing social networks.

 For more information about the conference: please visit us at www.viridisafrica.com.

The Hidden Cleantech Revolution: Five Priorities for Securing America's Energy Future -- without Breaking the Bank
By John Moore and Toby Shute 

 

Free full-text download available at http://hiddencleantech.com/

The most difficult aspect of our society's energy challenge for most people to grasp is the sheer scale of energy demand, the massive investment sunk into existing infrastructure, and the timeframe required for substantive change.  In thinking about the evolution of energy technology, most of us are thus subject to the classic error articulated by futurologist Paul Saffo: confusing a clear view of the future with a short distance.

Seeking to avoid that trap, The Hidden Cleantech Revolution: Five Priorities for Securing America's Energy Future -- without Breaking the Bank, a slim volume written by Acorn Energy CEO John Moore and Motley Fool energy analyst Toby Shute, focuses not on long-term breakthrough technologies or future regulatory changes, but rather on immediate opportunities for modest improvements.  By changing the inflection of the energy productivity curve right now, the authors argue, we can reap large cumulative impacts over time.  It's the miracle of compound interest translated from financial to energy planning.

That's why Moore and Shute talk about a "hidden cleantech revolution" --  some of the innovations they highlight are hidden in plain sight, overlooked because individually they are not game-changers, not exciting new technology, not disruptive.  But from the perspective of entrepreneurs and investors, energy and utility executives, or regulators and environmental policy-makers, these innovations in the aggregate have the potential to make a huge difference within the next decade.

And that's the driving energy behind this refreshingly brief, clear, and focused volume -- the authors want to make sure that potential near-term improvements and economic gains are not left in the shadows, while unwarranted attention is lavished on unproven or uneconomic technologies that might have an impact in the future.  As the authors stress, "Hope is not a strategy."

Moore and Shute leverage their deep experience with the real world of energy innovation to highlight a range of opportunities that can improve our existing energy infrastructure, production and distribution processes, largely through the application of information technology.  IT has already driven revolutionary change in industry after industry, but as yet has had little penetration in energy.  I especially like the references to Kevin Kelly's ideas about the "internet of things," that is, creating more effective and responsive systems by interconnecting and adding intelligence to the existing world of isolated 'dumb' devices like those making up our electrical grid or oil and gas pipelines.

The focus on wringing near-term improvements out of our existing infrastructure is clearly reflected in the structure of the book, which is organized around five strategic 'national priorities': 

• Getting more from the Grid
• Getting more from Oil and Gas
• Getting more from Coal
• Getting more from Nuclear
• Safety, Security, and Resilience

Notably missing is the usual discussion of such high-profile topics as bioenergy, solar, wind, or electric vehicles.  Not that the authors don't think these topics are important for the future, just that unresolved technical, economic, and regulatory issues drive higher risk and longer lead times for deployment at scale.  On the other hand, as their fifth National Priority indicates, they pay more attention than usual to opportunities associated with extending the life of our aging and vulnerable infrastructure.

Their focus on realistic short-term opportunities puts the authors on the same wavelength as Stuart Brand in his recent Whole Earth Discipline,  which emphasizes "ecopragmatist" solutions, or Robert Bryce in Power Hungry, with his 'N2N' (or natural gas to nuclear) policy.  The emerging consensus, as I see it, is that we need to become tougher and more hard-nosed in thinking about how to make immediate progress on every front possible, at the same time that we encourage visionary long-term approaches to changing the status quo.

One of the best features of the book is its simple rating system for the near-term potential of the various opportunities examined.  For each technology, the authors examine its potential to improve how clean, safe, reliable, and affordable our energy production and distribution systems are.  They then weight the result both by the extent to which the technology is already proven, and how widespread its deployment within the next 10 years could be.  A small table makes these ratings explicit at the head of each relevant chapter.

