3M is an American multinational conglomerate located in Minnesota. 3M is responsible for over 55,000 different products, including abrasives, adhesives, laminates, dental products, passive fire protection, medical products, electronic materials, car care products, optical films and electronic circuits. With operations in over 60 countries, 3M products are available in over 300 countries. Some of the more popular products include the Post-it note, Scotch Tape, Scotchgard, and Thinsulate, Scotch-Brite. 3M has been very instrumental in the clean technology industry.

1 ) 3M Creates Renewable Energy Division. In 2009, 3M announced the creation of its Renewable Energy Division. Within it, there will be two distinct divisions – energy generation and energy management. Energy generation will work toward the development of materials to be used for geothermal, solar, wind and biofuels solutions, including coatings, tapes, films, and sealants and adhesives. The energy management division maintains focus on thermal efficiencies, energy storage device membranes, and numerous other applications used for residential, commercial building and automotive markets.

2 ) 3M Signs Renewable Energy Research Agreement with NREL. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the United States Department of Energy, announced a number of Cooperative Research and Development Agreements with 3M. This collaboration looks to demonstrate both bodies’ commitment to meeting America’s clean energy needs through the development of different technologies that are essential to the production of large-scale sources of new renewable energies at lower costs. The three main areas of innovation include biofuels, thin-film photovoltaics and concentrating solar power. “3M is excited for the opportunity to tap into NREL’s expertise and understanding of a variety of solar modules and the interplay between the materials and systems,” said Mike Roman, general manager and vice president of 3M Renewable Energy Division. “Also, NREL has pilot plant capabilities, which allow valuable application testing of 3M’s biofuel distillation technologies in a controllable and scalable environment.”

3 ) 3M Cool Roofing Granules is a recent 3M innovation that looks to be an energy efficient breakthrough for roofing granule technology. The Cool Roofing Granules keep a home much cooler using less energy consumption, thereby lowering total energy costs. This is because Cool Roofing Granules are up to four times more reflective than any comparative conventional colored granules. Having a cooler roof means having a lower electricity bill due to less energy consumption. The Cool Roofing Granules meet all Energy Star requirements, making them a primary choice for green building.

4 ) The 3P Pollution Policy also known as the “Pollution Prevention Pays Initiative,” was started in 1975. Since its establishment, the 3P initiative has assisted in eliminating more than three billion pounds of pollution and saved 3M more than $1 billion. The policy is “based on the belief that a preventative approach is more effective, technically sound, and economical that conventional pollution controls. Building conventional controls require natural resources, human energy, and money; operating them requires even more.” The 3P initiative is different because it decreases overall resource consumption by preventing the creation of pollution right up front, via product reformulation, equipment redesign, process modification and waste material recycling and reuse. Projects include redesigning adhesive electrodes, preventing solvent emissions coming from the source, and improving environmental footprint.

5 ) Managing Waste. To 3M, minimizing waste is an essential strategy to lowering carbon footprints. At the Irvine, California facility that manufactures dental products, as part of its overall operation, the facility generates platinum catalyst waste. They turn the waste into raw materials via a recycler to recover as well as process waste so it can be reused. This has saved the plant over $100,000. 3M’s German and Japan facilities have eliminated all landfill waste through reuse, recycling, conversion to energy or incinerated.

6 ) Biodiversity. As part of their goal to preserve and enhance biodiversity, 3M has donated over $10 million to The Nature Conservancy to safeguard critical biodiversity and habitat throughout the United States, China, Mexico and Brazil. 3M has also worked alongside with Conservation International to assist in protection endangered wildlife species and restore threatened forests throughout China.

7 ) Climate Change. For 3M, reducing their total carbon dioxide emissions level is very important. Since 2005, 3M has saved over $100 million in energy costs simply by implementing a number of projects that improve energy efficiency. In their Brooking, South Dakota plant, 3M replaced the fume incinerator with a more efficient technology to control pollution, further reducing carbon dioxide emissions by over 11,000 tons. 3M has also invested in alternative energy sources. For example, its Austin, Texas facility has 13 percent of its energy coming from the wind.

8 ) Water Stewardship. 3M is always looking for new ways to cut their total water use and prevent water pollution in any way that the company is able to. In the Sumare, Brazil facility, the employees in 2007 implemented a new project to reduce total water use by almost 16 million gallons, saving $200,000 per year by using a process of reverse osmosis to treat and then reuse water. The 3M facility in Bangalore treats all its wastewater on-site, thereby reducing the facility’s utilization of water by 1.5 million gallons per year, also cutting their water bill by almost half.

