We had a great turnout for this meeting, thanks everyone for filling in our new venue nicely. Networking again is proving to be a very popular part of the meeting and there is plenty of space at law building  to do this now. ToughStuff worked the crowds before and after the meeting from their promotional table in the front entrance. There was a good sized crowd that wanted to see their durable solar panel from  last meeting.

Announcements

• Green tech happy hour – 4th thursday of every month, St. Julien
• CU tech transfer office, looking for chemistry/chemical engineering licensing associate – https://www.cu.edu/techtransfer/about/job_boulder_chem_lic_associate.html

Speakers

Infleksion, Brian Kromer
The Stationary Model – Stationary Compliance & Climate Change Market Profiling

Infleksion is an information company that provides Environmental Intelligence on Stationary Energy Markets. Environmental Intelligence provides valuable knowledge to a number of clients through reports and dashboards. Clients can data mine for patterns on industry compliance for emissions, (e.g. air/water/land discharge and GHG-green house gases) using filters to target a potential market.  The market datasets focus on stationary businesses (local power plants, factory/industry) versus mobile (transportation). Infleksion software and services also provide finely grained knowledge to help examine facilities by fuel type, location and equipment and this empowers the client to make a more informed decision on where to deploy their technology. Extending this solution, information on the burgeoning carbon credit market can be made part of a report. Understanding where a credit can be received, provides clients with exceptional cost savings and competitive advantage . Federal Climate legislation is validating Brian’s work with Infleksion. In June 2009 a success vote passed that was the:

first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change

Future energy demand is critical to understand stationary markets. Brian set the stage by examining the DOE/EIA International Energy Outlook. This graph projects demand from known consumption in 1980 projected out to 2030 of World Marketed Energy by Fuel type.  The graph(s) imply that that the increase in worldwide demand for energy sources such as oil, coal, renewables and natural gas fuels is growing significantly. How do we plan for energy types with existing and new compliance legislation? Infleksion helps model these scenarios – matching fuel type to industrial application to emission to location providing a landscape of the current environment (e.g. natural gas energy plant using a reciprocating engine complying with Colorado or Federal GHG/pollution emission standards ).

Where Infleksion breaks from the pack is it detailed knowledge on industries, machinery and regulation. It’s environmental intelligence is built on a collection of EPA, DOE and state agency datasets and other industrial information on machinery developed by its founder. Stationary datasets include Electricity Generation and Industry segments which account for 50% of the US Carbon footprint and 12.5% of the world footprint. The software product also helps to define and estimate using the new international currency denomination of climate change known as Carbon Dioxide Equivalency or CO₂e.

Carbon dioxide equivalency is a quantity that describes, for a given mixture and amount of greenhouse gas, the amount of CO₂ that would have the same global warming potential (GWP), when measured over a specified timescale (generally, 100 years). Carbon dioxide equivalency thus reflects the time-integrated radiative forcing, rather than the instantaneous value described by CO₂e.

The opportunity identified is the target market of 800K facilities in the US which are monitored for discharge to the Air, Land or Water.  Monitoring by the EPA for these operations will soon include Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.  Infleksion has entered this market with both a software and services offering. Early clients served are in the energy sector.

At the end of the presentation a number of example reports were displayed. The first slide showed natural gas transmission points by county for the whole of the US. A second slide showed Weld County, CO with one of the highest number of facilities for natural gas processing. Brian mentioned Rocky Mountains only holds 8% of all natural gas in the US, but apparently Colorado is a hub for specialized processing. Just north in Wyoming there were some of highest densities of natural gas transmission points in the nation.

Liquid Asset Development, Gregory Majersky
Take control of your water’s quality

Liquid Asset Development markets the design and the fabrication process to make water filtration systems using pervious concrete. At the core of this solution is the social cause to provide a sustainable and accessible solution for poor nations as well as developed nations to clean their polluted water supply. The current product focus is on cleaning up mining and heavy metal pollution from industrial waste water and filtering agricultural runoff such as nitrogen/phosphorous and microorganisms.

Pollution from mines has presented a problem for over 10,000 years. Toxicity from acid mine drainage can pollute a local water supply when abandoned mines are flooded and the appropriate safety accommodations have not been made. This toxicity is claimed to be more dangerous in low pH waters to aquatic life and to the local resident consuming it. Ironically, this wastewater provides value in a reclamation process, containing a number of high value metals  such as Vanadium or Tritium that pays over 1000 dollars per ounce. The issue around water needs to be addressed as growing tension around ownership and usage of clean water supplies are leading to legal battles (over water diversion and overuse) in areas such as the SouthWest states,  Great Lakes Compact and Mississippi River states. Most developing nations are protective to the point of using armed tactics to protect their water resources. Locations such as Africa where Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia count on the Nile, Central Asia water routes are being disputed by Russia and China/India where disputes and threats stem from water diversions from the Tibet Plateau. Many people rely on this water and once polluted their situation is so dire they drink without any filtration bringing upon themselves an enormous health risk.

The Tibetan plateau is the ‘Principal Asian watershed and source of ten major rivers’. Tibet water travels to eleven countries and are said to bring fresh water to over 85% of Asian population, approximately 50% of world’s population. Four of these ten rivers: the Brahmaputra, Indus, Yangtze, and Mekong have their head water on the Tibetan plateau.

