Green Tech

Intel said on Wednesday its venture capital arm invested a total of $10 million in five energy-related companies, giving a glimpse into the product areas that the chip giant considers promising.

In a first-time investment, Intel Capital backed CPower, a New York company which offers energy-efficiency services such as demand-response where commercial customers get paid to dial down energy use during peak times. Intel's money is in addition to the $10.7 million CPower raised in April.

Intel participated in a series C round for Grid Net, which makes network management software for utilities to manage energy flow to buildings with smart meters. The company has licensed its WiMax smart meter design to General Electric which is testing it with utilities.

In home energy management, Intel was part of the previously announced C-round investment in iControl, which is developing a system that combines home security services with energy tracking and automation.

Intel was part of a $24.5 million investment in Convey Computer in Richardson, Texas, which does energy-efficient high-performance computing with Xeon processors.

Limerick, Ireland-based Powervation got a second investment from Intel Capital to further build efficient power controllers for computers and communications equipment.

Intel Capital said it is seeking to fund new companies in efficiency, alternative power generation, storage, transportation, and materials. It developed Open Energy Initiative, a program for funding new companies, developing standards, and lobbying.

SpectraWatt is a solar manufacturing company that was spun out of Intel last year.

Google reached its goal of becoming carbon neutral for 2007 and is almost entirely neutral for 2008, Google's Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl announced on the official Google blog Wednesday evening.

In June 2007, Google had announced it was going to try to become carbon neutral by the end of that year by working to maximize its efficiency, investing in renewable energy resources, and as a last resort and interim solution buying carbon offsets.

In Wednesday evening's post announcing the company had finally achieved that goal, Weihl reiterated the company's 2007 promise of using carbon offsets was only a temporary fix and announced more initiatives towards long-term sustainability goals.

"While offsets with strong additionality can achieve real emissions reductions in unregulated sectors at a relatively low cost, we view them as a short-term solution for Google, not as a substitute for other action," said Weihl.

"In addition, we've set ourselves the ambitious goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable generation capacity--enough to power 50,000 typical U.S. homes--by 2012," he said.

Earlier this month, the company shared one of its quirkier Green alternative solutions: using goats to cuts the Mountain View, Calif., campus lawn.

As there is yet no legal standard on how a company must calculate its carbon footprint or an official U.S. carbon certifying agency, Google said in its June announcement that it would be hiring the Environmental Resources Trust to verify its yearly assessment . Google also stated that its global carbon footprint includes employee commuting and business travel, as well as Google company construction, server manufacturing, and electricity use.

So, how does this compare to others? Matching how Google stacks up against other big names in tech is difficult since everyone calculates things uniquely, as they do with recycling. Here's the available info on the carbon neutrality status of several big names in tech.

This past March, Microsoft announced on its sustainability blog that the company plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 30 percent compared with its 2007 levels, by 2012.

In August 2008, Dell announced that it was carbon neutral in terms of its global electricity use and in April 2008 announced that its U.S. headquarters, consisting of 2.1 million square feet and 10,000 employees, was powered by 100 percent green energy. It's striving to achieve carbon neutrality through a combination of efficiency practices and buying carbon offsets.

Hewlett-Packard has announced a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 16 percent from its 2005 levels before the end of 2010. About 99 percent of HP's greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity use, with only 1 percent coming from manufacturing and refrigeration equipment, according to HP. HP detailed that its official carbon footprint will include HP's owned and leased facilities' electricity use, natural gas use, manufacturing emissions, and refrigerant emissions. HP will not be including employee commuting, transport of its products, or the manufacturing of its suppliers in its carbon footprint, according to HP's "Global Citizenship Report 2008."

In May 2007, IBM held a press conference to announce that to help other companies become carbon neutral. Part of its promise is that it can help the average 25,000-square-foot data center cut its energy bills by 42 percent. Between 1990 and 2007, IBM reduced about 45 percent of the company's 1990 global CO2 emissions. It plans to reduce its energy use by 12 percent from its 2005 levels by 2012 through conservation, increased use of renewable energy, and buying Renewable Energy Certificates, according to the company materials on its environmental stance. It plans to reduce its total global GHG emissions by 7 percent from 2005 to 2012, according to a listing with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Comparing footprint size
You could keep sifting through all the corporate sustainability reports and get varying systems of carbon footprint measurements and statistics like those above for almost every tech company. There are some organizations that have tried to come up with a way to make it easier to compare.