9 ) Air Emissions. One of the main priorities at 3M is reducing volatile organic air emissions. Since 1990, 3M has been able to reduce the total amount of air emissions by 95 percent. The factory in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, for example, uses coating reformulations and equipment modifications to cut the amount of VOCs and other harmful air emissions by approximately 90 percent. This saves more than 500 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

10 ) Packaging. 3M has realized the cost and environmental benefits of reducing the packaging associated with all their products. Through the redesign, reuse, and increased recyclability of their packaging, along with using already recycled materials, 3M is reducing their environmental impact. The results of less packaging include less energy utilized in processing packaging materials, a decrease in the cost and emissions stemming from transportation, and less storage required.

Article by Shawn Lesser, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Atlanta-based Watershed Capital Group – an investment bank assisting sustainable fund and companies raise capital, perform acquisitions, and in other strategic financial decisions. He is also a Co-founder of the GCCA Global Cleantech Cluster Association ”The Global Voice of Cleantech”. He writes for various cleantech publications and is known as the David Letterman of Cleantech for his “Top 10″ series. He can be reached at shawn@watershedcapital.com.

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Some sectors and businesses have been more resilient than others to the economic crisis. But has the recession actually been a driver of growth for any? Apparently so – and they’re fast gaining investor attention, emerging as the ultimate recession-busting cleantech investment.

Unsurprisingly, the idea of reusing goods – extending their lives by trading used or refurbished items and thereby reducing energy use (compared to the manufacturing process of a new item), waste and most importantly, costs – is very much a theme of recessionary times.

Two opportunities in particular are opening up to investors (and they will be the focus of our next conference ‘Investing in Remanufacturing and Recommerce’ in London on March 9).

Recommerce is the increasing trend among consumers and businesses to trade used items for new or used goods, spend less and be more environmentally responsible. Regionally-focused, online trading houses with slick, easy-to-use websites offering good-as-new goods and instant credit or cash are making the most of the limited purchasing power of corporates and consumers. They buy used items, quality approve them, repackage them and sell them on – with a warranty. The speed and reliability of the service and products, compared with alternatives such as ebay, mean their fast building a fan base.

ReBuy is a high growth German company doing exactly this. It says the recession has actually had a positive effect on business and it’s looking to expand by adding more categories to its list which includes phones, video games and books.

Gazelle, ReBuy’s US counterpart, got $22 million in a series D round from a syndicate which included Craton Equity Partners Physic Ventures, Venrock Associates and RockPort Capital.

The second opportunity – remanufacturing – is when a product at end-of-life is refurbished and returned to like-new (with a warranty to match).

Remanufacturing is not to be confused with recycling, which refers to completely disassembling or breaking down an item into its various materials or components which are then separated and sold on to be used in the manufacture of new products. Nor is it a new concept.

Caterpillar, possibly the world’s largest remanufacturer, has been doing it for decades and increasing its capabilities as new generations of products reach end of life. One example being its recently signed deal with Vestas to refurbish wind turbines.

The benefits of remanufacturing can be huge, but they depend heavily on the product being considered for remanufacture. While a remanufactured item may have consumed much less energy (during remanufacturing) and produced less waste than a new one, the energy it consumes during its useful life is also a critical factor in assessing the case for remanufacture. A new item with energy efficient technology may consume a lot less energy during its useful life than an old – though remanufactured
model, thereby cancelling out any energy savings gained from remanufacturing. This is key to establishing whether remanufacturing services and technologies should be applied to new industries and whether they can be successfully maintained in others.

In the UK remanufacturing is a £5 billion dollar industry according to Oakdene Hollins which runs the UK Centre for Remanufacturing and Reuse. There are hundreds of companies providing services across the country – some, such as Infoteam, for big name clients like Apple and Sony.

Infoteam repairs electronic equipment that has been returned by customers to retailers or manufacturers. It was named the fastest growing company in the Southwest in October.

Cisco has also now caught onto the opportunity and is investigating new product offerings that realise the benefits of remanufacturing.

In the US. Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers thinks it’s onto a winner with eRecyclingcorp having led a $35m round in December. The company combines innovative software with remanufacturing capabilities to take second hand mobile phones from the developed world to feed emerging markets’ hunger for cheap phones. The software is integrated with mobile phone manufacturers’ point of sale software allowing consumers to receive store credit if they hand in their old phone when buying a new one. The credit can be then against the purchase of the new phone. The old one is then passed to erecyclingcorp to work its magic.

