Later this year, the Cleantech Group and the Guardian will publish the Cleantech Global 100, a list of the 100 most promising private clean technology companies on the planet.
Entry forms need to be submitted before nominations close June 30th, 2009. The final list of 100 private companies will be derived from nominations and the views of a panel of experts to reflect the combined wisdom of the international cleantech community.
According to this report, Australian company Carnegie has purchased a portfolio of patents for wave generators from Renewable Energy Holdings.
DuPont has just held the 21st DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation. As reported here, DuPont beleives packaging can be improved for simultaneous environmental and economic benefits.
Winning products included shampoo bottles with nearly 100% recycled plastic content, packages made from new natural materials, self-standing pouches for replacing glass jars. One of the winners is Australian: A&C Packers.
Filed under: News | Tags: biogas, cleantech, Global Financial Crises, patent, technology, wind power
If you think that big corporations are not protecting clean and sustainable technologies, think again. General Electric is getting into this area in a big way, and they are fierce advocates for a strong patent system to promote cleantech.
As reported here, Carl Horton, GE’s chief IP counsel explained that his firm has already made progress with its dedicated R&D stream for clean-energy solutions. ‘Innovative projects like those in GE’s Ecomagination initiative,’ he said, ‘prove that new energy technologies help fuel economic growth, create a new generation of green collar jobs, and help us be responsible environmental stewards.’
One of GE’s ecomagination products is a reciprocating engine that run off biogass (methane) from fermented animal waste. As reported here, they are also working on the Smart Grid and batteries. GE also is one of the major manufactures of wind turbines.
It’s a highly profitable enterprise, with reported revenues last year of US$17B. No wonder they are keen to protect clean and sustainable technology!
Across the Atlantic, another industrial juggernaut, Siemens, is getting a little hot under the collar for the attention that GE is getting. As reported here, Siemens claims to have made US$26B in 2008 from cleantech products – and believes it is much better at it!
It appears that the big corporations are eyeing green stimulus packages in response to the global financial crises (GFC). To many, these packages are a great way to address the GFC and climate change at the same time.
As reported here, a recent report Concentrated Solar Power Global Outlook 2009 states that concentrated solar power could provide 25% of the world’s power needs by 2050.
Filed under: News | Tags: hybrid vehicle, intellectual property, patent, prius, Toyota
Toyota, as reported, is transferring its hybrid vehicle technology to Ford. This may be part of a decisive strategy to make the Toyota technology a global standard.
Toyota has an overwhelming dominance of the patent landscape for hybrid vehicles giving it an extremely strong commercial position. No doubt it will be using its portfolio to extract maximum concessions from Ford.
If Toyota’s move to make it’s technology a global standard is realised then Toyota will make a windfall profit from licencing its patents to all the car manufactures who are in increasing numbers releasing their own models of hybrid vehicles.
Filed under: Feature | Tags: clean and sustainable technology, cleantech, hybrid vehicle, lithium sulfur battery, patent, rechargeable battery
The rechargeable battery world is abuzz with the news that a rechargeable battery based on lithium-sulfur chemistry has been realised. This chemistry has the potential to store many times the charge of current lithium-ion batteries which is good news for all sorts of clean and sustainable technologies, most notably hybrid and electric vehicles. The breakthrough was the use of nanotechnology. The nano-structure of the cathode is shown in the figure.
Carbon nanorods with infused sulfur make a great cathode
The difficult challenge was always the cathode, the part of the battery that stores and releases electrons in the charge and recharge cycles … To enable a reversible electrochemical reaction at high current rates, the electrically-active sulphur needs to remain in the most intimate contact with a conductor, such as carbon.
Filed under: News | Tags: geothermal, PV, Renewal Energy Policy, World Energy Market
According to the 2009 report of the Renewal Energy Policy Network from the 21st century, the global power capacity from the renewal energy sources reached 280 megawatts in 2008. This is a 16% rise over 2007, and nearly three times the capacity of the United States Nuclear Sector.
Solar heating increased by 15%, while biofuel production increased by 34%. Interestingly, at least 73 countries now have renewable energy policy targets. You should see an even greater uptake in renewables.
Once again, we see that countries like China and India are increasingly playing major roles. The highlights of the report include:
Wind
- Existing wind power capacity grew by 29 percent in 2008 to reach 121 GW, or more than double the 59 GW of capacity in place at the end of 2005.