The EPA lists companies that have joined its Climate Leaders initiative and their stated goals for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, but many companies simply have "greenhouse gas reduction goal is under development" next to their listing. The list also fails to specify what each company includes in its carbon footprint.

But according to that EPA list, Intel will reduce its global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 percent per from 2004 to 2010; Cisco will reduce by 25 percent from 2007 to 2012; and Oracle plans to reduce "by 6 percent per square foot from 2003 to 2010 for all non-data center space and to purchase 5 percent green power for data centers." Sun Microsystems reduced U.S. GHG emissions by 23 percent from 2002 to 2007 and pledged to the EPA that it would reduced its global GHG emissions by 20 percent from 2007 to 2015.

In May 2008, Climate Counts, a nonprofit watch group funded by yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm that keeps scorecards on companies environmental records, released a list on tech and software companies' green achievements. Companies were rated by a points system and also placed into one of three (green, yellow or red) categories. IBM, Canon, Toshiba, Sony, HP, Motorola, Hitachi, Samsung, Siemens, and Google were put in the green category signaling companies with a good environmental record.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell, and Nokia were put in the yellow category signaling that they had made a start, but still had work to do in certain areas.

Amazon.com, Apple, and eBay were placed in the red category which, according to Climate Counts' chart, stands for "This company is not yet taking meaningful action on climate change."

Modernizing the electricity grid with digital communications has become a national priority in the U.S., but people in related industries are concerned that a lack of standards could undercut the benefits of a smart grid.

The IEEE next month will convene its first meeting to hash out what interoperability standards are required for smart-grid technologies. It will be held at Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., and bring together representatives from the IT, communications, and power industries.

"Smart grid" doesn't refer to one specific technology but the notion of modernizing the electricity distribution system with digital technologies. Smart meters in a person's home, for example, can communicate energy usage to utilities in near real time. That allows the utility to more efficiently manage the electricity supply and potentially allow a consumer to take advantage of cheaper rates.

The federal Recovery Act, or stimulus package, dedicates $4.5 billion to fund installation of smart-grid technologies. Equipment is being developed from a raft of smart-grid start-up companies as well as IT companies, including IBM, Cisco, and Intel, looking for more revenue in the utility industry.

There are a number of utility-run smart-grid trial programs around the world, but for these technologies to be adopted rapidly, there need to be interoperable products, said Chuck Adams, president of the IEEE Standards Association, and Dick DeBlasio, program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and IEEE smart-grid liaison.

"We see a lot of learning that we can do, but if we don't capture it with the first investment of $4.5 billion, we're losing a great opportunity," said DeBlasio. "So if there's another four or eight billion dollars (in investment), we'll still be learning and we'll have nothing to base our equipment design on."

As it stands now, there's a mishmash of competing protocols and standards, said Joe Hughes, a senior technical manager at the Electric Power Research Institute who called the situation today "confused and chaotic."

There are some standards, such as networking protocols, that can be applied for embedding digital controllers and communications in grid distribution equipment. But the task of agreeing on standards is complicated by the fact that it requires coordinating different industries, Hughes said in an article published last fall.

The IEEE standards project, called P2030, will seek to come out with a guide for tackling various aspects of the smart grid, which touches everything from wireless chips in smart meters to energy storage. For example, integrating wind and solar power generation into the grid requires agreed-upon ways to manage the flow of energy around the grid.

"We're trying to develop standards as we develop the smart grid, but you need to have a base of understanding," DeBlasio said.

Former Intel CEO Andy Grove has joined other Silicon Valley elites who are advocating for an industry shift into energy technology.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Friday, Grove said he is urging Intel to invest in battery manufacturing as a way to diversify from its core chip business.

Andy Grove, former Intel CEO and now plug-in vehicle advocate.