Desalination is not practical on a large scale for many countries. UAE has one of the largest desalination plants in the world. Florida has the largest US desalination operation but dwarfs in comparison with 12% capacity compared to UAE’s Jebel Ali Plant. Some of the issues are the power consumption, screening organisms, marine life & debris, and pH elevation requirements. Florida’s Tampa Bay Water faced with 5 years of engineering problems and operation at 20% capacity due to marine life and growth captured and stuck to reverse osmosis filters prior to fully utilizing this facility in 2007. With pervious concrete, pre-treatment of water for higher pH and debris filtering could potentially bring down these issues and costs.

Enter the Pervious Concrete solution. This material allows for 3-8 gallons per min of water to flow per on square foot of concrete. It is approximately 15-25% void structure that utilized no sand in its construction. It recognized by the EPA for stormwater filtration as well as 30 years in parking lots for removing brake dust, brake fluid and oil. It supports a high pH environment and does well is cold conditions. It excels over carbon filters in filtering polluted waters which contain metals.

Liquid asset is in the research phase and has proven their product in extensive trials on polluted waters by removing:

• 85-99% of iron
• 60-70% sodium
• 74% zinc, 65% copper
• 60% sulfate

Their addressable market for acid mine drainage and recovery of metals is $200M/yr. annual spend and $40 Billion globally. Remediation in Pennsylvania alone for AMD is $23 Mil. / year and state-wide sludge based metals recovery could recoup millions of dollars. The pre-treatement desalination market is estimated to be $25 Billion by 2010. Greg provided more desalination markets data.

Liquid asset Development is look for startup capital at the time of this writing. More laboratory and 3rd party validation is required beyond their initial product tests with replaceable modules.  They are looking for skilled resources in hydrology, chemistry and other specialties to help expand their product to commercial applications. Their market and first stage expansion plans involve both  developing world and local commercial applications. They are looking for investor and advisors with international client contacts. With a sustainable product to provide clean water and a revenue stream to recover value metals, Liquid Assets is an attractive investment startup opportunity.

SolarTech, Lambert Bunker
Real Solar Power

SolarTech designs and delivers HCPV (High Concentration Photovoltaic) solar systems. Their product offering is an patented solar panel that claims 36.7% efficiency at 50W/cm squared and a concentrator technology that magnifies the sun 400 times. Amplification is achieved with custom Fresnel lenses and the product with tracking system supports usage in extreme wind conditions. The product roots were from Sandia National Laboratories research and has operational success on the grid for over a decade. New technology utilizing triple junction solar cells has been added to their current product. Their latest system costs have made them competitive supplying power at a competitive $1.85/W.

Globally and domestically the market potential for solar technology is huge. Market demand will be enhanced by the lucrative 43B made available from the recovery act in 2009. Previous to recover act, existing global solar revenue in 2006 was at $16B. Today there are 6000 MW of identified US projects that will utilize solar. SolarTech has chosen to narrow their focus to mid-range commercial, agriculture, remote and municipal markets that deploy in high sun conditions. Their newest product architecture is a roof-mounted system that can support large scale commercial or smaller size residential deployments. Their product line can be engineering to work with best of breed solutions and tailored to a customer’s special needs.

The plan for growth is to continue and extend a multi-channel distribution chain, including energy developers, equipment dealers, solar installers and direct first run channels. Licensing is also available to other distributors and this is the expected long-term strategy once the newest product lines have been operationalized at large scale.

The primary driving factor to solar adoption is efficiency and sustainability. Concentrators are meeting this issue by reducing the need for silicon (reduce by 1/175 material), which in turn reduces landfill by 1/3. It provides a sustainable product with 99% recyclable material.  SolarTech is innovating at the leading edge of concentrated solar and expects to see great opportunity in the next wave of solar adoption, while still sharing the triple bottom line with the community.

CLEANtricity, Daniel Sullivan
Yes Wind Can

CLEANtricity Power manufactures unique small wind turbines that capture power from wind in breezes to typhoons and generate clean electricity right where you need it. Variable area, vertical axis turbines produce energy in almost all wind conditions and service the distributed power market.

The identified revenue potential for the variable wind turbine is about $3 Billion for the “off-grid homes” market.  There are also about 37M homes in the US with property over 1/2 acre which are also potential product clients. As of 2008, this market was supplied with 10,500 units and the projected growth is approximately 30 fold in 5 years, with tax credits also supporting customer demand. This particular low-wind market is under-served with today’s technologies and CLEANtricity fills that gap in the market.

The product is a unique, patented solution that supports variable swept areas. It uses a design that self regulates its area passively and without the need of electronics. The vertical spin design has the benefit of noise reduction and less vibration making it more reliable and versatile. A normal wind turbine is optimized for a specific speed or range. If a “traditional” wind turbine needs to stop operating when wind conditions reach above category 8 (to prevent damage), then it misses out on the jump between cat 8 to cat 9 window, which offer 8x more energy.  Plus, in order to shut down a traditional turbine, you need to feather the blade or use a mechanical break which does not always work gracefully in high wind conditions. Smaller vertical axis wind turbines are significantly cheaper with no large installation costs and foundations to build.

The go-to-market strategy includes more R&D work to improve the product (such as incorporating a battery that will store power for up to 6 days). The current intellectual property is already protected with patents. CLEANtricity is also working with suppliers to ensure quality control, contracts and unit assembly are production ready. Distribution channels, contracts and training are the next step to scale out the product roll-out. With positive profitability forecasted in 2011, the expected number of units delivered by 2010 will be approximately 70 thousand and gross sales are expected to reach 3.5 Million.