- China doubled its wind power capacity for the fifth year in a row, ending 2008 at 12 GW, and breaching China’s 2010 development target of 10 GW two years early.
Solar
- Grid-connected solar PV continued to be the fastest growing power generation technology, with a 70 percent increase in existing capacity to reach 13 GW.
- Spain became the PV market leader, with 2.6 GW of new grid-tied installations.
- The concentrating solar power industry saw many new entrants and new manufacturing facilities in 2008
- Solar hot water in Germany set record growth in 2008, with over 200,000 systems installed.
Geothermal
- Geothermal power capacity surpassed 10 GW in 2008, led by the United States.
- Direct geothermal energy (ground source heat pumps) is now used in at least 76 countries.
Companies
- By August 2008, at least 160 publicly traded renewable energy companies worldwide had a market capitalization greater than $100 million.
- India emerged in 2008 as a major producer of solar PV, with new policies leading to $18 billion in new manufacturing investment plans or proposals by a number of companies.
President Obama today announced a massive increase for fuel efficiency standards in the US:
one national [United States] standard that will rapidly increase fuel efficiency without compromising safety by an average of five percent each year between 2012 and 2016 [emphasis added]
Obama has announced strict fuel efficiency standards - will Australia follow?
Wow – that’s a massive increase. According to this news item, for the current model year, 2009, the average fuel efficiency for cars and light trucks is 25 mpg. By 2016 the fleet average will be 35.5 mpg – 39 mpg for cars, and 30 mpg for trucks.
I am sure that Toyota, who has a very strong patent portfolio in hybrid vehicles, will be pleased they filed all of those patents! See my previous entries about patents for hybrid and electric vehicles. Also, here is an interesting news video clip about the announcement.
According to this article, Western Australia’s largest power retailer, Synergey, believes that the price for carbon needs to be Australian $80 per tonne to drive investments and clean energy. Synergey’s Wholesale Business Development Manager, Simon Middleton, is quoted as saying
“Over the medium term – 10 to 15 years – you will see the price moving to about $80 per tonne. And the reason for that is what is the required price that encourages emissions reductions technologies…so if you look at carbon captions storage renewables, what’s the price that you will need to bring about these technologies? The technologies are likely to be the price setters.”
Filed under: Feature
Take part in this inaugural ‘Clean Technology for the Future’ seminar series and one-to-one meeting program.
These seminars are designed to help you understand the range of government support services and programs available to boost your industry capability and help you compete globally.
Governments around the world are strongly supporting investment in clean energy and clean technologies.
Ensure you are aware of available resources in this area and able to maximise the success of your efforts in global markets by hearing from, and networking with representatives from key government and industry bodies.
For further details and to register for this free event, see below URL:
http://www.austrade.gov.au/EventViewBookingDetails.aspx?EventID=1969
According to this news item, the Australian Federal Government has stated that it wants to create the largest solar energy project in the world.
In the last budget, the Federal Government annouced that it would spend $1.4 billion on creating solar power plants. Up to four solar plants will be built, in total generating about the same amount of power as a single coal fired power station.
Sites have not been selected yet, although it is expected that a tender process will be commenced to select the sites. Important considerations for site selection include high insolation and ready access to the grid.
Interestingly, the Prime Minister has also announced that Australia will join the International Renewal Energy Agency.
The ACT, as reported in this news item, has selected two possible sites for a solar power station. These are Ingledene Forest and Kowen Forest.
Filed under: Feature
The CitySmart Innovation Festival is part of this year’s Australian Innovation Festival, which is held in all States and
Territories. This national program showcases innovation and entrepreneurship in all industries and runs from the 26th April
(World IP Day) to the end of May 2009.
This year’s theme “Solutions for Success” highlights the importance of innovation during this period of economic uncertainty. Many people equate the term “innovation” with having a long term R&D perspective, but of limited relevance to immediate business needs. This is fallacious, short sighted and a recipe for disaster. With today’s global financial crisis, Australian organisations need to be vigilant in reducing costs and debt levels. More than ever however, they must strive to
“innovate” to meet the challenge of increased competition and ever changing consumer and market needs.
“Innovation” is not just the latest in technology and scientific advancement; it is also about generating new ideas and their
take-up. Innovation applies to incremental, ongoing changes to existing processes, systems and products; as well as taking advantage of future, over the horizon opportunities. This festival has national importance because Australians increasingly realise that innovation is the lifeblood of today’s companies and the key to national economic success. Those
that fail to innovate are at best standing still, while those receptive to new ideas, realistic to challenges and prepared to make things happen will be successful.
