Autodesk’s Ambition to Change the Green Building Industry

Source: Reuters

By Justin Moresco - Earth2Tech

When software is designed well, it can radically improve the way an industry works. That’s the vision behind ongoing efforts at Autodesk to upgrade its building performance modeling software — to make energy retrofits of buildings cheaper and easier.

The San Rafael, Calif.-based firm believes the improvements it’s making to its suite of construction industry software will compress the time it takes to do detailed sustainability analysis (energy, water, emissions) from weeks to days and as a result, make such analysis cheap enough to be accessible to a majority of the building market.

More than 100 million buildings in the U.S. are leaky and inefficient and could use an energy makeover with measures like better insulation, heating and air conditioning systems and natural ventilation. But most of these structures are relatively small (homes and offices), and the cost of building accurate computer models to do detailed analysis on them is often too high with current technology, according to John Kennedy, senior manager for sustainable analysis products at Autodesk. He says energy service companies (ESCOs) -– businesses that develop, install and finance energy efficiency projects –- today won’t touch a building less than 10,000 square feet.

But Autodesk believes the economics will dramatically change once engineers and architects can build a model in, say, a day or two and have it automatically spit out recommendations with the impact on cost and performance for each measure. Some of the new or improved features Autodesk is working on include: an increased use of cloud computing that would make sophisticated analysis quicker, more leverage of deep reservoirs of data about local weather conditions and the performance of different building products, more accurate and faster modeling of natural ventilation and water use, and an emphasis on making sure all of this “sustainability criteria” can be easily and accurately shared between the different software used by architects and engineers. Kennedy didn’t provide a timeline for these upgrades.

Autodesk also wants to incorporate the embodied energy of building materials (the total energy used in manufacturing, transporting and installing) more thoroughly into its software models. “It makes no sense to put triple-paned windows in a house in Los Angeles when the energy saved from its use would never exceed the amount needed to build it,” Kennedy said. Few vendors currently supply or even have this data to provide, he added.

Still, even with Autodesk’s planned improvements, it’s unclear how far down into the building market its software can penetrate. At some point, it will always be cheaper for boutique energy retrofitters focused on the residential market to analyze a home than an architectural or engineering firm charging $150 an hour.

Autodesk says that current versions of its software –- such as performance modeler Ecotect Analysis and its on-demand Green Building Studio –- has already shrunk the time it takes for sustainability analysis from months to weeks, and the firm can also boast of a growing customer base. But the use of building performance software, from Autodesk or anyone else, is still relatively uncommon among design firms.

Part of the reason for this slow adoption is the perceived high cost of using these tools. Another reason, however, is that the industry –- broadly speaking -– is still operating collectively as if energy and water use don’t need to be factored in during design. It’s what Dawn Danby, sustainable design program manager at Auodesk, calls a “cultural” problem. While stricter building codes and the growing prominence of green building standards like LEED are pushing the embrace of performance software, widespread adoption won’t happen until architects and engineers change their habits.

That helps to explain Autodesk’s mounting marketing push alongside its software development. As part of that effort, in July the firm announced its “Clean Tech Partner Program” through which it will give away software packages worth up to $150,000 each to 100 early-stage cleantech startups. According to Danby, the firm is working hard to inform designers and building owners that its software is relatively easy to use, inexpensive and gives quick feedback.

Still, changing the construction industry will be a long slog, even when one of the strongest pushes is coming from a fast-moving software company.

Green-tech Startups

Via EE Times Asia:

11 December 2008
Small is beautiful for green-tech newbies

Green Tech

Les Fritzemeier heads up a tiny solar-energy start-up that most people have never heard of, Wakonda Technologies. But rather than worry about being steamrolled by the sliding economy, he feels like he's in a great spot.

"In a lot of respects, the best time to start a company is in the middle of a recession, assuming you've got money," he said. "Our target is to go to market when most people expect the economy to turn around."

Without a doubt, the recession and lower oil prices are hurting many companies in clean tech, a situation likely to slow what has been a frenzied pace of innovation.

But investors and entrepreneurs say that so far, smaller green-tech firms appear to weathering the storm the best, allowing them to continue developing new energy technologies.

To a large degree, that's simply because younger firms, in general, demand less capital to operate. Those green ventures most vulnerable are the ones that need late-stage funding--the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build a biofuel plant or solar-manufacturing line, they said.

Across the board, though, investors and entrepreneurs report that the valuations of green-tech start-ups—once considered in bubble territory—are going down, and there is a growing emphasis on having cash.

"What's out there is a level of nervousness in every business," said Mitch Tyson, CEO of Advanced Electron Beams, which makes equipment to make industrial processes more energy- and water-efficient. "People still don't have a good sense of where the bottom is."