Though the precision of these energy impact ratings is low, the trade-off is that they are clear and transparent, suitable for comparative discussion and debate.  And they work well enough to highlight some counter-intuitive results, such as:

• Some 'killer apps' that have garnered attention for their long-term potential, such as smart-meter deployment and grid-scale batteries, get extremely low scores for near-term value due to their current economics or technical maturity.
• Some 'hidden' opportunities that most people have never heard about, such as computer modeling for vegetation management in electrical transmission right-of-ways, or mega-project management software for nuclear plant construction, get very high marks due to the potential for widespread and economic implementation right now.

My favorite example was what the authors called 'the seeing bit.'  By using high-speed down-hole communications in concert with real-time seismic modeling, drilling accuracy can be improved enough to drive an estimated 15% improvement in oil recovery from existing fields.  A classic transformation of capabilities arising from the synergy of many small innovations, enabled by improved IT to tie them all together.

As the authors point out, knowledge is power -- literally!  Our current energy infrastructure is so enormous and so inefficient, that knowledge, in the form of improved IT and near-term cleantech developments, can provide us with more new usable power than any comparable brute force investment in basic capacity.  And collectively, these near-term improvements can start changing our energy productivity trend line now.

CLEAN-TECH DEFINED

We would not be off-track if we state that there is an energy centered “consumption” bias in almost all present day Definitions of the concept of CLEAN-TECH. And there is also a “tilt” in the thinking, based on Temperate Zone experiences alone. Further, not even one of these current definitions seems to strictly consider Clean-Tech in tune with Laws of physical Science … particularly the most important SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. Without going into the details and explanation of this Scientific law, let us observe that the essence of this Law is that it is impossible for us to “revert back” to an “original state” in space-time-entropy system. For example: people grow old; iron rusts; rocks weather and crumble; water flows from a higher level to a lower level. Not one of these could be expected to work “reverse”. For example, an old man would never “travel” back in time and ultimately enter back into his mother's womb!

In spite of the Thermodynamics truth and the effects of Time-Entropy, we may note that humans could either accelerate or slightly decelerate the inevitable “heat death” of the universe. The last four hundred years, starting from the period of the “Great Voyages” and Explorations (from around 1600 AD), we had seen how every action leads to a cascading environmental and human disasters, apparently accelerating this dreaded end! Today, these are being defined as Carbon Footprint increases in the atmosphere. However, this writer wishes to opine that these have NO MEANING FOR THE NON-TEMPERATE Zone regions … the TROPICS, where the Renewable Resources growth is phenomenal. It is therefore opined that the Tropics, which is constituted by about 160 nations  (with over 4 billion population) and are totally different in every respect from the Temperate zone regions, should follow independent Development paradigm. We shall, thus, define CLEAN-TECH aimed at this new Philosophy.

The concept of CLEAN-TECH may, thus, be defined as:

CONCEPTUALIZING CLEAN-TECH

We shall note that the greatest volume of terrestrial resources are the Renewable Resources (RR) in the form of Vegetation/ Plants/ Trees/ Shrubs. Although animal and other “living” organisms may not fall within these vegetation systems, we shall also include those resources within this RR ambit. It is estimated that the rate at which CO2 is “fixed” in plant life is about 45 Kg Cellulose per day, per each individual on earth. This does not include the vegetation matter in the sea/ oceans! Thus, the land based annual vegetation growth on earth could be of the order of 1,000 Billion tons (having average 27% solids; the balance being water) … approximately 150 T per annum per individual on earth (estimated population of 6.6 billion)

The illustration here briefly explains (in a nutshell) the Concept of AGRO-POLYMER INDUSTRY COMPLEX-SUSTAINABILTY ENGINEERED PROJECTS (APIX-SEP). It may be noted that every gram of ALL Available RR would be utilized and Recycled in a Self Regenerative Recycling (SRR) process, resulting in a CLOSED-LOOP ZERO-WASTE ZERO-CARBON BUSINESS-MODEL (ZW-ZC-BM). These resultant integrated and inter-related processes would have the following End products/ Value added productions:

