Join some of today’s Jewish leaders, with backgrounds varying in energy, investment, sustainability and policy, for a dynamic and enriching discussion of what they think will advance the generational movement for clean and secure energy.

The Jewish Response to the Energy Challenge (J-REC) on November 8, 2009 in San Francisco showcases some of the most influential leaders in clean tech today, including Alan Salzman, CEO of VantagePoint Venture Partners, Adam Werbach, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, Dr. Eitan Yudilevich, Executive Director of the Bird Foundation and Marc Gottschalk, Co-Founder of the Cleantech Open and Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

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What is the current smart grid infrastructure? How will we deploy the smart grid? Answer these questions and more by joining some of today’s leaders in the smart grid movement, next Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at Greentech Media’s The Networked Grid conference. The morning and afternoon keynote speeches will be given by PG&E’s Andrew Tang, senior director, smart energy web, and Oracle’s Linda Jackman, vice president of product strategy and management, utilities business. Also joining them will be speakers from California’s big three utilities and its public utilities commission, PG&E, SDG&E, SCE and CPUC, as well as companies such as ABB, Cisco, Control4, Coulomb Technologies, Enernex, Google, GridPoint, GTM Research, Intel, Oracle, Siemens, Silver Spring Networks, Stanford Research Institute, Tendril, Verizon Wireless.

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The Obama administration is awarding $3.4 billion in grants to modernize the national electric grid. One-hundred companies, utilities, manufacturers, and cities will receive the grants — ranging from $400,000 to $200 million — for projects that help build a “smart” grid that cuts energy costs, reduces blackouts, and has the capacity to deliver more wind and solar energy to American homes and businesses. Calling the nation’s grid system “dilapidated,” Carol Browner, the Obama administration’s top adviser on climate and energy issues, said federal funds would be used to expand the national grid and make it work more efficiently.

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First, take a deep breath. It is difficult to do when it is your life and career day-in and day-out, but every once in a while, all of us moving in the clean tech space should stop and reflect on the breakneck pace at which everything around us is moving: technology, regulation, public awareness. Sure, maybe climate change legislation will not be through the Senate in time for Copenhagen (or at all this year, or even this Session), but that was an ambitious (and partly arbitrary) timeline. On the brighter side, today’s public discourse and political will on renewable energy and climate change would have been inconceivable among anyone but the green elite even five years ago.

Still, I cannot help but notice that one not-so-novel technology is getting a lot of renewed attention these days: nuclear power. Sure, in the industry we’ve all bought into the CW that “nukes are back,” but it always been accompanied by a “sort of” at the end. Microreactor technology has been a consistent “yeah, but” in that developing conversation. Then in their NYT Op-ed, Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham blew the lid off of things with a commitment to good old-fashioned conventional nukes (alongside a commitment to drilling and clean coal that threatens to turn the Senate bill into little more than a symbolic accopmplishment).

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Turkey’s alternative energy potential is huge, but it remains locked – at least so far. Earlier this month, Ankara hosted the International Energy Congress on Renewable Energy where the Turkish energy sector was the main discussion point. The congress attracted a record number of participants from public and private sectors, including the Turkish Minister of Energy and members of the country’s Parliament. It was once more observed that the potential of investments in Turkey is by far exceeding the enthusiasm of the bureaucrats and the readiness of the Turkish infrastructure.

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The U.S. Department of Energy will pump $151 million into 37 innovative energy-related research projects through a new federal agency modeled after the Defense Department program that helped commercialize microchips and the Internet.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or Arpa-e, created in 2007 to support innovative and often-experimental projects, selected the first round of grant recipients from 3,600 proposals.

While many of the ideas may never lead to practical breakthroughs, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said some could have a “transformative impact.”

Among the first grant recipients are University of Minnesota researchers attempting to develop an organism that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide to sugars and diesel fuel; a Massachusetts Institute of Technology team developing an all-liquid metal battery that could better manage the output from intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar; and a United Technologies effort to capture carbon emissions from power plant stacks using enzymes.

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If I were the new CEO of Chevron, I would stop listening to the lawyers and bring the engineers into the boardroom to develop a strategy to invest a good portion of last year’s record $24 billion profit into inventing solutions to the adverse environmental and social impacts of the company’s operations around the globe.

It is clear that Chevron’s historical reliance upon litigation to get what it wants is being eclipsed by new activist strategies that have effectively boxed Chevron into a corner.

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“Ah-ha moments”, those times when something is triggered in one’s mind that opens up a new understanding or way of seeing things. Day three of West Coast Green 2009 brought together some of the brightest minds in the “green building” movement and provided the platform for the cross-pollination of innovation and ingenuity that led many to “ah-ha moments”.

One attendee, Jason Lear of Batt + Lear Designers and Builders who traveled from Seattle, Washington to attend the show shared some of the information that led to a complete rethinking for the way he conducts projects at his family-run business. During a previous show, Mr. Lear sat through a presentation given by Rick Chitwood, President of Chitwood Energy Management. The presentation by Mr. Chitwood was so simple yet so powerful, it changed Mr. Lear’s business overnight. The subject of the inspiration; properly sealed attics.

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A U.S. company and its Chinese partner will test electric buses using ultracapacitors that would be chargeable at stops every few miles. The latest ultracapacitors store only 5 percent of the energy that lithium-ion batteries can hold, making them impractical for passenger vehicles. But proponents say the fact that buses have to stop frequently — and at predictable locations — make them a more logical use of the technology.

Virginia-based Sinautec Automobile Technologies and Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, a partnership that has run 17 similar runs outside Shanghai for the last three years, will test the technology this week at American University in Washington, D.C.

Unlike traditional trolleys that stay connected to electric lines throughout their route, there is a collector on top of the Sinautec vehicle that would connect to a re-charging line at bus stops every two or three miles. Within three minutes, banks of ultracapacitors located beneath the seats of the bus would re-charge.
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Ormat Technologies, Inc., announced today that its Israeli subsidiary, Ormat Systems Ltd., has signed a Joint Venture Agreement (“JVA”) with Sunday Energy Ltd. (“Sunday”), an Israeli solar integration company, to construct and operate solar-photovoltaic (“PV”) energy systems in Israel with a total capacity of 36 megawatts (MW).

Under the JVA, Sunday will contribute the rights to all of its property and roofs required to develop solar energy systems above 1 MW to special purpose entities (“SPEs”). Ormat will own 70% of each SPE and will also have control of it. Under the terms of the agreement, Ormat and Sunday will act, jointly, as the engineering, procurement and construction (“EPC”) contractor and the operator of each project in accordance with each company share in the SPEs .

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