The London Environmental Investment Forum will be holding its ‘Investing in Remanufacturing & Recommerce’ conference on 9 March 2012 which will explore this topic in more depth through industry insight and discussions with leaders and innovators. If you’re interested in speaking at or sponsoring this event, please contact us. Find out more about LEIF at www.london-eif.com.

Article by Tom Whitehouse. Tom is the Chairman of the London Environmental Investment Forum (LEIF), a conference platform which connects environmental innovation with capital, and the Founder and CEO of LEIF’s Initiating Partner, Carbon International, a corporate finance and investor communications consultancy for environmental and cleantech industries.

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The minerals known as rare earths are likely the most important, but least understood factor in our transition to a low-carbon, clean-energy future. They’re essential ingredients to just about every source of renewable energy and nearly every consumer electronic device we use today.

But China dominates worldwide rare earth supplies and production, and their monopoly could corner the world economy. energyNOW! chief correspondent Tyler Suiters explores how U.S. dependence on China’s rare earths could affect our energy future and high-tech lifestyles. The full video is available below.

Americans are used to seeing the words “Made in China” on most things we buy, but could they soon also read “Mined in China?” The nation controls 97 percent of global production of the elements we rely upon in every aspect of modern life. Consider the technologies requiring rare earths: computers, smart phones, military jets, rocket systems, electric cars, wind turbines, energy-efficient light bulbs, and flat-screen televisions, to name a few.

China’s claim on the rare earths market began in the 1980’s. Premier Deng Xiaoping famously quipped “the Middle East has oil, but China has rare earths,” and the country ramped up mining efforts. This drove production costs down so sharply that rare earth mining became unprofitable in other countries, including the U.S., which had led global production since the 1960s. It also boosted China’s economy.

“They were very effectively using their control over the rare earth industry to force high-tech manufacturing into China,” said John Burba, CTO of Molycorp, operator of the only active rare earths mine in America. “I could look and see how fast it was leaving the United States.”

Molycorp hopes to counter China’s rare earths monopoly through its Mountain Pass mine in California. Until the 1980s, Mountain Pass was the single top producing rare earths mine in the world. Plunging commodity prices and a series of environmental accidents forced it to close.

Through a revamped approach that favors computer control and automation, Molycorp says it can safely produce 40,000 tons of rare earths a year by 2013 – equal to all U.S. demand. “A facility of this size in China would probably require 3,000 to 4,000 people,” said Mark Smith, Molycorp CEO. “We’ll have 300 or 400.”

Meeting that demand is critical to the burgeoning cleantech economy, which consumes 20 percent of the world’s rare earths. They coat the inside of compact fluorescent light bulbs, go into the magnets that turn electric vehicle batteries, and power the electrical generators inside wind turbines. For context, some of the biggest turbines can each use two tons of rare earths.

If production can’t be increased, another solution may be to find replacements. Companies with a big stake in renewables are actively looking for rare earth substitutes. General Electric says it has developed a higher-performance wind turbine magnetizer coil, completely free of rare earths, and Toyota is working on an EV motor that doesn’t need rare earths at all. But, both are still in the experimental phase and not yet market-ready.

So while breaking up the rare earths monopoly has environmental consequences, it also represents an economic imperative – and the window is closing. “The big danger is that China totally controls the production of all devices containing rare earths,” said Jack Lifton, of Technology Metals Research. “If we haven’t made any significant moves by 2015, we will simply no longer be a nation with any hope of doing so.”

Article by Silvio Marcacci, appearing courtesy Earth & Industry.

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Researchers are busy trying to develop solar energy, both in terms of efficiency as well as materials and manufacturing processes.

At the University of Notre Dame, researchers have developed what they call a ‘solar paint’ that could be applied to the exterior of a building to generate electricity, said TG Daily.

They call the solar paint Sun-Believable and although levels of efficiency are low (1 per cent) compared to current standards (around 15 per cent), it’s inexpensive and easy to produce is mass quantities. In order to produce the paint, the researchers used nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide which were then coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide. After that, the particles were suspended in a mixture of water and alcohol to create a paste.

Elsewhere, researchers at the University of Florida said they achieved a new record in efficiency with a prototype solar cell that could be manufactured using a roll-to-roll process. They compare the process to printing newspaper roll to roll.

The roll-to-roll manufacturing process is not a new idea. Imagine photovoltaic sheets being applied to the exterior of buildings, cars, clothing and accessories. But so far PV sheets have not mustered enough energy per square inch to make them viable to manufacturers. The UF researchers have managed to cross the critical threshold of eight per cent efficiency in laboratory prototype solar cells, which means the cells could be economically feasible.

