Schwartz Renewablog

Schwartz is GoingGreen

2008-08-01T19:51:23Z

After a long hiatus in which I took a couple of trips and battled a sinus infection, it's great to be back in the saddle on Renewablog. Not to mention I returned with exciting news.

Schwartz has partnered with AlwaysOn to sponsor and represent the GoingGreen event. GoingGreen has become the premiere cleantech industry event focused on green financing, venture capital and emerging growth companies in solar, wind, green IT, sustainability, biofuels, etc.

GoingGreen kicks off what will be an action-packed Fall for the renewables market, as PVSEC Europe, GoingGreen, greenXchange Xpo and Solar Power International (the artist formerly known as Solar Power 2008), all take place between Labor and Columbus Day week. If the other conferences have a line-up like GoingGreen (Raj Atluru and Steve Jurvetson, Vinod Khosla, Ajit Nazre, Ray Lane, etc.), we are in for one great stretch of conferences. One topic that is sure to be top of mind? The expiring renewable tax credits and the impact that a change in Washington will have on industries like solar, biofuels, wind and hydro.

If you attend the events, let us know what you think. I've been waiting for this stretch all year long.

Intersolar Invades North America

2008-07-18T18:37:09Z

The third floor of Moscone West in San Francisco buzzed with visitors and exhibitors at Intersolar, the massive Munich conference's first foray into North America. Held in conjunction with SEMICON West, Intersolar infused the conference with more photovoltaic technology than it's seen in previous years, and according to my engineer friend (a SEMICON veteran), more women.

I noticed some eye-candy myself, in the form of solar panels. Thin-film stole the show, but the technology took a backseat to the buzz about a legal battle brewing between exhibitors Applied Materials and Oerlikon Solar. Both companies manufacture and sell equipment for making thin-film solar panels. Oerlikon had been offering turnkey thin-film production lines for a few years when Applied threw its hat in the ring in 2006, and the two companies have been working to out-innovate one anothe r since.

Just before the Intersolar Munich conference this past June—which hosted more than 50,000 visitors—Oerlikon filed a lawsuit against Applied Materials customer Sunfilm, claiming patent infringement for its production process. Many think it is a move aimed directly at Applied, who supplies—you guessed it—Sunfilm’s entire production line. Neither company seems to be talking about it on the record, but sources tell me that Applied is “not sweating it.” Applied didn’t look a bit worried on the Intersolar exhibition floor as a constant flow of visitors stopped to watch a flashy video promoting the SunFab (5.7m2 thin-film) production line Expect an upcoming feature article on the heated competition between Applied and Oerlikon from leading international photovoltaic publication PHOTON International.

Fresh from Wednesday's press conference with Applied, one international journalist commented to me that he was surprised at how reporters from the top-tier business press knew very little about the Oerlikon lawsuit, and in fact, little about solar itself. As I briefly mentioned to him, most American journalists are working under conditions that don’t allow them time for the in-depth research and reporting they’d love to do in this evolving and complicated industry. The cleantech journalists I know are bright and hungry, anxiously learning everything they can all while withstanding the drama of newsrooms where their colleagues are being laid off or quitting due to corporate politics. My friend, a former cleantech reporter at a fallen-from-grace Bay Area tech publication, discovered the company had quit paying her health and dental insurance after going to the doctor! She was also told by her editor to write only about “breaking news” such as funding, which left her knowledge limited amid a swelling landscape of cleantech players.

The former journalist in me can talk about this all day, but the PR practitioner in me wants to call your attention to thin-film manufacturer (and Schwartz client), Global Solar Energy, who hosted plenty of Intersolar attendees flocking to see its PowerFlex™ Solar Stings, in essence, solar cells on light and flexible foil. Usually the thin-film company with the largest funding round is the media darling of the moment, but Global Solar has been working on its Copper Indium Gallium DiSelenide (CIGS) technology since 1996, making them a veteran in an industry where new companies are constantly popping out of stealth.

For more of the scoop on Intersolar, check out Eric Wesoff’s Green Light blog posts (“Intersolar Hallway Conversations and Rumors Part I and II”) at Greentech Media.

The Big Picture

2008-07-15T06:48:34Z

Kids really ground you. They see things so simply.

The folks at Pixar get this, and as a result make brilliant and poignant movies that speak to kids and the kids within all of us.

Pixar's latest effort, Wall-E, is many things: a kid's movie, a love story, an homage to Chaplin.

