RETECH 2010 Conference

The RETECH Conference in February brought together the DOE, NGOs, Companies, Investors, and Influencers in the Renewable Energy and Cleantech space. As a blogger for ACORE (American Council on Renewable Energy), one of the hosts, I was able to attend several panels and posted blogs on several sessions (links below):

Business Conference Agenda / List of Panels

Blog Entries:

US Department of Energy Programs

Innovative Strategies in Renewable Energy

Project Finance

Thoughts & Analysis:

Generally I thought the conference was well attended. Speakers ranged from government agencies to universities to private investors and corporations. Attendees seemed to be heavily concentrated on those trying to raise capital for projects or companies as indicated by the crowding in those sessions speaking about DOE funding programs, RE investment, and RE project finance. The exhibition floor had a few big names like Lockheed, Covanta, Johnson Controls, and Volvo, but generally consisted of smaller companies and organizations. The space is generally very fragmented space with few RE-concentrated companies of scale.

Smart grid notes
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- Smart grid discussions were again focused on bringing online distributed RE without a focus on fixing current grid problems
- Utility concerns:
*Provisioning T&D infrastructure and reserving generation capacity to RE sites where there maybe no payback; remedy with fixed fee charge
*After recently rolling out AMR, now requesting additional funds to roll out next generation smart meters proves challenging (cannot be giving utility regulators much comfort in approving new initiatives)
- Building automation maybe the key to converting demand response into action:
*Identify device by virtue of it being plugged-in, similar to a computer recognizing a mouse, ipod, or printer through USB
*Potentially draft legislation to tax devices used during peak hours
*Building also site of EV charging, so can influence taxing here also; one note of concern that is unverified is that there maybe a battery life issue with EV batteries supplying power to the grid, maybe due to opposite direction power flow or because of over-draining of the
battery
- Notable players:
*NASA is working on a smart grid study/project
*Lockheed and Verizon are positioning themselves as integrators, both touting security offerings; the thought of having energy flows of a utility vulnerable to hackers is a real danger

Funding notes:
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- There was a side panel on the design of CEDA/Green Bank. Meant to be independent, initially capitalized with $10 billion, and gain authority over unspent funds in the Loan Guarantee Program
- Jim Presswood from the NRDC was on panel F2 (innovative strategies in RE) and stated his belief that cap & trade limits are important, demonstrated how PTC was critical to meet deployment goals, and that a policy tool chest, including RE standards and deployment standards, is needed
- Also on the above panel, cap & dividend was mentioned as a policy gaining significant traction
- The panel on university based research had a professor from Denmark stating how universities should be the site for risk taking, investing in those areas the market cannot support. I thought that was very in-sync with ARPA-E's approach to funding those technologies after the university lab stage but before the VC stage. The issue however, is
the potential that VCs view ARPA-E funded companies as unsustainable without significant government involvement, and therefore unattractive financing candidates.

Technology notes:
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- Wind - large off shore opportunity
- Biomass Energy for Transportation - jointly funded by DOE and DOAgriculture; I was surprised that Biomass for transportation was still being aggressively funded as I thought the better use for Biomass was for electricity generation; However, Volvo did mention
that their freight vehicle fleet will consist of EVs for short distances and LNG vehicles for long-haul routes
- Water - large opportunity to replace existing turbines, some 20-30 years old; will increase efficiency of power generation from 70% to 90% and will reduce the amount of fish killed by 90%