They used a specially treated zinc oxide polymer blend as the electron charge transporting material. The full report outlining the details of their latest laboratory success in solar cell technology was published in the December 18 online version of Nature Photonics.

The researchers said the innovative process they used to apply the zinc oxide as a film was key to their success. They first mixed it with a polymer so it could be spread thinly across the device, and then removed the polymer by subjecting it to intense ultraviolet light.

John Reynolds, a UF professor of chemistry working on the project, said the cells are layered with different materials that function like an electron-transporting parfait, with each of the nano-thin layers working together synergistically to harvest the sun’s energy with the highest efficiency.

Reynolds’ chemistry research group developed an additional specialized polymer coating that overlays the zinc oxide polymer blend. His team is aligned in an ongoing collaboration with a material sciences team led by Frank So, a professor at UF’s department of materials science and engineering. They call the partnership “The SoRey Group.”

The most recent fruit of their collaboration will now go to Risø National Laboratory in Denmark, where researchers will replicate the materials and processes developed by the SoRey Group and test them in the roll-to-roll manufacturing process.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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There isn’t a product that hits shelves whose packaging hasn’t been designed – and redesigned – by the sales and marketing folks who believe they know exactly what consumers look for and will choose among the sea of options on store shelves or web pages. And then, of course, the safety and loss prevention people get their say – before the packaging gets finalized.

Enter the latest voice from the packaging peanut gallery: sustainability. It’s not really a surprise that business has been wary about modifying packaging to reduce environmental impacts. Any changes – even the smallest ones to already recognized packaging – could make the difference between a sale and no sale.

That being said, there has been significant progress, even in the luxury segment of the market, where packaging is the brand and in itself the packaging is an $11.9 billion business annually.

“Sustainability,” when applied to packaging, covers a large number of functions. Just some of those are the design of the container, raw materials used, energy and water consumed in production, resources needed for transportation, waste produced, impacts on workers, and what is written on the label. Changes in any one or more of these usually entail strategic decisions about procurement, supply chain management, production, shipping, disposal, human resources, and labeling. Costs have to be factored in and regulatory approval can take up to two years. But, pressure from consumers, media, investors, global, national, and state government bodies, and activists has created a revolution in how products are packaged. And, that’s only in its early stages. Overall, packaging has been a laggard in the environmentalism.

Now, Wal-Mart, Unilever, McDonald’s, and MillerCoors are among the growing number of companies that publish their own detailed information and communicate with the media about their efforts in packaging sustainability. For example, Wal-Mart announced its goal of reducing global packaging by five percent by 2013.

Much of the focus of global companies has been on gaining commitment from their supply chain for these initiatives. That extends from sourcing of materials, especially scarce, hazardous, and fossil-fuel ones, to what the label, which more consumers analyze, can legally and ethically state.

In the high-margin luxury niche, making packaging more eco-friendly had been a topic at the 2011 global Luxe Pack conference. The challenge was framed as maintaining the brand differentiation from private label products through unique packaging but doing that in ways that minimize environmental impacts. There are also new labeling requirements for luxury products to combat the practice of stating that the container is “green,” without providing documentation of that. Months before the conference, cosmetic leader L’Oreal issued its own assessment system to track packaging sustainability and committed to using the Sustainable Packaging Alliance’s Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool (PIQET).

The biggest gains are expected in developing economies. There, a middle class is growing which is brand conscious including about luxury products. The Asia Pacific region, for example, has a 35 percent market share for worldwide luxury sales. Also the businesses in emerging nations want to be perceived as a “good corporate citizens” in order to become vendors for a developed-economy. As a result, they are investing in packaging sustainability, even though the current costs may have no immediate return on investment.

Article by Bari Faye Siegel, a technology writer and marketing consultant at Noveda Technologies, an innovative leader in real-time, web-based energy management, solar PV monitoring and water management. Noveda also offers real-time collaboration tools that leverage social media to educate and empower stakeholder communities and make the smart grid a reality today. For more information, visit www.noveda.com.

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Yesterday, Science Magazine hosted a debate about the application of nanotechnology to the development of solar cells. There are hopes that nanotechnology can bring solar power’s prices down to fossil fuel price level.

On the discussion panel were Alan Heeger, a physicist at the University of California who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on electrically conducting plastics, and Deli Wang, a materials scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

Both focus their research on related to technology. Alan develops solar cells from plastics and other organic materials while Deli tries to develop solar cells using tiny inorganic nanowires.