Seeking new sources

As a result, green-tech entrepreneurs—after being lavished with money and attention for the last three years--need to get creative with how they fund their ideas.

Consider Qteros, a young firm with a potential breakthrough process for making ethanol from agricultural waste, such as corn stover. One of its initial investors, ethanol maker VeraSun Energy, declared bankruptcy, shutting it out of any follow-on round.

Other sources of money, including BP and George Soros' fund, filled the void. But the added work—compounded by cautious lenders—strung the process out from six months to nine.

"This Wall Street meltdown is having effects on early-stage green-tech companies getting the money they need to grow," said Jonathan Gorman, the manager of business development at Qteros. "There was a huge due diligence process, with outside scientists, as we looked for money, which they probably wouldn't have done before."

In another case of Wall Street colliding with green-tech garage start-ups, one newly formed firm nearly lost an investor when he lost half a million dollars on the stock market.

Late last month, SunRun, which installs and finances consumer solar-panel purchases, secured a $105 million commitment from U.S. Bank, but it wasn't as easy as it would have been a few months ago: one investor said getting a bank to sign on to a tax equity fund was like getting on "the last helicopter leaving Saigon."

Fritzemeier of Wakonda Technologies seems have gotten the timing right too: he was fortunate enough to raise money in July, before the financial markets' meltdown.

He's optimistic about the future because demand for technology that reduces the cost of solar electricity will remain strong, even in a down economy. The company is trying to develop disruptive solar-cell technology by combining low-cost, thin-film manufacturing techniques with very efficient cells.

Like most people in clean tech, he's eager to see the shape of the Obama administration's energy and green-job initiatives.

"The continued emphasis on renewable energy and economic development from the incoming (Bush) administration may put additional support in place to accelerate our efforts," Fritzemeier said.

Flight to quality
Certainly, being in the right industry helps a small company's chances. While biofuels are closely tied to falling commodity and gasoline prices, products that save energy can appeal to cost-cutting businesses or utilities looking to make the electricity grid more efficient.

"We feel better that we're in the efficiency business selling to businesses," said Robert LeFort, the CEO of Ember, a wireless-networking firm that has shifted its focus to smart-grid products. "That's better than putting something on the shelf at Wal-Mart, and hoping the consumer picks it up. It's the lesser of two evils."

As more bad economic news comes out seemingly every day, many predict that the best companies—with paying customers —are the ones that have the best chance of thriving. A number of successful companies, including Google and Cisco Systems, were founded during an economic downturn.

Nicholas Parker, executive chairman of the Cleantech Group research firm, said the difficulty in getting financing in the coming year will thin the ranks of clean-tech start-ups and, from an investment point of view, result in a "flight to quality."

Advanced Electron Beams' Tyson is out, trying to raise another $20 million to $25 million Series C round, and he's gotten a commitment from existing investors and a good reception from others. The interest could well stem from the fact that the company already has customers using its product.

"I say to potential investors, 'We have a product in the field now and look at the customer base—the market risk is low,'" he said. "Knock on wood. So far, my experience, has been typical of normal times."

- Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog.

Book: The Art of Sustainable Investing

Via Renewable Energy World:

8 December 2008
Cary Krosinsky & Nick Robins, Authors

Our new book, Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long-Term Performance, published by Earthscan in the UK on November 10, and Stylus Publishing in the U.S. on December 8, was conceived in the early summer of 2007 before credit markets crunched and the world economy experienced perhaps the worst financial shock since the Great Depression.

Its scope and purpose were also designed in advance of the UN Bali conference, which after years of inertia, laid the groundwork for a global deal to confront climate change. These two apparently unconnected developments symbolize the need for patterns of finance and investment that are truly focused on long-term value creation, and away from the short-term focused vision that has arguably led us to the immediate financial crisis we face.

Fortunately, a shift in this direction is already underway with the rapid growth in sustainable investing practice over the past two decades. Today's rendition of sustainable investing covers all asset classes and all regions of the world. It has strong links to the pioneering ethical and socially responsible investment communities, but goes a number of steps further by placing the pursuit of financial returns in the context of the world's economic, environmental and social challenges.

Over the past 30 years, a range of terms, notably social, ethical, green, responsible, socially responsible and sustainable — have been used to describe the emerging practice of incorporating extra-financial factors into investment decision-making. One woman's "ethical investing" is another man's "socially responsible investing," and one firm's "responsible investing" is another manager's "sustainable investing."

On reflection, this embarrassment of semantic richness is perhaps understandable for a rapidly evolving approach, where the final form has yet to be settled. In such a fluid field, we are well aware of the dangers of false precision.

