Great February meeting! Thanks to everyone for being patient with the overflow in the room . As we speak, we’re looking at options to expand.  With room for 200 and extra chairs, there was an overflow of approximately 30 people in the aisles. Hope you all enjoyed the speakers and we’ll let you know about the location change for next month.

Announcements

• Kris reviewed the new mission statement for Colorado Green Tech:

Help the Front Range of Colorado become the Silicon Valley of Clean/Green Tech by providing fast track opportunities for companies with emerging Clean/Green technologies

• Thanks to Meg Hendriks for the job board, Tony and Yann Ropars for  photos
• For those interested in participating on the Advisory board, please contact Kris
• Kris is looking for a sweat equity IP attorney for one of his projects. If interested please contact him at kris@coloradogreentech.net
• MISI has published a Green Job report for Colorado and at the national level
• Various events were announced – next month these will show up as a group mail, as well as in the calendar on our web site.

Speakers

Susan Innis, Governors Energy Office, Colorado Carbon Fund
A New Way to Fund Clean Energy Projects

A first for the green tech meetup – we’re delighted to have a representative from the Governors Energy Office (GEO) talk about how green technology is supported by the state. Susan Innis is the program manager of The Colorado Carbon Fund, otherwise known as Project C, which support the following GEO’s objectives:

• Develop a funding source for community-based clean energy and climate mitigation projects in Colorado
• Support Colorado’s climate change mitigation objectives
• Provide high quality, credible offsets for individuals, businesses and government agencies interested in mitigating their carbon footprint

For more information on the Governor’s activities,  Susan, directed us to Energy’s Office website. In our audience, Susan pointed out a number of recipients of the GEO’s NEED grant program, (CZero, Hybrids-Plus). Although the NEED fund is now closed,  these recipients are moving on to their next stages of growth. Colorado has been an active leader at the state level and is one of 2 dozen government agencies executing  their climate action plans.

Delivering on the three objectives above, the Carbon fund is actively looking for clean energy projects to invest in. The response to the program has been very positive so far with over 125 projects submitted.  In order for the fund to buy carbon credits for your project you need to show that your business/technology will reduce or displace fossil fuels, and the main criteria is

Reduce one or more of the six GHGs (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride).

Some examples of projects that have funding preferences are: home or business “weatherization” projects and thermal-based energy technologies such as biomass. Road/transportation reduction solutions are also considered. Another area of interest is “Anaerobic digestion projects”, (some of our attendees may remember Heartland Renewable Energy presented on April 10th, 2008 at our meeting.)  Susan pointed out that this anaerobic technology for methane capture must be used on a hog or dairy farm. The state is also interested in other methods of methane capture from landfills and coal mines.  For more details on qualifications for projects see the website. A few important requirements is that a project needs to be brand new in Colorado, take place in Colorado and have not yet been implemented. A project needs real and verifiable emission reductions. It must be equivalent to or greater than 2500 metric ton/yr of carbon dioxide-equivalent Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The carbon credits are purchased at a rate of $8-12 per metric ton. Susan also mentioned that even though there is a minimum savings requirement – but they would consider “aggregating” projects such as smaller “solar heating” distributed systems.

The Governor has chosen the Climate trust in Portland Oregon, to design the Colorado Carbon Fund and work to offset Greenhouse Gas (GHG). Currently the fund is in it’s early stages and looking to fund it’s first projects (as of this writing). In the question session , Susan was asked about interesting projects. One project had to do with electrified overnighting for large haul trucks similar to this project. Also projects related to bio-mass co-firing and zero emission diesel have been evaluated. One project presented, but did not qualify, was a “Colorado” scuba diving center that “saved greenhouse gases” since people did not have to travel to New Mexico to get certified.  The Carbon Fund will not sponsor education programs, given the outreach programs in place today such as Boulder County’s Climate Smart Program.

Mike Fisher, EasyLite ILS
Energy Efficient Controlled Lighting Systems

Easylite is a Boulder based company founded over 10 yrs ago that specializes in integrated, controlled facility-wide lighting systems. Their founding started with 4-5 years of R&D and the product line demonstrates that their research is still on-going with a 3rd Generation fluorescent  lighting solution with dimming capability.