1. Alternate (non-fossil based) Energy

2. Alternate (non-fossil based) Petrochemicals

3. Alternate Renewable Resources based Engineering materials

4. Non-Chemical, Non-Fossil Biofertilizer

5. Biowater

6. Locally driven Processed foods

In the ultimate analyses, we may note that there is the QUADRUPLE IMPACT of TECHNO-SOCIO-COMMERCIAL-ENVIRONMENTAL involvements:

• TECHNICAL: The conversion of RR materials would result in: Energy, Engineered materials, Bio-Petrochemicals, Bio-Fertilizer, Bio-water and Processed Foods

• SOCIAL: These APIX-SEP's would generate enough job-opportunities to local people in villages, reducing the gap between “rich” and “poor”

• BUSINESS: The different Projects would convert available RR into high value businesses, having value additions in the range of 20 to over 100 from the base RR values

• ENVIRONMENTAL: APIX-SEP would mitigate Global Warming and Poverty (GWP), without destroying the environment, through Zero hybridization and total recycling

COMMERCIALIZING CLEAN-TECH

In order that the REAL CLEAN-TECH systems are developed, commercialized and propagated throughout the world, a small group (AGRO-BIOGENICS) have come together, and are planning to set up an APIX_Pilot plant (to begin with in India). The long-term proposition is to set up various APIX Sustainability Engineered projects in almost every one of the 160 Tropical nations. The estimated Worldwide APIX-SEP potentials are of the order of not less than US $4 trillion

The illustration here is the gist of the First APIX_Pilot project

For more info:

Please visit: http://zerowastezerocarbon.wordpress.com/

and http://zerowastezerocarbon.wordpress.com/contact-us/

For immediate contact: hariharan.pv@agro-biogenics.com

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins

Throughout history, until very recently, man has been a small actor in an overwhelmingly large world.  Most of the book explores how this has given rise to our ingrained cultural patterns of wasteful resource utilization, limited focus on capital efficiency, and drive for production volumes, while assuming unbounded access to subsidized natural resources and 'free' ecosystem services.  Shifting perspective to include natural capital on the business balance sheet, and to expand lean manufacturing principles beyond the factory walls is what's required to address the ecology/climate change nexus.  This change in perspective is embodied in a range of sustainable business concepts, including the 'triple bottom line' (profits, people, and planet), and the 'cradle-to-cradle' model for recycling products and integrating industries to eliminate 'waste'.

The basic principles of natural capitalism put forward can be summarized as: (1) focus on natural resource efficiency (2) using closed loop, biomemetic, nontoxic processes (3) to deliver more appropriate end-user services (4) while investing in restoring, sustaining, and expanding natural capital.  Following these principles leads not to constraints on business or lowered expectations, but an enormous range of new business opportunities to profit from improved efficiencies and environmentally beneficial activities.  One of the best expressions of this perspective comes in the discussion on climate change, providing a refreshing contrast to the recent spate of bad news on this front: "Together, the [available business] opportunities can turn climate change into an unnecessary artifact of [our] uneconomically wasteful use of resources."

While the authors deliver an awesome, deeply researched articulation of their vision, showing with many examples why it's important and how it can work within our current capitalistic economies, the book has two key flaws.  First, it falls prey to the syndrome first articulated by Paul Saffo, founder of the Institute for the Future, of confusing a clear vision of the future with a short path.  This combines with an  excessive reliance on sheer volume of examples to make their points, too many of them poorly explained, bristling with non-comparable numbers, and substituting hand-waving for real outcomes.  Deeper exploration of fewer examples might have illustrated the principles better, and have been much easier to read.  Also, 11 years after the original publication, many of the examples are seen to be hastily chosen and and used to support glib and overreaching conclusions that make the authors seem naive.  Examples include the advent hydrogen powered cars ("hypercars"), the potential for shutting down Ruhr Valley coal production in favor of direct social payments to coal workers, or the imminent triumph of the Kyoto Protocols for international carbon trading.  And, while much attention is paid to articulating the perverse incentives, misguided taxes and subsidies, and split responsibilities that impede more efficient system approaches, there's short shrift given to new technology adoption rates, the scale of existing infrastructure investments, or the political complexities of changing incentives and subsidies.

