by Scott Schnelle

As an energy consultant for home retrofits, I often have customers
and acquaintances ask my opinion regarding green technologies and
energy efficient products. Undoubtedly, with the recent surge of the
green movement and a shift toward becoming more environmentally
sustainable, now is a great time to invest in these types of
products.

One product that has been getting more and more attention lately is
spray foam. The product itself has been around for many years, but
it has recently risen in popularity for a couple of reasons. Here,
I’ll discuss spray foam briefly and then touch on some tips for
investing in this market.

First, spray foam is a more environmentally efficient method of
insulation as opposed to traditional fiberglass installation. Spray
foam is usually several times more expensive, depending on the size
of the spray foam tanks being used. Bigger tanks are cheaper per
ounce. That being said, the spray foam installation is often quicker
and easier, and after factoring in labor costs, spray foam can
compete with fiberglass in many applications solely on price.

The product itself is a thick, foaming substance that sprays out in
a thin layer but quickly begins expanding on contact. After about 60
seconds, it ceases expanding and begins to harden.

Otto Bayer developed the product in the 1930s while he was trying to
develop an alternative to the rubber tire. It was also used in World
War II in the German U-boats as floatation material. In the ‘60s and
‘70s, the product began infiltrating into the residential market as
home insulation. In recent years, home improvement television shows
have spurred a new interest in spray foam. Most customers that come
to us cite these types of programs as their point of familiarity
with the product.

My company highly recommends this product. It’s great for large gaps
and cracks that need to be air-sealed. It also acts as a great
insulator and can be used to save time in some applications like rim
joists.

Because the product has been around for many years, I would not
consider spray foam an “up-and-coming” product. However, I believe
it is gaining quite a bit of popularity because of the green
movement and the push for greater energy efficiency. I also believe
that we’ll see a drop in the price of this product as more people
use it and it is manufactured on a larger scale.

Currently, my company uses a spray foam product from Dow Chemical
Company (DOW),
though we do not necessarily endorse any one company or brand. All
major industry players carry spray foam products, including Johns
Manville (a subsidiary of Berkshire-Hathaway, href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/berkshire/">BRK-A
and BRK-B), Owens Corning ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/owens-corning/">OC)
and Certainteed (a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain (SGO.PA). Another
company worth exploring is BioBased Technologies, LLC.

Biobased is based in Arkansas and specializes in polyurethane foam
insulation products. The notable aspect about BioBased Technologies
is that they use a soy-based product, which is becoming a new trend
within the spray foam movement. Other soy-based insulation companies
include InsulSoy, Emega Biopolymers, Urethane Soy Systems and Green
Bear Innovation. Though, it is safe to say that BioBased is the
industry leader in the soy-based product.  I see soy-based
spray foam growing in popularity faster than traditional spray foam.

Soy based foam could even become the industry standard in
residential applications in the future, most likely because
traditional spray foam products are are quite toxic. We have had a
few cases where employees fail to use their masks properly and
subsequently report pain in their lungs and a shortness of breath.
It is extremely important to wear a protective body suit along with
a breathing mask if ever applying spray foam.  The soy-based
product is much safer for the installer and the homeowner as well.
The level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are much lower with
the soy product, and I think as awareness about the harmful effects
of VOCs becomes more widespread, more people will be seeking a safer
product. Our company is currently working with distributors in the
area that carry soy-based spray foam.

Though Johns Manville has a line of spray foam products, they have
yet to introduce a soy-based product. The same is true for Owens
Corning and Certainteed. I believe that this is because soy-based
spray foam is still relatively new. Soy-based spray foam has many
advocates, but it also has been the subject of some criticism. For
instance, many believe that the environmental benefits are
overstated, as soy-based spray foam could open up its own set of
environmental problems including pesticide use and the use of
genetically-modified crops. However, many agree that these potential
problems still outweigh the carbon footprint and toxins associated
with traditional spray foam.

About the Author:  Scott
Schnelle is an energy auditor with href="http://www.goenergylink.com">Energy Link, a home
retrofit company based out of Columbia, Missouri. EnergyLink
specializes in increasing energy efficiency in homes through
comfort sealing, duct renovations, insulation, heating and air and
more.

The space where energy meets IT is a geek’s dream. Four years ago, about when I took an extended hiatus from blogging for cleantechblog, the available software and hardware options that supported residential energy efficiency were slim, and the solutions, clunky. Home performance and energy rating professionals had paper data collection sheets and time-consuming modeling [...]

The space where energy meets IT is a geek’s dream. Four years ago, about when I took an extended hiatus from blogging for cleantechblog, the available software and hardware options that supported residential energy efficiency were slim, and the solutions, clunky. Home performance and energy rating professionals had paper data collection sheets and time-consuming modeling [...]

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It's not a popular thing to argue right now, but yes, there certainly is a vital role for government in support of cleantech innovation.

Let me start by acknowledging that I absolutely understand and quite often agree with the sentiment that government shouldn't be in the business of venture capital. Market-based policies are, to my liking, almost always preferable to policies where government employees select and fund specific innovators or companies. Thus, the most effective way for governments to support cleantech innovation would be to price in externalities like climate change and dependence on imported energy, and then let the market sort things out.