Mike took us through some of their experience in setting up custom and controlled lighting environments. For management of a facility, EasyLite offers the following solutions/control systems to reduce lighting loads:

1. Time of day (changing lighting output for various time periods)
2. Zone based (allowing finely grained control of facilities e.g. floor, building, classroom  to improve lighting load reduction)
3. Daylight harvesting (sensing daylight levels and adjusting interior lighting to maintain a constant light level)
4. Occupancy sensing (bringing up lighting on detection of a person’s entry)
5. Network addressable lighting (tying into the building automation systems over existing 3 wire connections)
6. Electric Demand reduction (supporting smart grid utility commands to reduce lighting at peak rates)
7. Frequency modulating dimming (retrofitting fluorescent lighting to allow for dimming)

Their focus has been on customer satisfaction, (currently rated at 4.86 out of 5, based on yearly visits after a deployment) and on optimizing end user value.  Their solutions are directed at reducing overall electricity usage, but also target peak usage when utilities charge peak rates.  The time of day/zone on-off scheduling systems, offer savings of 5-15%, while light level (dimming) can be higher 10-20%. Light harvesting generates outstanding savings of 30-60%, while occupancy sensing shows 5-25% savings.

EasyLite does it’s own manufacturing of ballasts and controls. Their value-add is in system design and application development for various facility requirements. Their offerings also include a full turn-key solution for customers. They also build and source many system components including digital addressable controls, relays, software, occupancy sensors and dimmers used in system solutions.

The crown jewel in the product line is their Frequency (versus pulse modulated) controlled ballast system for fluorescents, that allows for dimming. This system is based on low voltage control, does not require conduit, and works independent of the existing electric circuit configuration, ( so you can zone in any direction or grouping).  These lights are interconnected via a class 2, RJ-11 (phone-jack) terminated wiring.  This facilitates the control network and is used to create zones via plug-n-play.

Through their research on lighting systems, they have achieved two benchmarks unmatched in the industry:

• Low Profile T8 – 1 thru 8 lamp configurations
• Low Profile T5HO – 1 thru 4 lamp

Others in the industry can only do T5 fluorescent at 2′ for a single dimming ballast. Just as a note, the T measure is a diameter in 1/8ths of an inch ( A T8 bulb will be 1 inch in diameter, compared to 1 1/2 inch for the T12 bulb, a T8 bulb is often used to replace T12 as it fits into the same ballast and reduces energy consumption ). A T5HO bulb is used for typically for outdoor usages.

These lights support universal voltage, meaning they can be wired to various voltage sources levels (source needs 20A current rating) which is then converted system to their network low DC voltage. Another unique feature with the EasyLite fluorescent system is that all the lights are wired in a parallel. This configuration ensures that one failure won’t bring down a bank of lights.  With a harvesting configuration, a failure is compensated by the remaining active lights which maintain a constant lighting level. The harvesting solution is a closed loop system – which reads the natural and artificial light constantly at the “working surface” and can be reset by a flashlight. The harvester reacts gradually, minimizing the distraction at the location.

Mike provided an example of demand leveling in a school, showing a reduction of 200Kw at peak usage. He also presented a use case where there system enabled a 63% electricity saving at a school facility with daylight harvesting. The incremental install cost for a controlled lighting system is typically $1 per sq ft.  EasyLIte has patented technology in US, Europe and Asia.

We began the Q&A session and here are some of the answers to questions. The company has somewhere between 500-800 installed projects. Their frequency based ballast used regular fluorescent bulbs.  A question was posed on “interference problems”, since their system frequency range may cause aliasing problems and the response was there are no problems in this area. Their system is based on a 17V DC bus and can use existing conduit.  Light reduction usually translates into  A/C savings.  The formula for A/C savings in Colorado is for every 3 Watts of light not used, there is a 1W of A/C savings. In Texas this rate is much higher.

Benzi Livneh/Ian Richards,   MicroCoal, Inc
A Smarter Way to Clean Coal

After a brief audience survey on the perception of clean-coal by Kris, we were primed to hear our next presenters that have patented a new pre-combustion coal cleaning technology. Kris also mentioned that the new Comanche 3 coal plant is built for a 60 yr lifespan and cost 1 Billion to build. Our presenters did not disappoint on addressing the reality of our coal legacy. In the U.S cleaning up what we have is necessity and a stopgap as we shift over to renewables.