However, if you are interested in understanding the genesis and foundations of the modern sustainability movement, this is a fundamental text.  Despite its flaws, after 11 years the fundamental argument and principles hold up well and are still inspiring.

Houston, TX – July 30August 13, 2010 – marcus evans, a conference producing company, will host the 3^rd Annual Risk Management in Energy Trading Conference, October 21-22, 2010 in Houston, TX. More than 18 leading experts will provide insights on best practices for risk management in energy trading, including managing liquidity risk, optimizing stress testing programs and complying with new CFTC regulatory reforms.

“As energy and financial markets have become more efficient and interwoven, it has become increasingly important for everyone involved with managing the risks associated with energy transactions to learn as much about the topic as possible,” said Michael Carter, Director—Credit Risk, at EDF Trading. “Recent history is littered with stories of those who failed.”

Carter, who has 25 years of experience in the energy industry, will share his knowledge on practical aspects of risk management with this year’s conference attendees. 

With a one-track focus, the 3^rd Annual Risk Management in Energy Trading Conference is a highly intensive, content-driven event that includes case studies, presentations and panel discussions over two full days. This conference targets industry leaders in risk management roles in order to provide an intimate atmosphere for both the delegates and speakers.

Due to the historic passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, this event will provide a comprehensive look at impending regulatory reforms affecting the energy trading industry. Commissioner Jill E. Sommers from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will deliver the conference’s keynote address to provide a firsthand perspective on pressing regulatory issues. Other regulatory reform speakers include Jim Allison, Regional Risk Manager, Gas and Power NA, at ConocoPhillips, and Lisa Epifani from law firm Van Ness Feldman.

“The energy trading and risk management landscape is continuously evolving,” said Darilyn Jones, SVP Risk Control at Sequent Energy Management, and this year’s conference chairperson. “It is a dynamic landscape where the impact of key drivers is sometimes difficult to predict and constantly changing. Understanding the current market and regulatory environment is very important.”

marcus evans invites risk management professionals to join in this cutting-edge, peer-to-peer conference that examines best practices in the energy trading industry. In addition to two days of conference sessions, attendees will have extensive networking opportunities with their peers.

Says Carter, “I have been fortunate enough to experience a marcus evans conference as both an attendee and as a presenter.  Regardless of which side of the podium I was on, I was pleased with the knowledge I gained from the program and the interaction with other participants.”

For more information on this conference or to get a complete list of speakers, sessions or past attendees, visit http://www.marcusevansch.com/RMET or email Michele Westergaard, Michelew@marcusevansch.com

About marcus evans

marcus evans conferences annually produce over 2,000 high quality events designed to provide key strategic business information, best practice and networking opportunities for senior industry decision-makers. Our global reach is utilized to attract over 30,000 speakers annually, ensuring niche focused subject matter presented directly by practitioners and a diversity of information to assist our clients in adopting best practice in all business disciplines.

Contact

Michele Westergaard

312-540-3000 ext. 6625

Michelew@marcusevansch.com

Regulatory developments coming down the tracks are set to impact the energy trading market and in particular risk management practices. Michael Carter, Director of Credit Risk at EDF Trading North America, gives his views on these and some of the other pressing aspects of risk management in the energy trading industry.

- How will the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulatory reforms affect risk management practices in the energy trading industry?

To a large extent it is still unknown as there are still so many details that have to be worked out. I think the CFTC has released a list of 30 areas that they intend to address over the coming year. We don’t know enough details just yet to know how it will affect different companies. For instance they may elect to permit end-user exceptions to differentiate the people who are solely in the business of trading energy derivatives for speculative purposes, versus those who are doing it to hedge a physical position they already have. We just don’t have enough details for people to begin to make grand assumptions about how they’re going to conduct their future business. There is a huge amount of unknown detail hanging out there. This is an 800lb gorilla in the room for a lot of energy companies.

- What is the importance of knowing the fundamentals and going "back to basics" with risk management practices?