Alan is an optimist. He believes solar cell technology will be contributing significantly to our energy needs by 2020 as costs are dropping rapidly.

Deli said the efficiency of nanowire solar cells have been increasing dramatically in the past few years, from tenth of 1% to 15-16%. Still lower than the best Si cells (silicon), but it’s improving fast.

He added the main challenges faced by nanowire solar cells include managing the surface states of nanowires to reduce the surface recombination, including finding the right materials, and designing/fabricating devices that allow the effective carrier collection.

As people who follow solar power development are aware, efficiency is the industry’s Holy Grail. Alan said the main problem is the need for new materials.

“We need materials with a smaller energy gap to provide better harvesting of the solar radiation. We need materials with higher mobilities so that we do not lose the photogenerated carriers by recombination before they are extracted at the electrodes” he said. He noted the efficiency of organic solar cells (the ones not made of silicon, the industry standard) is growing steadily and current record values in the lab are approximately 10%.

He added that organic PV technology is not a direct competitor with conventional Si solar cell technology. The organic cells are light weight, flexible and rugged. Besides, they can be made semitransparent. For that reason, organic PV can be used in a range of products that are not possible with Si cells, such as semitransparent windows as well as the covering and powering of green houses. He expects organic solar cell panels to be on the market well before 2020 in a growing number of specialized applications.

In terms of the advantages of nanowire solar cells, Deli said these and other nanomaterial solar cells require less materials compared with single crystal Si cells. The new materials are made by low-cost process, such as solution method, and cheaper device processing (e.g. printing). Si cells require high purity and more materials, therefore larger capital and energy is necessary to produce them. New nanomaterials are light weight, portable and flexible. A wide range of materials can be used, including organic conjugated polymers. Best of all, it is possible to develop new materials with elements that are abundant in the earth.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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The cost of a solar cell is given per unit of peak electrical power. Manufacturing costs necessarily include the cost of energy required for manufacture. Solar power must become more efficient and less expensive to compete with energy produced by fossil fuels. Silicon-based solar cells are the dominant technology in the field, but the widespread adoption of these cells has been slowed by their high costs. Solar cells that use inorganic nanocrystals or quantum dots could be a cheaper alternative, but they are generally less efficient at turning solar energy into electricity. Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers have now found a new way to generate an electrical field inside the quantum dots, making them more suitable for building an energy-efficient nanocrystal solar cell.

In their report in the October 9 issue of Nature Materials, Professor Nir Tessler (of the Zisapel Nano-Electronics Center in the Technion Department of Electrical Engineering) and colleagues describe how they tuned the electrical properties of quantum dots before testing their capabilities in a model solar cell.

Quantum dots are particles of semiconductor material with the size so small that, due to quantum mechanics considerations, the electron energies that can exist within them are limited. These energy levels, defined by the size of quantum dots, in turn define the bandgaps. The dots can be grown to any needed size, allowing them to be tuned across a wide variety of bandgaps without changing the underlying material or construction techniques. In typical preparations, the tuning is accomplished by Quantum dot solar cells are an emerging field in solar cell research that uses quantum dots as the photovoltaic material, as opposed to better-known bulk materials such as silicon, copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) or CdTe. varying the duration or temperature of synthesis.

Nanocrystal or quantum dots “are promising materials for low-cost and high efficiency solar cells” due to their unusual electronic properties, Tessler said. For instance, the size of a quantum dot is uniquely correlated to its light absorption, so changing a dot’s size can maximize its ability to harvest light within a solar cell.

To live up to their promise, however, the dots must share electrons efficiently which is a feat that has been difficult to control. The Technion study offers a new way to bring an electrical charge to the dots; each about one-millionth the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

Tessler and colleagues were able to generate strong electrical fields within the dots by capping them with two different organic molecules. The chemical groups that attach the molecules to the dots’ surface generate the electrical field.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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The increased use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the production of refrigerators, air conditioners, and other products could play a significant role in accelerating global warming, a new UN report warns.

Without stricter regulations, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report says, the projected emissions of HFCs by 2050 could equal pouring nearly 9 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — or about one-third of current CO2 emissions.

While introduced in the 1990s to replace ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), HFCs are also potent greenhouse gases — about 1,600 times more powerful in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

And with the increase in world population and the continued growth of emerging economies, annual consumption of HFCs has doubled over the last decade to about 400,000 tons, according to the UNEP report.