However, at its core, Wall-E is an elegant, beautiful, moving Silent Spring for the next generation.

It's easy to get lost in the back and forth bickering over global warming, gas prices, regulation, competing green technologies, subsidies and every other Tag word in the blogosphere.

It's easy to lose the big picture.

Thanks to Wall-E for providing some focus.

San Francisco a Little Greener this Morning

2008-06-12T15:32:09Z

Ater weeks of debate and intense lobbying by green businesses and environmentalists around the Bay Area, San Francisco finally passed the country's most aggressive municiple solar grant plan. As Elsa Wenzel at CNET mentions, this will sweeten the SF pot for green start ups.

This is another example of the considerable movement at the municiple and state levels to drive green adoption. While this is a great thing for green vendors, it makes the job of cleantech PR practitioners and marketers much more difficult, as they are tempted to take a patchwork local-market approach to selling their wares.

While local PR programs are effective (we've been executing them for medical clients for nearly two decades), green is a different market that requires as much nationwide education as it does adoption. This is especially true as the federal climate becomes more politicized in an election year and much of the legislation introduced in 2008 is more about drawing battle lines than about getting things signed into law. That will change in early 2009, which makes national PR programs integrated with government relations even more critical. For this reason and this reason alone, it is important that green marketing and PR organizations not get too myopic.

With all of that said, bravo to San Francisco for taking the initiative to get a program in place. It will lead to an influx of companies setting up shop in the city and create a number of green collar jobs in the area.

It will be interesting if this also helps draw conferences to the city that have to date been the domain of Southern California, including Solar Power 2008 and GreenXchange Expo. Good days for solar are ahead.

California Drought: Renewable Powered Pumps to the Rescue?

2008-06-05T14:43:27Z

Governor Schwarzenegger has declared a drought in California following one of the driest springs on record. This of course is bad news to the farmers in the state and those of us in the East Bay who want grass for a yard and not a dustbowl.

The majority of the state's water comes from the Sierra snowpack and that pack is thinner this year than in normal years. Some farmers can make up the difference with deep water pumps, but those pumps run on diesel and use 5 gallons per hour, meaning one hour of pumping costs about $26-$30 per hour depending on the cost of fuel.

Conservationists and environmentalists point to global warming as the driver of snowpack reduction, whereas global warming naysayers call the drought cyclical. Regardless of who is right and given the cost of fuel right now, it leads to interesting questions about markets you don't hear much about.

The first market is desalination. This is a technology that has never made sense because of the fuel needed--wood, coal, natural gas--to power a desalination plant. Today, solar and wind, and (longer term) maybe even tidal resources could power such plants and give coastal states (hello drought-stricken Georgia) an almost inexhaustable source of fresh water. Not to mention it would help us deal with rising sea levels (sorry, bad joke).

The other area where renewables could help is deep water pumps. A lot of areas around the country have deep water reservoirs that are expensive to tap and require fuel to harvest. Using wind and solar power would dramatically cut costs for farmers and reduce the strain on reservoirs, rivers and other irrigation options.

If you are marketers in the aforementioned areas, this is a prime time to educate the market and government regulators about the viability of such technologies to generate sales leads and stimulate new investment. It will be interesting to see if either of these areas get any interest at the IDG GreenXchange event or Solar Power 2008. By then, California will be five months into an official drought and no doubt there will be plenty of discussion about the role renewables can play in water shortages.

Back in the Saddle: Green Breeds Green

2008-06-05T00:13:41Z

After a busy May split up by a Yellowstone trip (and two Grizzly sightings) I am back in the saddle on Renewablog pledging to do 8.3 percent more green posts in Q3 than I did in Q2. Why? Because green gets a premium everywhere these days.

A new survey commissioned by BioCycle (and executed by Schwartz client Marketools) shows that consumers are willing to spend $8.30 more on a $100 product if it is made from recycled goods or helps the environment. This brings the total of such goods to $150 when you also factor in California sales tax.

All kidding aside, this is a great sign that even during a softening economy people are still willing to open their wallets for greener goods and services. In fact, the survey also shows that seven out of ten respondents are willing to pay that premium, so it is not just a small subset of people throwing off the average.

This is good news for the green marketer.