The first statistic introduced to the group was that total global energy usage is 17.4Billion MWh/yr. This demand for energy is expected to double by 2030. Of that total, 4 Billion MWh is consumed in the US. The install capacity of coal in the US is 330, 000 MW including the Comanche III plant. The replacement cost of the 1300 coal plants in the U.S. is 500Bil.  Of the 4Bil MWh used here, 50% is produced by coal.

Trying to relate how coal has improved, a graph was presented showing a period between 1990-2006, where electrical generation went up 34% but emissions went down. From the web I found that

Average annual emissions growth since 1990 is 1.1%/year for both petroleum and coal, and 0.8%/year for natural gas.

So in a sense, emissions per unit of energy is decreasing due to cleaner technologies, but our demand is outstripping current cleaning technology improvements.

So the question was posed on how we are going to tackle cleaning up coal. One solution put forth is legislation. Currently we have the Clean Air Act of 1990, that deals with Air Pollution Prevention and Control.  There is also the proposed Carbon Tax, legislation put forth by  Congressman Dingell’s to tax carbon content @ $50 ton/of carbon content  and  50 cents on a gallon of gasoline.

The direction that MicroCoal has taken is to make burning coal more efficient. As posed, it takes 3.17 kWh of fuel consumed to produce 1 kWh. So as it stands today coal is 30% efficient. There is a lot of room to improve this efficiency. Older coal plants typically boil water to produce electricity. In the next generation, coal will also be turned into liquid, to power and provide fuel for vehicles. This new process is dirtier then current coal plants.  In both cases, the processing is essentially burning coal and trying to clean what comes out of it. The effluent contains various contaminants including NOx (Nitrus Oxides), SOx (Sulfur Oxides) and Hg (Mercury).  These pollutants are released from the 1.2 Bil tonnes of coal we burn every year.

MicroCoals approach is to clean the coal so it goes to the boiler cleaner thus reducing contaminants by 30-50%. The reduced effluent,  will improve the boiler performance by reducing slag and resultant ash. The slag in the boiler acts as an insulator and decreases boiler efficiency. The early-processing of coal, cleans it up during the pre-combustion stage, which reduces moisture, sulfur, mercury, etc. via microwave treatment. The process separates the slag and heavy metals from the coal.  It also handles the resultant water by cleaning/filtering and separating it from the effluent solids.  If all coal plants used this system, it would result in a reduction of 2.5 Billion tonnes of CO₂ /annually from the atmosphere.  Coal that is processed through this system comes out ‘fractured’ but it contains more energy. Another footnote is that Comanche III will take in 2-3 Million tonnes of coal a year, and use 1 million tonnes of water to process.  MicroCoal will significantly reduce the amount of water used by the plant.

Benzi, indicated they are making good progress selling their system, and have a pilot facility co-located at a power plant in Golden, CO.  The Q&A session revealed some great insights.  It seems that there is a penalty to do carbon capture, (a competitor to MicroCoal). In theory Carbon Capture Systems (CCS) could reduce CO₂ by 80-90% but there is a  25-40% cost premium.  MicroCoal considers their penalty to be much less – closer to 15-20% premium.  They offer stiff competition to other solutions, with a conversion cost for a 500MWh plant  around $30mil versus scrubber system that would cost $100mil.  In terms of cost, microwave was chosen since it is more efficient then other heating systems, he posed the example that a microwave is much more efficient then a stove to for heating food. The current efficiency of a microwave is around 64%.

Another question came up on the source and quality of coal. 40% of American coal comes from Wyoming and Wyoming has very clean coal. In fact in the Powder River Basin is the the world’s largest deposit of coal.  Benzi indicated that they worked with $13/ton WY coal and $60/ton Appalachian coal – Appalachian coal has 30-40% more BTU’s, hence the extra cost. The MicroCoal solution works better with cleaner WY coal and provides a more ecological result with a 40% contaminant reduction rate.

A quote I found on a 1990 NY Times article backed up Benzi’s discussion on the Powder the Power River Basin talked to the benefit of this coal and the Federal Clean Air Act :

Powder River Basin coal is so low in sulfur that utilities that burn it can meet the new standards without installing multimillion-dollar pollution control systems.