The most common type of HFC increased 10 percent annually from 2006 to 2010. “Without intervention, the increase in HFC emissions is projected to offset much of the climate benefit achieved by the earlier reduction in [ozone-depleting substances],” the report says.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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An international group of scientists says space-based solar plants could help meet the world’s energy needs within 30 years if governments are willing to provide the early funding.

Space-based solar technology, in which satellites are launched into space to collect the Sun’s energy and beam it back to Earth, could be “technically feasible” within two decades, according to the new study by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA).

But, while the study does not offer a cost estimate for such a project, it suggests that the development and deployment would likely cost tens of billions of dollars. Since the private sector would be unlikely to invest in an unproven technology on its own, the IAA says governments should take the lead in showing that it is an economically viable solution to meeting the world’s energy needs.

While skeptics say the technology is not feasible — in large part because of the high costs involved — the study contends the economic case has improved in recent years, largely as a result of increased government incentives for green energy.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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It’s a $160 billion a year market you’ve probably never heard of.

Ethylene, the intermediary chemical compound from which popular plastics and many other high value products are derived, has traditionally been made in the petroleum industry via steam cracking, an energy- and carbon-intensive process. It’s the most produced organic compound in the world; annual global production is in the hundreds of millions of tons. To meet ever-increasing demand, production facilities are being added globally, particularly in the Persian Gulf and China.

The problem is, it’s complicated and expensive to make ethylene. And, or course, petroleum reserves are waning.

For decades, chemical engineers have been pursuing cost effective ways to make this key industrial compound from other things. Now, a handful of companies think they’re honing in on ways to make ethylene from the methane in natural gas with commercially viable processes.

If making ethylene from methane turns out to be possible at scale, it could be a watershed for the chemical and petroleum industries. Ethylene from methane could potentially be much less expensive, given that natural gas is one-fifth the price of oil. And its supply could be more sustainable, given the massive and growing size of natural gas reserves.

The methane conversion space is more crowded than one might expect. Kachan & Co. recently performed a consulting project for a client that uncovered and profiled 24 announced and stealth mode startups in this space, along with 19 blue chip companies and 6 universities and government labs. The project involved interviews with company and research personnel, a review of venture investment data, interviews with investors and trade organizations, an intellectual property patent search and a literature review that included media and scientific sources.

Here are some of the more interesting of the 24 small organizations we found at the forefront of methane-to-ethylene commercialization today:

Excerpt from private Kachan & Co. study of 24 methane to ethylene companies, October 2011

The companies we found worldwide pursing methane-to-ethylene arranged themselves into rough groupings by type:

• IP Provider: Develops IP related to methane-to-ethylene, does not go beyond IP phase
• Technology Provider: Developed a technology and a prototype, intend to license to other companies (e.g. Carbon Sciences)
• Application Provider: Developed a technology, and sells engineering services to build facilities (e.g. BCCK) or manufacture technology (e.g. Rentech)
• Technology Operator: Goes beyond the licensing and directly operates facilities (e.g. CompactGTL) 

Global oil and gas majors have been working on the challenge of methane to ethylene for years themselves, with dozens of patents issued. But none have cracked the code of profitable commercial scale production.

Global oil majors and number of patents in converting methane to ethylene

High value chemicals like ethylene from natural gas would be even more compelling if the gas was derived from renewable, biological sources, and not from conventional reserves or fracking, as today. Small volumes of renewable methane are available today from anaerobic digestion and landfill gas. But large volumes are promised by a new wave of companies commercializing thermal gasification and other approaches to creating bio natural gas from wood waste and other widely available feedstocks (see the Kachan report The Bio Natural Gas Opportunity).

Complicated science aside, it won’t be easy for companies to bring methane to ethylene innovations to scale. Ethylene and other high value chemicals today are an oligopoly, a market hard to crack. Any new process will likely need to be championed by one of today’s 5 big suppliers as a partner to enter the market. Then there’s the culture clash between small, fast-moving venture backed companies seeking quick exists and the notoriously slow, conservative petroleum and chemical industries.

But those challenges are likely surmountable, according to the bets that are being made by name brand cleantech venture backers of the companies in this space.

Article by Dallas Kachan, appearing courtesy Kachan & Co. A former managing director of the Cleantech Group, Dallas Kachan is now managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech research and advisory firm that does business worldwide from San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. Kachan & Co. staff have been covering, publishing about and helping propel clean technology since 2006. Kachan & Co. offers cleantech research reports, consulting and other services that help accelerate its clients’ success in clean technology. Details at www.kachan.com.

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