Interesting business clips

I try to keep a pretty close eye on the new technology in renewables and energy efficiency, for two basic reasons: 1) Any scale-able, cost-effective renewable and efficiency technology is by definition a climate mitigation solution, and I need to teach the latest information in my classes and class modules relating to climate change, and 2) I also regularly teach classes and modules of classes in energy and energy efficiency.

This is a fairly volatile market, and if you blink you might miss any of the various changes, roll-outs, and other things going on. I'm often surprised how little attention some otherwise authoritative commentators pay to these meanderings, since a break through in any of the competing technologies can be game-changing for all the others.

Of course, the claims of companies for their new ideas and equipment always have to be taken with a pinch of salt, and energy tech markets can be very slow to change, but there's been enormous and fruitful work done in the last decade or so in many areas.

So, for instance, I'm very interested in wind turbine technology, but any serious further reduction in the price of solar PV, which has dropped 40-60% per watt in the last two years, will begin to make turbines seem far less cost-effective, and eventually, perhaps, even obsolete.

Here's a couple of clips. UTC, the Connecticut tech giant that owns Sikorski helicopters, Carrier HVAC/AC, and other major light-to medium-heavy engineering and US manufacturing may make a bid for UK-based Clipper Windpower, which is as far as I know the first time UTC has thought to go up against GE in wind tech. If this takeover goes ahead and bears fruit, a serious US-based competitor to GE may emerge. There are a few but none with this kind of clout.

Interesting.

And a UK biofuel concern that owns a potent new bug that converts high-carbon landfill waste to fuel has landed a serious deal with another US firm.

Funnily enough, a UK commentator in that last clip bemoans the loss of UK tech to the US, where she believes that renewables are in serious boom, supported wholeheartedly by our politicians:

"It's just so sad that we are losing these companies to the US," she said. "Why aren't we building these plants in the UK? Sustainable development in the UK keeps getting knocked back by skittish politicians. We just need to go for it, like the US is."

Which just goes to show, everything is relative.