Green is in the Eye of the Beholder

2008-05-12T21:12:58Z

NPR’s Morning Edition completed its series on global climate change with a look at Masdar, a soon-to-be-built an Abu Dhabi city that aims to be the first city with no carbon emissions. Claiming to be carbon-neutral is certainly bold, so Reporter Joe Palca went a step deeper examining how, exactly, designers plan to do that.

Toward the end of the story came an interesting quote from Liz Darley at Bioregional, the firm that will calculate the city’s carbon emissions.

"What they're currently doing is deciding where that boundary is drawn," Darley says. "That is, in itself, quite a complex thing to decide on as a project team ... because it could include all the carbon expenditure of flying between Europe and the Middle East the design team is incurring. It could go to the extent of you guys coming here to interview us. Once you start peeling back the layers of the onion, it just goes on and on and on forever."

This struck me as quite interesting since our offices here on Prospect Hill in Waltham have a new neighbor, a building that purports to be the first LEED-certified office building the area. This is certainly a good thing, but I wondered about all this environmental stuff as the large parking lot went up next to it. Not to mention, the building’s design is your standard suburban office variety with no retail on the first floor, so those of us in the complex who may want to have a bit of lunch still have to jump in our cars and head somewhere else. Yes, we have a cafe with outdoor seating, but that can get old VERY fast.

In fact, the marketing copy on the sites proclaims that the building has 716 total parking spaces, certainly fewer than the 893 in our building, but the transportation to both buildings is the same.

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There are those who say that free parking is a major part of the problem. That because it’s so easy to drive and park, we choose to do that rather than find alternative transportation. They have a point. Except that building put up in an office park don’t give people that alternative. The Westin Hotel, also up here on Prospect Hill, recently started charging $9 to park a car overnight. That wouldn’t be so bad, except there is no way to get here EXCEPT to drive. The people who have tried to take the bus often abandoned the concept because it’s so onerous to do so. I try to bike here a few times a week, but the trip up Totten Pond Road brings me just inches from speeding trucks. It’s enough to make even the most ardent cyclist pretty nervous.

So how green is green? Is it better to build a LEED certified building on a hill in Waltham or is it better to encourage businesses to move toward more urban settings with better public transit? Is it better to build an entirely new carbon-neutral city or to take the same technologies and apply them to existing communities?

Kleiner Raising New Green Round

2008-04-28T10:35:28Z

Great to see KPCB raising another round for green investment. It shows that despite a softening economy, people believe that green is still a good investment. It is probably a good bet since the political climate at the federal level will likely change dramtically in t-minus nine months. Maybe Kleiner's celebrity fund raiser, Al Gore, will play a role in changing that political climate?

Why is this important? Because it feeds the marketing and lobbying coffers of green companies, allowing them to better compete with traditional industries trying to slow green adoption.

It is also important because green marketers need to realize that the market is still going to get even noisier. They need to be pushing their executive teams for additional budget in 2008 and 2009, because the softening economy may have little impact on how aggressive their competitors will be.

Sometimes Simple Point is Most Critical

2008-04-25T10:41:02Z

When posting on a blog it is sometimes easy to overthink your topic and gloss over some of the really simple topics that are incredibly critical. This dawned on me when reading a post by John Gartner at MarketingShift.

His post is about how Green has reached mainstream levels in terms of buzz according to Nielsen research. He gives some useful information throughout the brief post, but John's simple yet critical point is his last one: "Companies have to develop a marketing message that is genuine and not condescending to the desirable demographic."

This is a critically important point for a couple of reasons:

1) We have reach the second stage in green hype. The first stage was the embracing of Green by hype watchers as the next big thing in business and lifestyle. The second is an age of backlash and skepticism driven by fear that it will be adopted, along with general pushback by media and others who will say that adoption is not nearly matching the Stage-One hype. A lot of the media out there right now is focused on the inefficiency of solar, the negative impact of biofuels and freak windfarm fires. This makes it a prime period of time for green washers to get destroyed by media and the general public. Hence, why John's "genuine" statement is important.

2) People sometimes overlook that communications and marketing can come across as condescening. Look at the presidential campaign. You have the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barrack Obama trying to spin every little piece of information or data their way, to the point that it sometimes gets insulting to the viewer. An Editorial in the NY Times this week accused them of thinking the American people are a bunch of "rubes."

This is how I feel sometimes about green marketing--that is so superficial and transparent, it does more harm than good. So the simple message is: Be genuine and don't condescend. If you have to fool someone or oversell your greenness, it won't appear green to your audience, it will be transparent.