There’s a significant convergence within the energy space between the efforts of physical energy companies and financial participants. For instance, you have energy companies who are trading with the banks. Historically they have had different ways of managing their risk. Physical energy companies have typically been more involved in managing their physical business and less involved in managing their financial risk. There was not even a natural gas futures contract until the early 90s. There are many companies in the physical energy space who still aren’t even margining while banks already have all of this in place.  As they are forced to trade more and more with one another, I don’t think you can continue to have this great disparity in how risks are managed between those two massive efforts. There may be a bank, for instance, that will want to trade under an ISDA contract and they’re talking to an oil company that has never had a daily margining requirement and now they’re being forced to. It’s definitely changing the rules of the game and requiring not only the physical companies to learn how to do things like Wall Street does, but it’s requiring Wall Street people to understand some of the nuances of the physical commodity space.

- Can controlling risks in energy trading provide greater market assurance for companies like oil and gas producers, electric providers and gas utilities?

Yes but I think it’s important to remember that those who come to this game looking to manage a latent risk are often simply exchanging one risk for another. Sometimes it’s a more dangerous one. A producer of a product comes to the market with what they need to sell and if they enter into a margining arrangement, they could lock in a profitable deal but be margined into default if prices move and they can’t come up with collateral. That’s sometimes a more dangerous risk to face because it’s unforgiving and it’s over in a few days.  A lot of companies can operate in the red for a while, but ones who can’t meet a margin call literally have only days to fix the problem. If you go in and try to cover a market risk that you face and you sign a contract to agree to provide collateral when prices change, you are exchanging one form of risk for another. That’s a common issue for companies in this market.

- How can risk management give confidence to the insurance companies, banks, and manufacturers that work with energy companies?

One of the issues we have to deal with is the importance in having confidence in your counterparty’s ability to perform. If you have good controls and you believe your counterparty does too, it eases everyone’s concern and lets each party focus on the transaction rather than heightening the tensions and increasing the potential for negative actions. If I’m trading with a counterparty who I believe is weak I’m going to be concerned and I’m going to halt trading at the first sign of trouble rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt - as I may if I thought it was a strong and well controlled company. Entities in the market have a great deal of subjective flexibility when they interact with individual counterparties and sometimes entire classes of counterparties. Simply having a degree of anxiety over your counterparty or particular industry sector can make people take defensive actions more quickly.

- What are the key challenges facing the industry right now?

Uncertainty. What’s the pace of the economic recovery likely to look like? That affects the demand for the product. How is the coal industry going to be affected if there is a change in regulation and public opinion regarding emissions? How is the huge amount of gas that has been discovered in North America going to affect the geopolitical energy balance? Is that going to cause some shifting away from other energy sources? It is very difficult for executives in the energy space to make long term plans.

Another is the unequal application of business practices. That has the opportunity to introduce arbitrage into the trading process. The biggest challenge right now is getting everyone on the same page. Back in the 90s energy companies started trying to adopt Wall Street-style risk management practices.  That’s where the Enrons and the Dynegys of the world started to really introduce something in the energy patch that basically had been in the financial kingdom.  That effort is still underway and is more advanced in commodities like gas and power than it is in oil and coal, for instance, although they are moving in that direction, too.  It is being made more difficult because even more “sophisticated” techniques such as Credit Value Adjustments (CVA) are becoming more common, making the process a moving target.

There are still a dramatic number of physical energy players out there who do not fully embrace the more robust risk management techniques yet. If they’re going to continue to evolve in their business practices, they’re going to have to step up the level of their capabilities and improve the training of their personnel and upgrade their systems and policies.

The marcus evans 3rd Annual Risk Management in Energy Trading Conference will take place on 21-22 October, 2010 in Houston, TX.

For further information on this event contact:

Michele Westergaard
Marketing/PR Coordinator – N.A. Conferences
marcus evans
____________________________________
The NBC Tower, 9th Floor
455 N Cityfront Plaza Drive
Chicago, IL 60611
tel: 312-540-3000 ext.6625
www.marcusevans.com