Indeed, one of our contributors, Rod Schwartz, when trying to pin down socially responsible investment, revived John Morley's dictum that "if you want a platitude, there is nothing like a definition."

Yet it is also our strongly held view that not resolving these terminology disputes has led to a misperception that investing with one's values inevitably leads to underperformance by definition, which could not be further from the truth, as our book details in greater depth.

Sustainable investing in our experience combines two profound appreciations. The first is that the best way of generating risk-adjusted returns in the 21^st century is to fully incorporate long-term environmental, social and economic trends into investment and ownership decision-making. The second is that achieving global sustainability requires the full recasting of the world's capital markets.

If the first speaks the language of financial value at the micro-level, the second refers to the imperative of structural reform at the macro-dimension. Sustainable investing thus provides an agenda for action for purely financially motivated investors eager to mitigate risk and benefit from upside opportunities, as well as for civil society organizations aiming to achieve social and environmental progress.

It encompasses the growing numbers of individual investors who wish to ensure that social and environmental factors are included in the ways they allocate their savings. It also draws on the rising tide of institutional investors who appreciate the growing financial materiality of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.

Added to this are cleantech investors who identify major potential for capital growth in companies providing solutions to mounting environmental constraints. And alongside these are investors explicitly seeking social as well as financial returns from new avenues such as microfinance. What unites these apparently disparate groups is an acknowledgment that value can now only be created on a long-term basis through fresh approaches to financial analysis, fiduciary duty and capital market regulation.

Currently, we observe five distinctive investment styles:

• Ethical Investing: described as "an approach to investing driven by the value system of the key investment decision-maker." and drawn from The Social Responsibility of the Investment Profession by Julie Hudson. In many cases, this equates to traditional social investing in the U.S. as well as to much of current socially responsible investing, and applies mostly to individual investors as well as to charities and foundations that have values as part of their mission.

• Responsible Investing: described as "an approach adopted by institutional investors to start taking ESG factors into account in pursuit of their fiduciary duties to clients and beneficiaries."

• Cleantech investing: defined as the surge in investment into environmental sectors such as energy efficiency, pollution control, renewable energy sustainable transport, as well as waste and water management. Linked to this is the fast-growing practice of "climate change investing," which may supplement clean tech with allocations to sustainable forestry, as well as in some cases to nuclear power.

• Social investing: described as "an approach to investing that seeks to generate social as well as financial returns." While ethical investing tends to focus on the consistency of investments with the investor's value system, social investing examines outcomes in light of the impact on others, often those most disadvantaged in society.

• Sustainable investing: described as "an approach to investing driven by the long-term economic, environmental and social risks and opportunities facing the global economy." What distinguishes current practitioners of sustainable investing from the other approaches is the conviction of their commitment to systematically integrate environmental, social and economic factors into the valuation and choice of assets and the exercise of ownership rights and duties. [For example, Joe Keefe of Pax World defines sustainable investing as the "full integration of environmental, social and governance factors into financial analysis and decision-making." See Keefe, J. (2007) ‘From SRI to Sustainable Investing', Green Money Journal, Summer 2007]

In the book, we use these distinctions to compare the financial performance of different types of funds.

Sustainable investing is also distinct from the investment mainstream, not least in its approach to time horizons. We would describe the mainstream as "an approach to investing that applies conventional financial theories to the valuation and selection of assets and the exercise of ownership rights."

Clearly, as the importance of environmental and social factors becomes part of the conventional wisdom, so the investment mainstream will adopt aspects of the sustainable investing agenda. Indeed, a growing share of the world's capital assets is already incorporating at least parts of the sustainability agenda.

The McKinsey Global Institute has calculated that the value of public equities, as well as corporate and government bonds, amounted to some US $120 trillion in 2006.

Our "rule of thumb" estimate is that at most between one-tenth and one-quarter of this figure is now on a sustainable investing trajectory, but with the bulk of this limited to early stage shareholder engagement rather than active deployment of capital.

[The upper band of this estimate is drawn from the 2008 assets under management supporting the Carbon Disclosure Project of US$67 trillion. To deal with the issue of double counting, we have simply halved this figure and then compared it with the overall total given by McKinsey. The lower band is derived from the assets under management supporting the UN Principles of Responsible Investment, which in May 2008, amounted to some US$13 trillion.]

One final clarification. SRI started out standing for "socially responsible investment." More recently, it has begun to spell out "sustainable and responsible investment." For us, the evolution of this acronym describes the generational shift that is now underway, and when we use SRI as a catch-all, we mean it to cover the five investment styles we have identified.

To date, sustainable investing has proved itself as a powerful addition to the investment landscape. The years ahead, however, are set to be increasingly dynamic as sustainability emerges from a niche to transforming the rest of investment management, in the process becoming the new mainstream.