But that's not likely to happen anytime soon in the U.S.

So in the meantime, how should we view policymakers' efforts to promote innovation and startups that would otherwise languish in today's skewed pricing environment? It's a very complex problem, which I'll illustrate below.

I would propose that an appropriate government effort to promote cleantech innovation will follow three core principles:

1. Additionality

Within the realm of desirable outcomes for the U.S. economy and energy mix, some are already being tackled by the private sector, and some are not.  As a rule, government efforts even in economically beneficial innovation areas shouldn't duplicate the existing efforts of the private sector. In this case, the government should be aiming to fill capital gaps.

This is a lot easier said than done, however. First of all, how do you define a capital gap? It's hard enough to get reliable information about venture funding overall, much less get reliable data about what specific stages and sectors and business models are hard to get funded. Secondly, these capital gaps also wax, wane, and shift as investor enthusiasm for a sector ebbs and flows. Thirdly, in some of these capital gaps, there might be non-institutional investors who are interested in putting in money where the institutional VCs won't, and the capital gap is one of check size (angels writing $25,000 checks when $250,000 is what's needed), not one that's sector- or stage-driven. And finally, there might even be gaps across various efforts within an individual company — for example, a research project at a venture-backed startup, where the research wouldn't have happened with VC dollars alone.

You also want to avoid either having these government-directed dollars flowing into the hot new startup (because the program is under pressure to show some 'successes' early on), or a negative selection bias where government dollars are being directed away from the best innovative startups because VCs might become interested. But you do want to see leverage resulting from these efforts, where the government program helps to unlock follow-on capital from the private sector. In other words, VC dollars following government dollars is one indicative metric of a successful program. But government dollars following VC dollars is less so (with the caveat of the additional research project scenario as described above).

How to prove additionality under such complex conditions? It doesn't make sense to attempt to codify a definition legislatively. Rather, the best approach is to to develop flexible processes that are outcome-oriented and provide opportunities for an evolution of the program over time.

2. Flexibility

One of the less-reported but damaging trends in U.S. policy right now is the shift in tactical control from the executive branch to the legislative branch. In other words, lawmakers are writing in too many detailed directives as to how programs should work, instead of stepping back. Because if there's one group of people you don't want designing your management process, it's Congress. Yet that's exactly what's going on. Many of the more public examples of failed energy policy recently were, at heart, driven by byzantine program designs dictated from Capitol Hill, not in the White House or inside the DOE. It's the equivalent of a startup's board of directors going around the CEO to specify how junior engineers in the R&D group should organize their daily activities. Lawmakers should establish goals, provide boundaries and oversight, and then let the implementers on the firing lines figure out the best way to accomplish these objectives.

If lawmakers are to surrender some control over process, however, there does need to be sufficient oversight, as well as a forcing function to make sure the program really does evolve over time as market conditions change.

3. The Voice of the Market

To reiterate, I strongly prefer market-based policies to any effort to have government groups select some specific recipients over others. But if there are some areas where economic imperatives necessitate this latter type of policy, the next best choice is to at least give the voice of the market a major role.

Peer review is one commonly used way to get at this. And if done the right way, it can be quite valuable. But if done wrong, of course, it's useless. A good peer review process will work hard to get a wide variety of knowledgeable technical and market viewpoints, control for potential conflicts of interest, and include force-ranking or other ways of making sure 'grade inflation' doesn't creep in. 

What I haven't seen as much of, but what would also be valuable, would be to have additional reviews done by groups of end-users or customers. This is tougher, and won't be definitive, because quite often customers don't know what they've been missing until they see something in action. But still, for building energy efficiency technology (for example), there should be collective reviews by large building owners who could eventually be purchasing the technology, both within the government system (e.g., let's get the Navy helping ARPA-E select what technologies they'd love to have commercialized for use on their bases) and, of course, really including the private sector owners of buildings. It will be important to avoid inclusion of channel partners who seem like purchasers but really are biased distributors (sorry, ESCOs). It won't be a perfect process, but these programs shouldn't be "build it and they will come" by design — they should be bringing in the voice of the customer right from the point of selection. And the input and perspective will help all participating startups, even those not selected by the program.

Outside perspectives from market participants can, at least in a wisdom of crowds format, also help identify which areas are truly capital gaps and which aren't. Perhaps doing this on a case-by-case basis would be unwieldy, but at the very least, a large panel of advisors from the private sector could help evaluate the program staff's own identification and definition of capital gaps on an annual basis, helping to validate the strategy while keeping it somewhat flexible. It would have to be a large and diverse panel — each advisor would absolutely walk in with their own biases in certain sectors and categories, so it will be important to flood out each bias with enough of a crowd of perspectives.

