First published on the Cleantech Investor website, January 2012

Elisabeth Jeffries learns about enterprise, from the masters 

Soul-searching. Tormented by demons. Chippy.

Not the most promising qualities in a prospective PR manager perhaps, but ideal in an entrepreneur. And the Scots have them in bundles. That, at least, is the conviction of Bill Aulet, MD of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center in Cambridge, Massachussetts. Bill blasted into Edinburgh earlier this month from across the Atlantic alongside a couple of other big cheeses, to yank some fire out of the bellies of Scottish entrepreneurs (OK and a few Dutch, Spanish, Italian and, er, English).

A Fuel Cell Today Analyst View, by Dan Carter, republished courtesy of Fuel Cell Today

Today (18 January 2012) saw the launch of UKH2Mobility at the Royal Society in London. The project brings together thirteen industry participants with three UK Government departments (listed below) and the European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU). All participants have signed a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to share knowledge and expertise towards the shared goals.

UKH2Mobility is being facilitated by McKinsey & Co., which has prior experience of the European fuel cell industry from its involvement authoring the European powertrain study, and in its involvement in the German H2Mobility project. The project will draw from these previous studies where possible, but will include up to date, UK-specific information. All commercially sensitive data used in the report will be held by McKinsey and not made available for publishing.

A Fuel Cell Today Analyst View, by Dan Carter, republished courtesy of Fuel Cell Today

China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and has well-publicised problems with pollution and air quality. Negative headlines like this can be misleading though as the country’s per capita emissions are significantly less than other industrialised nations and China is one of the biggest manufacturers of renewable energy in the world. It also has extensive installed capacity of renewable energy, and its research centres are heavily focused on developing domestic renewables, but where do fuel cells fit into this picture? I recently spent two weeks travelling in China, visiting research centres and fuel cell companies to gather data for a forthcoming report and I’d like to give you a taste of my findings here.

2012-01-18

Jörg “George” Sperling, Munich-based partner at European cleantech fund WHEB Partners looks at which countries are producing globally-applicable environmental technologies and why

I spend a lot of my time on the road in Europe looking for companies developing clean industrial processes and energy-efficient solutions – some of which will ultimately enter the product lines or production lines of Europe’s leading industrial groups. Indeed, experience of the past 20 years has shown that government penalties on emissions and pollution are not simply a dead-weight cost to large industry. They can catalyse deep-rooted overhauls in efficiency and, therefore, productivity. The German chemicals sector is a case in point – environmental legislation, once feared, has helped turn it into the most efficient in the world, still able to compete globally.

Elisabeth Jeffries reviews technology innovation emerging from Imperial College London

Where the Russians lead, the Americans follow; where the Americans lead, the Russians follow. The new cold war for the 21st century has barely begun in the vicious climate of the Arctic circle. It is a scramble to extract the greatest share of hydrocarbons located under the seabed in the second most hostile place on the planet. This underground fuel accounts for 13% (90 billion barrels of oil and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids) of undiscovered oil on the planet, according to US Geological survey estimates in 2008.