Christopher Reim , American BioResources, LLC
Simplified Scalable Algae Production Solutions

Christopher started off their presentation by introducing the executive team, a new CEO Sue Kunz, the COO Jeffrey Veres and their lead industrial microbiologist Nick Rancis.  American BioResources is driven by the market opportunity to use algae as a source for bio-fuels with the primary target market being  bio-diesel vehicles. They’re current offering consists of an algae growing system and a distribution channel for purchasing algae-based fuel to be refined and resold to the transportation market.  A key aspect of their solution is the partnership with farmers that would provide facilities to grow algae.

The foundation of algae bio-fuels is a desire to find a fuel source that is highly scalable and renewable given where the global demand for oil is going. Chris displayed a chart showing this resource consumption and it demonstrated how quickly demand from China has grown. Even if you don’t believe in Peak Oil (which is not theorized to be in 2020), then there still remains the issue of global competition for our existing petroleum resources post-recesson.

The growth of bio-diesel processing capacity in the U.S. is increasing with 110 plants in production and 86 new plants coming on-line. The current issue is that there is a disconnect with capacity and resources, where bio-diesel sources are being outstripped by the capacity being built. To meet this need, is the opportunity to use lipid-based oils from micro-algae, enabling anyone with the equipment to grow their fuel In a sense, facilitate the “Democratization of Energy”. The bio-fuels market is 2 Billion today with 500 Million gallons sold in 2008 and production has doubled since 2004. In comparison, the current petroleum market in 2008 was 306 Billion gallons.

The bio-fuel competition comes from other sources of bio-mass, such as corn, soy-bean, sunflower, safflower, camelina, and rapeseed. One of the best efficiencies comes from oil palms which can make 635gal/acre of bio-diesel, but this is dwarfed by micro-algae which produces 1850 gal/acre of fuel. The newer numbers for algae are proving to be even higher then this number cited.  Algae has a number of unique properties. Ocean-based Algae produces 70% of the worlds oxygen. So much for the reputation of the world’s forests, in reality the ocean is the “lungs of the earth”. Algae has the potential for 100% utilization in the process, with lipids going to make bio-diesel and the chaff used to make cellulosic ethanol. Also the chaff can be used for bio-plastics, fertilizer and food supplements (being rich in omega 3) .  The chaff is of great interest to livestock farmers. This type of “crop” is highly desirable to farmers over other alternatives since it is not seasonal, not weather dependent, does not require “change of fields” and can be grown all year-round.

The solution involves growing algae is an indoor, photo-bioreactor system. It consists of a proprietary growing system that is closed loop. It employs artificial lights to grow algae, recycles water and uses affordable components. Algae is not consumptive of water is just lives in it.  But it does consume CO₂ at a rate of 1.8 lbs for each 1lb of fuel produced. The current focus is to make the offering attrative to farmers through scalability and  low infrastructure cost.  The solution supports the change of  algae-strains, scaling the process through additional tanks and flexibility to upgrade system components for efficiency.  AmBioRes currently has two full scale units in production today.

In our Q&A session we had another great set of questions from our highly-educated audience.  First, a question on the efficiency equation was not tackled due to the complexity of the answer.  In regards to problems such as disease, the proprietary system can quickly cycle out water to quickly change out bad algae and get the system running again.  Responding to a more detailed request on the business model, AmBioRes mentioned that it supplies the photo-bioreactor to farmers/micro-growers, and in a co-op style the growers sell their product back to AmBioRes.  The company then processes it in refineries and sells the final product. Their goal is to use hub & spoke, so that micro-growers are setup close to refineries, in order to minimize the overall cost of moving the product.

Algae strains also are part of the equation and profiling them for fuel conversion is where much of the proprietary research and intellectual property is found. There are over 300,000 known strains and some are so filled with lipids and fatty-acids, more then 50% of it can be converted to fuel.  They have chosen a distributed model that allows for rapid growth and partnering with farmers. An extra benefit to farmers is utilizing chaff for their livestock.

The question of the extra cost of internal lights versus natural lighting and it turns out that the internal lights are much more efficient then natural light which has a 11% efficiency rate.  The cost of bio-diesel fuels was in the realm of $4.43/gal in mid 2008 and down to $2.45/gal at the end of 2008, some in the audience claims a much higher rate for algae fuel.  Algae-based fuel at the pump will probably be brought down with government subsidization.  As a feed for livestock, algae has a huge upside, since it produces 2 1/2 times the protein of soy. Farmers need to invest about 100K for equipment, but would see payback in a relatively short period.  The feed for algae is proprietary but its a mixture of Nitrates, Phosphates and CO₂.