Bringing this all together, I'll throw out there a vision of what this might look like:

• A program given a concrete and ambitious but relatively broad set of mandates in terms of goals (such as $1.00 per watt installed solar cost), with an authorized budget and department home, and some basic parameters around types of activities (grants vs. investments, etc.) and a requirement to demonstrate additionality.
• An oversight committee to review the program's activities on a quarterly basis and strategy/program design on an annual basis.
• An auditor established elsewhere in the government to evaluate adherence and effectiveness of the program on an annual basis.
• A strong manager out of the private sector with a mandate to hire a top-notch team, tasked with designing and running the program.
• Peer review and market input processes so that as much as possible of the program's activities are guided by the voice of the market, while still giving the internal team latitude to use their experience and judgment toward meeting the goals of the program.

Obviously, a fourth unstated principle, therefore, is that this requires a really sharp team. Not a bureaucrat-laden team, but a team of experienced managers with private-sector experience, leavened with smart young technologists and market analyst types. This is the single most important determinant, in my mind, between a successful effort like this and an unsuccessful effort. Groups like ARPA-E and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center have had leadership like this, and it's a major reason why (in my mind, at least) they've been pretty successful to date. Effective, mission-oriented people have been brought on board by the leadership of each program, and they've found a way to make a positive impact.  

But will that last? I do worry that the crushing nature of politics means that such people will eventually be driven out by partisanship-inspired attacks. I'm not sure that can be avoided (unless anyone has any brilliant ideas on how to remove party politics from energy policy in this country?). So we can only hope that effective businesspeople with tough hides will continue to agree to lead programs like this out of a sense of mission, and that they will be able to continue to inspire strong managers and analysts to come join these teams even though they will have to expect that it becomes unpleasant at times.

In the meantime, we can hope to continue to see broader recognition of the need for market-based energy policies that will establish a more even playing field, so that all of the above becomes less necessary. Because right now, it's absolutely critical.

from original post at Clean Fleet Report Iran stopped shipping oil to the United Kingdom and to France. Global oil prices shot-up and we pay more at the pump. With the threat of oil shipment disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, prices are likely to stay high. In the USA, over 96 percent of our [...]

Due to the warming effects of climate change, ascending the world’s highest peak may become more difficult yet.

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That sound you hear is the stampede of shale gas drillers away from dry
gas plays. The irrational exuberance of shale gas drillers, chief
amongst them Chesapeake’s voluble Aubrey McLendon, is leading to an impressive
destruction of capital. The long run marginal cost is href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8914">significantly above the
current spot price. With natural gas storage href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/390361-the-problems-plaguing-chesapeake-energy">bursting
at the seams, natural gas is reverting to its historical nuisance
byproduct as drilling moves to liquid rich plays. While not sustainable
in the long term, the present pricing situation presents opportuinities
to displace coal generation and some oil in the transport sector.

Both the gas/coal and oil/gas ratios are at record levels:
src="http://i989.photobucket.com/albums/af18/EamonKeane/oilgascoalgasratio.png">

Sources: Natural
Gas (EIA); href="http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=RBRTE&f=D">Oil
(EIA); href="http://205.254.135.7/coal/nymex/html/nymex_historical.html">Coal
(EIA)

Natural gas is now cheaper than coal on a per unit energy basis, and a
btu of natural gas also yields more electricity than coal. Only href="http://www.economist.com/node/21543563">half of coal plants
have scrubbers, with older plants now facing the decision of whether to
upgrade or to switch to natural gas. Central Appalachian coal at $60/ton is now selling below its mining cost of $65 -$75/ton, which means there is limited scope for coal prices to adjust downwards should fuel switching accelerate.

The oil gas ratio is at record levels also, which has translated to
large differentials between CNG and gasoline/diesel (making for
compelling payback
period calculations):
alt="average retail fuel price"
src="http://i989.photobucket.com/albums/af18/EamonKeane/Averageretailfuelprices.jpg">
Source: Alternative
Fuels Data Center; Clean
Energy Fuels

This presents an opportunity for Clean Energy Fuels if they can
increase the volume of fuel they sell, as their margin per gallon of
gasoline equivalent is currently in the range of href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/46518928/Clean_Energy_Fuels_CEO_on_Future_of_Nat_Gas">35c.

alt="alternative fuel consumption"
src="http://i989.photobucket.com/albums/af18/EamonKeane/estimatedconsumptionoffuelbyafvs.jpg">
Source: Alternative
Fuels Data Center; href="http://205.254.135.24/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/aer.pdf">EIA
Annual Energy Review 2010

In 2010 href="http://205.254.135.24/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/aer.pdf">2.4%
of US primary energy consumption in the transport sector came from natural. With the
possibility of a strike on Iran, the oil/gas ratio could go
significantly higher, which may result in a knee jerk narrowing of the
CLNE oil/gas ratio spread as hands are wrung about $4/gallon gas.

src="http://i989.photobucket.com/albums/af18/EamonKeane/oilgasratio.jpg">

Disclosure: None

Innovation in the cleantech arena often entails combining inarguable facts in strange ways.  Consider these apparently-unrelated truths: Much of the developing world lacks access to electricity. Fertility rates in the developing world are typically much higher than in the developed world. There are few things with more untapped energy than a young child. Children around the world [...]

From old cassette tapes to hemp and bamboo silk, dressy to casual, these clutch bags let you carry what you need in style — and without a bulky tote.

Diane Ott Whealy recommends taking a stroll through the garden to explain “genetic diversity.”