This year marks the eight anniversary of the Festival. We expect over 400,000 participants to the 600 plus events this year. The Festival was established in 2002 as a not-for-profit initiative to celebrate and showcase the best in Australian innovation. Its mission is to increase public awareness of the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship through a
renewed emphasis on the three pillars of future economic growth – excellence in research, development and commercialisation. Australia is thriving with innovators, entrepreneurs and creative talents.
The Festival is the largest Australian industry festival. It is one of a kind; there is nothing else like it!
The Secretariat’s role is also to avoid timing issues as best as possible with events that may have similar themes or industry focus. Please go to
our website www.ausinnovation.org for further details.
Filed under: Feature | Tags: honda insight, hybrid vehicle patent, technology, toyota prius
To celebrate the launch of the new Toyota Prius (TM), we had another look at the patent landscape for hybrid vehicles.
In a previous blog entry I discussed Toyota’s numerous patent portfolio for hybrid vehicles and the commercial advantage it gave Toyota. In this blog entry I showed that there is more than 2,000 patent applications each year for electric and hybrid vehicles.
Griffith Hack (GH) decided to have a more focused look at Hybrid vehicles. GH Searchers performed a key word search for patents filled across the globe relating to hybrid vehicles between 1994 and 2008. GH located around 2,100 Toyota patents related to hybrid vehicles.
Below, we graph hybrid vehicle patent families by year. A patent family is the collection of national patents covering a single invention. Toyota, for example, has roughly between 2-3 patent applications for each family. This graph shows that patent filing activity in this area is increasing roughly exponentially. The numbers, particularly in recent years, are indicative of intense R&D activity and innovation in hybrid vehicles. The various manufactures are attempting to crystallize their first-mover advantage by rapidly filing patent applications for their inventions.
Hybrid vehicle patent filings per year
Interestingly, the ‘other’ category is the source of the majority of growth from 2006 onwards. However the biggest ‘other’ has only 10% of the filing rate of Toyota, the largest filer. Also, they are quite late entrants in the market and are unlikely to be able to work their inventions without licences from the long term players such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda. Thus, the ‘other’ category represents a group of patents fragmented over a multiplicity of late-entry entitles, and are weakly positioned to take advantage of their patent portfolio compared with the likes of Toyota.
Below, we graph hybrid Vehicle patents filed by manufacturer. This graph shows the numbers of patents filed by the dominant players (I am told that Fuji is Subaru, but I can not confirm this). Clearly, Toyota is the front runner, with Nissan, Honda and Subaru a distant 2nd-4th. The other players have relatively small patent portfolios and are at a distinct commercial disadvantage because of this. It is also clear that Toyota is the most innovative company in the field of Hybrid vehicles when patent counts are used as the relevant metric.
Hybrid vehicle patents applications by manufacturer
Toyota has been very aggressive in patenting it’s hybrid technology. As can be seen, they are the dominant patent filer which indicates they are the key innovators and have the strongest commercial position in the marketplace.
It appears that other car makers are not beginning to close the gap with Toyota. Since 2006 there have been a large number of filings fragmented across a multiplicity of players. None of these players have anything approaching the dominant position that Toyota has. However, it appears that there are 13 entities that have over 100 patents each in the filed, which is quite remarkable. There is intense interest by many entities to be part of the hybrid vehicle industry.
Did you ever want to know how a biomass gasification plant worked? Have a look at this video to find out!
Justin Blows
According to this report, the US Department of energy has allocated US$2.4B for carbon capture and storage.
Justin Blows
The good news for wind keeps coming, with the announcement that the London array wind farm will go ahead, as reported here.
This project is for 1,000MW of wind capacity in the form of off shore wind turbines in the Thames Estuary. The first phase of the project is reported to cost 2.2 billion Euros.
Apparently, Britain plans to build 30 to 35 GW of wind capacity, 20 GW of which will be offshore. The UK’s current generation capacity is approximately 75 GW.
Justin Blows.
According to this post, the European Patent Office Office (EPO) has joined with two global environmental groups to find ways of making the patent system friendlier for green IP. As reported in a previous post, it appears that the UK is moving stronly in this direction – I found this additional news item.
Justin Blows