(Credit: Intel)

Grove told the Journal that Intel's "strategic objective is tackling big problems and turning them into big businesses." He said Intel, with its cash resources, can invest in battery technology and manufacturing to bring down the cost of car batteries, which would drive adoption of plug-in electric cars.

Batteries are the most expensive component in plug-in electric vehicles, a market being pursued by a few U.S. companies.

General Motor's 2011 Volt is testing batteries from lithium-ion maker A123 Systems. Other U.S. companies include Ener1 and Valence Technology. Notebook battery maker Boston Power also intends to enter the auto market.

But battery makers and analysts say that U.S. manufacturers lack the financial means to meet the anticipated demand of electric cars.

"The technology exists today to put (electric drives) into an automobile," said Ener1 CEO Charles Gassenheimer at last week's Electric Drive Transportation Association's Conference & Exposition. "But it is not doable without the ability to drive down the cost of manufacturing."

Intel has invested in battery technology through its venture capital arm and other energy-related firms. Earlier this year, Intel also spun out SpectraWatt, which intends to lower the cost of manufacturing solar cells.

Grove has become an advocate for government policies that promote plug-in hybrid cars. This summer, he published a manifesto, called "Our Electric Future," in The American magazine, where he called for transitioning the American auto fleet to electricity for national security reasons.

"Because electricity is the stickiest form of energy, and because it is multi-sourced, it will give us the greatest degree of energy resilience. Our nation will be best served if we dedicate ourselves to increasing the amount of our energy that we use in the form of electricity," he wrote.

In a speech at the Plug-in 2008 conference in August, he called for a goal of putting 10 million plug-in vehicles on the road in 10 years.

Even with turmoil in the financial markets, venture capital is still flowing to energy-tech ventures.

Here are the latest such investments: • Intel Capital has made its first clean-tech investment in China, the company said Tuesday.

The venture-capital arm of the chip giant put $20 million into Trony Solar Holdings, a Chinese solar thin-film cell developer. It also invested an undisclosed sum in NP Holdings, which makes large-scale energy storage systems for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Intel Capital set up a $500 million fund for tech deals in China earlier this year, according to Reuters.

"We think innovation is the way to help companies out of this financial crisis," Cadol Cheung, head of Intel Capital in Asia Pacific told reporters Tuesday. "We have no plan of slowing down our investment pace."

• Ice Energy said Tuesday it has raised $33 million in a second round of funding. The round, led by Energy Capital Partners, also provides up to $150 million in project development financing.

Ice Energy makes rooftop air conditioners that use ice to help lower the cost of operating them.

Ice Energy's rooftop ice-cooled air conditioner.

(Credit: Ice Energy)

During off-peak hours, such as the middle of the night, the machines freeze water. During the day, the ice cools the refrigerant to run the air conditioner, cutting down on the electricity it would otherwise need.

The ice storage can shift the demand to off-peak times by as much as 40 percent, according to the company. For that reason, the company is marketing its products to utilities looking for ways to reduce peak demand to avoid construction of new power plants.

•  Blue Source said Monday that Goldman Sachs will take an equity stake in the company and finance carbon offset projects.

Blue Source identifies and runs projects that reduce greenhouse gases, such as methane capture at landfills, and carbon capture and storage at oil wells.

Goldman Sachs will market and trade the offsets from Blue Source projects in carbon emissions trading markets, according to the companies.

•  General Electric said last week it is investing $30 million in lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems, part of a planned $102 million series E round.

GE is now the largest investor in the company with a 9 percent stake after having put in $55 million. The two companies are working on various projects, including integrating A123 Systems' batteries in the Think all-electric town car and a hybrid bus platform.

Both GE and A123 Systems are pursuing the market for power grid storage as well.

Intel's venture capital arm, Intel Capital, on Wednesday said it has invested in German thin-film solar cell manufacturer Sulfurcell.

Intel Capital led the $133.7 million (85 million euro) round with a $37.7 million contribution. The money will be used to expand the company's existing production, which started in 2005.

A module using Sulfurcell's CIGS thin-film solar cells.

(Credit: Sulfurcell)

The announcement follows the spin-off last month of SpectraWatt, a manufacturer of silicon solar cells, from Intel.