Cary Krosinsky is Vice President for Trucost Plc as of June 2008. Trucost has built the world's most extensive database of more than 700 emissions and pollutants of more than 4200 public companies around the world and uses this data to help portfolio managers understand their carbon footprints, helping lower them while maintaining and enhancing performance.

Nick Robins (left) is Head of the HSBC Climate Change Centre. Nick has 20 years experience in promoting sustainable development and corporate responsibility in financial markets, business and public policy research.

Nick Robins and Cary Krosinsky are authors of Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long-Term Performance.

REC Solar Helps Wine Country Pack & Ship and J&L Wines Chill Wine with Power from the Sun

Via Renewable Energy World:

7 December 2008

REC Solar installs a 46.4 kW solar electric system on state-of-the-art wine distribution center

Paso Robles, CA

J&L Wines' warehouse announced this week the completion of a 46.4 kilowatt solar electric system, installed by industry leader REC Solar, Inc. The temperature controlled wine storage and distribution facility is the first of its kind to utilize clean, renewable energy from the sun. The REC Solar electric system will dramatically lower energy costs for the 28,000 sq. ft. warehouse, which uses extensive electricity for temperature control, electronic surveillance, and its computerized inventory management system

“J&L Wines’ decision to go solar is a natural extension of the company’s commitment to environmental sustainability,” said Angiolo Laviziano, REC Solar’s President and CEO. “J&L Wines will generate about 70% of their facility’s energy needs with clean, renewable energy from the sun and will reduce their electricity bills by almost 75%.”

Previously, business owners Lorraine and John Alban worked with REC Solar to install three solar electric systems at one of their other businesses, Alban Vineyards. Alban Vineyards installed a 36 kW system for the winery production facility, an 11.6 kW system for the agricultural water pump, and one for the Alban’s home.

According to Lorraine Alban, President of J&L Wines, “My husband, John Alban, and I believe solar is a wonderful energy source for countless reasons. Our experience using REC for the installations on our home, winery, and water well have all been very positive. When you factor in that we really like working with local businesses, REC is just about perfect for us.”

J&L Wines is quite unique as a wine distributor. They independently operate their own warehouse and all deliveries are made from their fleet of refrigerated trucks. Thus they are able to ensure the wines they sell are in their hands from when they leave the winery to when they reach the restaurant or retailer. The warehouse that is home to both J&L Wines and Wine Country Pack & Ship is conveniently located on Ramada Drive, at the Highway 101 and Highway 46 West intersection in Paso Robles. For more information please visit www.recsolar.com www.jandlwines.com or www.winecountrypackandship.com

About REC Solar, Inc.

REC Solar is an industry-leading solar power provider specializing in grid-tied residential and commercial installations. With a local presence in all major solar markets in the USA and millions of watts installed, REC Solar is committed to lowering the cost of solar power through efficient processes, innovative products, and outstanding customer service. REC Solar is among the nation’s largest solar integrators and currently has over a dozen offices throughout 6 states (AZ, CA, CO, HI, OR and NJ). For additional information on REC Solar visit www.recsolar.com or call 1-888-OK-SOLAR (888-657-6527).

About J&L Wines, Inc.

J&L Wines Inc. of Paso Robles started in 1981 as J. Eberle Wines. The company’s name and mission evolved with the emergence of the wines from the central coast. Under the ownership and guidance of Lorraine Alban, its mission has been to select wineries representing the best of their region. Employing eight regional sales people, J & L Wines is proud of its excellent reputation for professionalism and prompt, dependable, personal service. The company endeavors to work closely with suppliers to develop sales programs that produce results. This has helped many of the J&L Wines’ brands become very well established in the region. The sales personnel focus on making appropriate placements which serve to enhance and build the wineries they represent. For more information please visit www.jandlwines.com or call 805 239-1377.

About Wine Country Pack & Ship

Wine Country Pack & Ship (WCP&S) excels in delivering premium fulfillment services to wineries with consumer-direct shipping needs. The company is a joint venture between Lorraine Alban and Maureen Herrera. Services encompass wine clubs, release shipments, tasting room orders, e-commerce orders and more. WCP&S simplifies the fulfillment process for our customers and helps build their brand in the consumer-direct market. For more information please visit www.winecountrypackandship.com or call (805) 227-7117.

Contact:

Isabelle Christensen

REC Solar, Inc.

(650) 815-6778

ichristensen@recsolar.com

Lorraine Alban

J&L Wines, Inc.

(805) 239-1377

Lorraine@jandlwines.com

Maureen Herrera

Wine Country Pack & Ship

(805) 227-7117

Maureen@winecountrypackandship.com

For Further Information

• REC Solar
• J&L Wines
• Wine Country Pack & Ship