Earth Day Noise Pollution

2008-04-22T15:24:19Z

We're often asked by clients if the biggest trade show of the year in their respective space is a good location to announce news. We usually answer their question with a question: "What is the goal of the announcement?"

We explain that if the goal is stand-alone media coverage, they might be better off using the event to pre-brief media and announce a couple of weeks later when the market has exhausted its news. If the goal is to drive business development activities, announcing what they are doing at the show to give sales and bizdev a press release to shop to customers and prospects might be the way to go.

The green/clean tech world is relatively immature when it comes to events. There are several that are vying to become the RSA, NRF, Mobile World Congress or JavaOne of their respective markets---such as Solar Power and GreenXChange Expo--but for the most part there is not yet that one event that makes green marketers exhaust their news arsenal.

But unlike security, open source, application development, retail technology and wireless, green does have a landmark "event" that brings every marketer out of the woodwork with a news announcement: Earth Day. I performed a highly scientific research project (40-second searching of Google News by source) and found about 500 commercial press releases from the past 24 hours that mention Earth Day.

My favorite? Purex announced that Jaime Pressly has become its spokesperson for the company's green campaign. I can just see Joy, Randy, Earl and Crabman doing what they can to stop global warming on My Name is Earl.

But the point is that Earth Day may have officially become the noisiest day in the Green world. The question for marketers then becomes: "Should you announce signidicant news on Earth Day?"

I think the answer would be a resounding "No." Earth Day is much too noisy, especially when you also factor in this year's Presidential campaign, earnings season and just about every other news event that could drown out a momentum announcement, new corporate green initiative or donations to a green charity.

My advice? Avoid Earth Day like the plague and don't contribute to the noise being created by marketers in every sector from detergents to light bulbs. Better yet, follow the advice of my eight-year old daughter who said, "Let's shut everything off today that uses electricity, including the Wii, Webkinz, the TV and the toaster."

Generation Green speaks. Shut off your computer, take the day off and celebrate Earth Day away from the noise.

Speeds, feeds and....weeds?

2008-04-21T21:26:50Z

According to a recent survey from IDC, we have seen an inflection point with regards to the adoption of Green IT. According to the firm, more than half of all IT buyers now consider "greenness" as part of the buying criteria. The number one driver in green purchasing decisions is economic revolving around operational costs. As energy prices continue to go higher, there is little chance that this trend will stop anytime soon.

What does this mean? It means even more hardware marketers will tout the greenness of their products through PR and advertising. It means that companies that reduce storage and other infrastructure requirements (SaaS) will continue to point to the indirect costs those products save customers. Bottom line? Green IT is here to stay.

Renewable Energy Tax Credit Decisions Coming

2008-04-14T13:18:06Z

Back from a short hiatus while the RSA event was going on. Security is Schwartz's biggest practice group and when RSA takes place it is all hands on deck.

So what did I miss while discussing whether or not social networks are the next big target for security threats? Well, nothing since I was still paying attention. But we saw a major development last week in the Senate, where they attached renewable energy tax credits to a housing finance bill with the hopes that it would go back to the House and pass, only then to be signed by President Bush. The measure was passed 88-8 in the Senate. The biggest hurdle facing the bill is from House Democrats who must figure out where the money will come from to finance the credits. I think it is safe to say, based on past behavior, that Bush will not sign anything that increases taxes on oil companies.

This next week or two should be interesting.

How Best to Put Out the Fire? Solar in SF, Zero-Emission Cars

2008-03-28T14:45:36Z

The public will for change exists. The research supports it. The economics are getting there. So what's the problem? Some of the same problems that have stifled green adoption for the past several decades. In the specific cases below? Politics and Detroit.

Word from both Chris Morrison of VentureBeat and Craig Rubens of Earth2Tech that the City Supervisor in San Francisco has stalled a plan that would have provided $6 million in consumer solar rebates to residents that implement solar electric systems. His concern? That only the wealthy will be able to take advantage.

I know housing prices in the city have come down a bit, but aren't most property owners in San Francisco considered wealthy anyway? Aren't there also programs and special financing in place for solar installations for affordable housing projects? I know that solar on affordable housing is one of the areas where Schwartz client Borrego Solar specializes, so I suspect the answer is "yes." I think it is time that politicians get creative and invest more in green rebates and tax credits, rather than focusing solely on which is the best approach, taking credit and further delaying something that is sorely needed.