Sulfurcell, by contrast, is an expert in thin-film solar cells made from a combination of materials in the CIS/CIGSe (Copper-Indium-Sulfide/Selenide) family of chemicals. The company was spun out of Hahn-Meitner-Institut, a Berlin-based research institute specializing in thin-film photovoltaics.

Intel Capital's clean-tech strategy is to invest in a number of different areas including solar, energy efficiency, power generation and storage, and transportation.

Chip rival IBM is also moving into the thin-film solar cell arena through a manufacturing partnership with Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK).

Thin-film cells, particularly those made from CIGS (copper, indium, gallium, and selenide), are one of the hottest areas of clean-tech investment.

Because they use much less material than silicon, they can be more cost-effective on a price-per-watt basis.

Update at 1:30 p.m. PDT July 3, with additional comments from Micron Technology (at bottom).

Has the image of solid state drives as power misers been shattered? A recent review would seem to dispel the notion that these devices are more power efficient than the hard disk drives used in laptops.

In an article at Tom's Hardware titled "The SSD Power Consumption Hoax", the authors state: "We have discovered that the power savings aren't there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash (solid state drive)."

(Note: Tom's Hardware has posted a correction to its original report here.)

One of the key selling points of solid state drives has been that they use less power than hard disk drives. The claim has seemed plausible because solid state drives have no moving parts, while hard disk drives have a number of moving components.

The Tom's Hardware review, however, says: "While conventional hard drives may operate at relatively low power when little movement is required...flash based drives do not. They will draw their maximum power level constantly when in use, and as a consequence, simply spend more total time drawing maximum power than conventional drives."

The review goes on to test four solid state drives (SSDs) from Crucial (Micron Technology), Memoright, Sandisk, and Mtron. For example, in evaluating the Crucial CT32GBFAB0 32GB drive, the review states, "Users who purchase this drive because of Crucial's statements such as 'low power consumption' and the product being ideal for 'users who want longer battery life' will most likely be disappointed."

Though Intel's drives were not tested in the review, the chipmaker stated Wednesday that SSDs "can be architected to improve battery life." Intel is expected to bring out drives ranging in capacity from 80GB to 160GB later this year.

I had a chance to chat with Andrew Wilson, a longtime Intel guy who is the CEO of Spectrawatt, about what he is doing. The venture is the result of the last 3 years of extensive business planning, that Andrew said grew out of an off the cuff conversation he had internally four years ago.

While they have very early stage development in the works for some new and novel technology to reduce the manufacturing costs of solar cells, they are not sharing details. The Spectrawatt core business today will be about building a company to manufacture crystalline silicon based solar cells. In the near term the business will be buying wafers and manufacturing cells. According to Andrew, they have a significant supply of silicon secured, and while he cannot say who the vendors are, at least one of those vendors will likely be announcing soon, as the Spectrawatt contract is a material event for them.

So the first question is why x-Si and not thin film? Besides the obvious that it is far and away the biggest market today and a natural fit for Intel, Andrew added two more. Customers care about per kwh cost, and all things equal, how much energy they can get out of the real estate they have (read, efficiency matters). So they think x-Si makes a lot more sense than thin film, especially given the additional issues around stability, manufacturing complexity and materials resource constraints.

Andrew did say that they may vertically integrate later. So I asked why did they start at cells? Andrew explained that since the business comes out of Intel, and Intel is accomplished at processing wafers into products, cells made sense to start with. And at the end of the day they hold the view that the biggest point of value in solar value chain is in creating the cell, moving from low value silicon to high value device. They consider it the largest single value add step.

Andrew and I are in agreement that 2004 was a kind of a magic year changing what the photovoltaic industry is. Andrew stated it was the first year where the average company in every segment of the value chain in solar became profitable. So given today's environment Intel and Spectrawatt could have conceivably started at numerous places in the value chain. This is where the vertical integration may come in. His view on the silicon supply is that no glut is coming, or at least not a long lived one. The end demand market is growing at 30 to 40% per year, and the silicon supply that is coming on line is in large part subject to long term contracts with fixed prices. The silicon supply additions then are pretty much already spoken for. In Andrew's mind while growth at the margin will definitely cause some level of boom bust cycles, those long term supply contracts may moderate it more than other people believe. If he is right, and he has secure supplies, a horizontal business like cell manufacturing is a great place to be. If he is wrong, he sees continued vertical integration to manage the growth issue as one of the major avenues industry participants will go done. In this he and I also agree, rapid movements in supply cycles tend to reward vertical integration. And if he gets big enough with Spectrawatt, vertical integration could be a move Spectrawatt makes, too.