Which brings us to Detroit and a post from Katie Fehrenbacher of Earth2Tech. Apparently Big Auto has successfully muddled the adoption of zero-emission cars in California by focusing the debate on which type of car should qualify, battery, plug-ins or fuel cell automobiles.

I really think the best analogy for some of the inane debates taking place in the cleantech and renewable energy world are analagous to firemen watching a house burn down while they argue over whether it is most effective to use foam, water or sand, and which qualifies as a truly efficient fire-fighting tool. I hate to disagree with the great Billy Joel, but we did start the fire and we are continuing to feed it.

Green Jobs

2008-03-27T16:35:26Z

Yesterday's New York Times features a piece by Steven Greenhouse called "Millions of Jobs of a Different Color." He writes:

"Presidential candidates talk about the promise of 'green collar' jobs — an economy with millions of workers installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, brewing biofuels, building hybrid cars and erecting giant wind turbines. Labor unions view these new jobs as replacements for positions lost to overseas manufacturing and outsourcing. Urban groups view training in green jobs as a route out of poverty. And environmentalists say they are crucial to combating climate change."

Positive economic impact of new green technologies is an important topic, but I was so pleased to see Mr. Greenhouse go on to say that "many advocates of green employment say the jobs should be good for the workers as well as the environment."

Mark Richey Woodworking and Design, a high-end architectural millworking firm we've been working with, is the first company of its type to use a biomass furnace to burn all wood waste and eliminate use of natural gas for heating the shop. They're also working on installing a wind turbine that should provide enough electricity to take Mark Richey Woodworking off the electric grid.

If you speak with Mr. Richey--a world-class climber who's seen first-hand environmental damage that's not apparent to most Americans--you'll quickly feel his dedication to doing his part to help the environment. What's striking is how deeply he believes that being good to the environment isn't at odds with running a profitable business; on the contrary, the two go hand in hand.

Mr. Richey's company employs nearly 100 people in Massachusetts and is able to be competitive in an industry that's been losing ground to Canada and China partially because the company has eliminated its once substantial natural gas bill.

Certainly, keeping jobs in the U.S. is very "good for the workers," as Mr. Greenhouse says. Mr. Richey's gone beyond that by installing a sophisticated ventilation system that cleans dust from the air to improve the comfort of his employees. The shop, working at full tilt, is cleaner than many offices.

Green employment, indeed.

Solar speedbump: Mountain or Mole Hill?

2008-03-25T14:43:32Z

Last week saw the release of a report predicting that solar would see a serious speedbump in 2010, as the current shortage of polysilicon eases and solar cells flood the market. The report predicts difficulty for both thin-film players and the chrystalline silicon makers that depend on polysilicon as a key ingredient in their products. For green marketers in solar, this could mean that the window of opportunity is much smaller than previously thought.

This report looks at the supply side of the equation and sees doom for manufacture profits and gloom for their investors. I wonder, however, how much the report thoroughly investigated the demand side of the equation. There are a number of things that should increase solar demand in the coming years and may partially or substantially offset any increase in supply:

Improved storage capacity--one of the biggest technology bottlenecks to the adoption of all renewals has been battery and storage efficiency. That said, millions are being invested in battery companies right now, including A123, Lion Cells and Seeo, which will help in terms of power storage in applications like electric cars, solar and wind. If the storage gets better, then the demand and ROI will go up significantly.
Speaking of electric cars--one of the biggest contradictions in my mind is the use of an electric car charged on coal-generated electricity. What's the answer? Charging it with renewables. The use of solar combined with good battery technology and electric cars just makes too much sense. It also doesn't require substantial infrastructure overhauls like changing the types and locations of fueling stations. A solar implementation on a house, office building or even carports, would be a huge advantage.
Government support--next January will definitely see a change in the political climate for solar and other renewables. All three major presidential candidates have stated that they believe in renewable sources of energy and will commit more investment in areas like solar. This includes direct investment in R&D and other areas, but also better federal tax incentives and rebates. These rebates will allow solar companies to protect some of their margins as the supply of solar increases.

There is no doubt that solar is riding high right now because of the perfect storm of high demand, low supply and large sums of investment. It also makes sense that the market wil mature eventually and it will be a bit more commoditized. But to predict it is going to get there in two years is a bit silly IMHO, since we have just begun to scratch the surface of building integrated photovoltaics and other solar applications beyond the panels you see today.