It is great for the solar industry to see more technology giants like Intel joining the fray, and perhaps helping drive down crystalline product costs the same way Applied Materials and IBM are looking to drive down then film costs.

Neal Dikeman is a founding partner at Jane Capital Partners LLC, a boutique merchant bank advising strategic investors and startups in cleantech. He is the founding CEO of Carbonflow, founding contributor of Cleantech Blog, Chairman of Cleantech.org, and a blogger for CNET's Green Tech blog.

Intel made a big leap into the burgeoning clean-tech sector on Monday by creating SpectraWatt, a spinoff company that will manufacture solar cells.

Its investment arm, Intel Capital, is leading a $50 million round in SpectraWatt. Other investors include Goldman Sachs subsidiary Cogentrix Energy, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and German solar company Solon.

The SpectraWatt logo.

(Credit: SpectraWatt)

The venture expects to start breaking ground on a facility in the middle of this year in Oregon and start shipping cells made from silicon to solar panel makers by the middle of next year. Andrew Wilson, the former general manager in the Intel New Business Initiatives group, will be SpectraWatt's CEO.

In an interview, Wilson declined to provide specific technical information because the company is still in the process of seeking intellectual property protections.

He did say that the company will focus on improving solar cell efficiency--how well a panel converts light to electricity--as well as cutting the overall cost per watt.

"The solar industry is akin to where the microprocessor industry was in the late 1970s. There is a lot to be figured out and improved," he said.

The company's first plant in Oregon will produce 60 megawatts worth of cells. There will be a ground-breaking in about two months. Wilson said that the company has already secured customers and a supply of polysilicon, which is now in short supply worldwide.

Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said in a statement that the chipmaker is eyeing different business opportunities in clean tech. "This is an important investment for Intel Capital in the growing clean-tech sector, and we look forward to working with the company to support its expansion," he said.

In addition to solar, Intel is investing in energy-efficiency processors and data center gear. Intel Capital, meanwhile, has invested in smart-grid company Grid Net, which is using WiMax wireless networks to broker communications between electricity utilities and customers.

Looking for a solar play
The Intel-SpectraWatt deal highlights the deepening cross-over between IT companies and the clean-technology sector.

IBM on Monday announced plans to enter the CIGS solar cell arena by forming a partnership with a Japanese semiconductor equipment maker. It's one of four solar efforts at IBM, which has a companywide green technology initiative.

Hewlett-Packard earlier this month licensed transparent electronics to a solar concentrator start-up, Xtreme Energetics.

Like IBM and HP, Intel has expertise in semiconductor materials and capital-intensive, high-volume manufacturing. Those same skills are required in the solar photovoltaics business, which is growing rapidly--on the order of 40 percent to 50 percent--from soaring demand.

SpectraWatt's Wilson said that Intel's silicon expertise translates in the solar cell industry, even though there are significant differences in the end product.

"It sure looks like solar will be consuming a lot of silicon so it's another thing that we need to understand," he said. "We (also) see a lot of overlap with respect to the research directions of the technology."

Solar expert Travis Bradford, who is president of the Prometheus Institute, said that Intel's move into solar is not surprising, given the rapid growth of solar energy.

"Almost every company in the electronics and semiconductor industry is going to try to figure out how to get into solar--it's going to be that big of an industry," he said.

On the other hand, Intel's processors--the brains of computers--are more sophisticated than solar cells. And in solar, packaging the final goods is very important.

"Compared to the stuff Intel makes, the (solar cell) stuff is pretty dumb," Bradford said. "To be successful long term, you need downstream partners to work on different (solar panel) form factors for different types of installations. Intel doesn't do downstream stuff--they do brains."

Updated at 1:15 p.m. PDT with comments from Bradford and SpectraWatt.